Welcome back, friends and foes! It is now summertime for yours truly, meaning productivity is ramping up!

Here are all the things I consider report-worthy that we have accomplished since the last devlog.

MULTIPLE SAVE FILES!

Behold: Multiple save files!

The biggest downside of multiple save files is actually one I was not anticipating: While only one slot in Undertale is just straight-up worse gameplay-wise compared to Deltarune, narrative-wise it is essential for some of the stakes. So, by implementing this, we have basically locked ourselves out of playing with players' attachment to the world. However, gameplay-wise, it is a significant improvement. Besides, the story we planned does not really play with save file attachment a whole lot.

A DEBUG THING THAT MIGHT SOMEWHAT APPLY AS A MAIN MECHANIC DOWN THE ROAD

This will not matter to any of you, but it is a very useful feature for me.

Over time, with more and more rooms being added to VT, it has gotten a bit annoying to have to open my save file in a text editor and change the room I am in or to mash the specified debug keys in either direction to go to the desired room.

So, I took some time to make a debug warp menu. I would not normally share this, but I was really proud of how it turned out.

Funnily enough, you may have noticed in prior showcase videos that the save menu has a "Warp" option. That is because I was intending on streamlining fast travel by just letting the player warp to any previously-discovered save point.

I am still not entirely sure if I will go through with that (It might break the whole diegetic nature of saving as a mechanic by letting the player warp between save points) but the feature that would allow it to work IS in the game now! All I would need to do is just change it so the menu only shows rooms with save points in them. As of now, though, it is reserved for debugging.

PRISM PUZZLE (+ BONUS PROGRAMMER RANT)

The first major puzzle mechanic is implemented: Light prisms!

The gist: There are these prisms that reflect a light beam in one of the cardinal directions. You must direct this beam through the various prisms into a receptacle to solve the puzzle.

The only current problem is that the layering of the beam itself is a little hokey. Everything else seems to be working flawlessly though.

Speaking of which, this is another Bonus Programmer Rant for you all who are interested in the process of implementing something like this. WARNING: Nerd stuff ahead.

I coded the prism light mechanic intermittently over three days. That is two days more than I was hoping it would take. Ironically, I thought this would be the easiest mechanic to create. I WAS WRONG.

Each prism here is the same object type, so I programmed them as something akin to a doubly linked list, a data structure where there is a "head" node (The light beam generator), and pointers to prior and next nodes' IDs stored as variables in each connected object.

I cannot even begin to tell you how this decision resulted in HOURS AND HOURS of debugging and rewriting the entire prism code from scratch. I rewrote it all TWO TIMES. I have nightmares about prism beams now.

For the record, I am not implying I did this the most correct way. One of you will probably see this and cringe in pain reading the method I decided to use.

CONCLUSION

'Tis all for now, folks! I do not know how much I am going to be able to show off for next time due to spoiler risks, so it could be a little while before the next devlog, but I will try to make it speedy. See ya next time!