Hey everyone, and a happy new year! This devlog was meant to come out last month, but some stuff came up, so I wasnt quite able to write the devlog on time (not like I regularly miss my mark on that front). Regardless, I've got some exciting news, so let's get to it.

For starters, here's a big one: All of UNDERTALE's SOUL modes have been faithfully recreated, including various elements of jank. Take a look:

But that's not all! Along with that, I have added two additional SOUL modes. Both of these additional ones are variations of existing SOUL modes that most of you might be familiar with. For starters, here is the Yellow SOUL as it appears in Deltarune Chapter 2:

Secondly, here's a variant of the Blue SOUL with the dash mechanic from TS!UNDERSWAP:

Sure makes you wonder if all of these will be used in PvP later down the line, doesn't it? Well, that is the plan, anyway.

Fun fact: Did you know that the bullet border used in the Mad Mew Mew fight is different from the one used for any other battle? This doesn't even seem to relate to the unique border shape, as that variant is actually completely separate from the main border. Interestingly, the way the rectangular border in that fight moves is different from how the normal bullet border moves - this alternate movement behavior is also implemented into Mysterytale and will be enabled when in PvP battles featuring Mad Mew Mew.

For the next part, I wanted to knock out multiple features at once! Those being "quick battles" and colored attacks. And what better way to combine both of those than Hotland's colored lasers? It's a 3-for-one-special!

Let's start with how the lasers behave on the overworld. They can be set to blue or orange, can be given movement, and can be set to stop their laser at walls, or have the laser continue infinitely as in the original game. Walk through the orange ones, stand still in the blue ones. But, what about when you fail to do so?

If you're standing in a Deltarune bullet area, you just directly take damage as you'd expect in that context. However, this is a Deltarune feature and Undertale handled things a little differently.

If you trigger the lasers outside of such an area, you get thrown into a "quick battle", Undertale's precursor to Deltarune's Overworld / Field bullets.

One more thing you might notice in this GIF is that the player only grazes the blue laser at the end. This is because orange attacks can only be grazed by standing still, while blue attacks can only be grazed while moving, else there would be no challenge in grazing them. If any future Deltarune chapters feature orange and blue attacks and feature different grazing logic for those, I'll definitely go back and update the game accordingly, but for the time being this is how I think it works best.

"Quick battles" are definitely an extremely niche feature, but one I really wanted to add. One of the things I really want to go for with Mysterytale is a feeling of familiarity. Despite the game being made from scratch rather than being a mod, I want it to feel like an updated version of the original game, or, yknow, to feel like a mod.

Now, onto the last major feature.

Shops finally made their way into the new engine!

They work just about as you'd expect them to, but with some added functionality that they lacked in the previous versions of the game.

The big and obvious main addition is support for your party members. Like in your overworld menus, you can just easily cycle through the active party member with left and right. Perhaps that's not the most graceful way to handle things, but after comparing various possible implementations, we decided that this was the best way to go about it.

Additionally, shops can hold more than 4 items now. Is this necessary? Maybe, maybe not.

There's even a functional Sell option now! Bet all of you have just been dying to sell that one old cookie. I mean, really, who was gonna eat that trash anyway?

Finally, some additional options have been added. You can now adjust the game's Music and Sound volumes, as well as the controls on keyboard.

Note that it's likely that the names of some keys wont be displayed correctly, but other than that, it should be fully functional.

And with that, well, the new engine is basically done! That's actually really exciting! That means I can start working on the actual multiplayer functionality very soon! If you wanna be there for some potential test sessions when those are gonna happen, feel free to join the Discord! ...or don't, I'm not your boss.

Typically though, I always talk about what I've been doing for the game in these Devlogs. But that doesn't mean I'm the only member of the team working hard. That said, a text-based Devlog format makes it difficult to really show much of the work done by our artists, especially when it comes to music. I do hope you're all looking forward to the future of the game as much as I am though.

Discarded Vessel says hi, probably.