You remember in school when homework was due at midnight, but you've put it off until the night before, so you hunker down and complete the assignment with only a few minutes to spare?

Welcome to the July 2026 devlog, folks!

DELTARUNE CHAPTER 5 FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Deltarune Chapter 5 came out a little over a month ago. If you're curious what my thoughts were, here's my first impressions video, 95% undiluted by fandom discourse. Since this video came out, my opinions have solidified more, so it's not wholly up to date. But if you want to watch it, go ahead!

The scope of the video ballooned, with the outline's page count inflating to fourteen pages, not counting the impromptu FRIEND tangent (Since, y'know, it was impromptu). Thus, my work on Versotale the past month has been unfortunately minimal in lieu of getting this video out. Sorry about that, folks!

NEW IDEAS

With the overall story being more fleshed out and really getting into the weeds of how the gameplay is going to mesh with the plot, a new segment has been added to Haven.

I mentioned a while back that Hollow Knight became a massive inspiration for elements of this story. I think, when this first area of Versotale finally releases, you'll understand why. It's like all the previously existing elements that have since been expanded by Hollow Knight inspiration have coalesced and exploded into something I never could have predicted being a part of my Undertale fanproject.

Here's a WIP teaser. Those of you who have been following for a while might recognize some of the environment! (Sorry for the graininess of the gif, by the way, that just be how gifs be)

Oh, and if you're curious, the spotlight is not a new thing, I had made it maybe a year or two ago, as well as the "breathing" animation. However, I did clean it up and make it significantly more robust.

!!!WARNING, CODING NERD TALK AHEAD!!!

I programmed it in a super clunky way before. Embarrassingly, I always knew it'd be easier to achieve the desired effect with a sine function, but I think when I first made it, I was too afraid to concede that I'd need to use MATH. And MATH? Well, I hate that guy. He's caused me nothing but trouble

...As it turns out, yeah, I was completely right. It actually was ludicrously easy to redo with a sine function, which condensed 43 lines of code down to a measly 11. Also, I remember the old code being a multi-day effort. This version took about an hour to implement. I've spent more time on this entire devlog than actually coding the damn thing. You love to see it

Folks, pay attention. Especially you novice programmers. View this as a cautionary tale and PLEASE don't act like Past Me. Don't let petty stubbornness make your endeavors pointlessly harder than it needed to be! That is self-sabotage. If you have knowledge, USE IT, AND SAVE YOURSELF HOURS OF STRIFE. Future You will be very grateful.

CONCLUSION

Apologies for the bare-bones update this go around! I did not prioritize my time after posting the Deltarune video very well. But things are really shaping up into something super nifty. Next devlog, I think I'll have some pretty cool stuff to show off!

See you next time!