Another month, another devlog! This month both has and hasn't been super exciting, strange as that may sound. On one hand, there aren't a lot of tangible fancy new things to show, but on the other hand we are inching ever closer to that public BETA release I've been talking about. So, let's get right into things.

First things first, something small; People kept suggesting I add the pose on the left to Kris. This way, all 3 heroes can now use their iconic poses together. While I was at it, I figured I'd throw in the pose on the right as well.

But what good is a pose if you don't have any friends to pose with?

That's right, Susie is finally here. And, unlike in MTO Legacy, she's no longer purely based off Chapter 1. Her MTO Legacy / Chapter 1 iteration still exists via the costume system, but by default, Susie now sports her updated look with updated expressions.

While adding Susie though, I ran into a small issue. Susie has a lot of extremely great poses.. yet the pose system..

...only supports up to 4. Hm, that's a problem.

So, ultimately, I expanded the pose system to allow for an infinite number of poses. Yeah, you heard that right. Infinite possibilities. You can cycle through different pages, and the 1-4 keys will use the poses of whatever page you're on. Pretty neat, right?

Since I already did this, I went back and gave Ralsei some new poses, including one that was requested a lot by people.

Though, the irony is that people are now asking for a related pose on another character... We'll see where that goes.

Oh also, here's the rock. Did you know that Rockington has a battle theme now? Take a listen!

But one thing was severely missing from our private testing sessions. The debug rooms aren't bad but.. They're just not it, y'know?

So, I went ahead and implemented the most important room into the game.

That's right, Grillby's is back and better than ever! Now you can climb every chair, sit stand at the booths. But that's not all... Because finally, you have found a working Jukebox!

This jukebox contains a lot of tracks. All of the game's original soundtrack, some tracks from UNDERTALE and a handful of tracks from DELTARUNE. There are also a few bonus tracks from TS!Underswap! Because, realistically, "Chill by the grill" makes for such a good Grillby's hangout track that I absolutely couldn't have gotten by without adding that.

A few of you might be familiar with how admins were able to change the music for all players in a room via an admin command. This feature works similarly to that, except the song remains even when you re-enter it! The music will only reset when the server restarts! As of right now, the jukebox is free, but a GOLD fee will be attached to it in the future. This GOLD fee will increase every single time another song is interrupted and will only reset once a song has fully looped at least once. But, y'know, there aren't any good GOLD sources in the game yet, so for now it's free.

Here's a quick little video of Grillby's and its new jukebox:

And, as you can assume, this was our primary spot during BETA testing and I will assume it will be for everyone else once the BETA publicly releases on the Discord server.

Of course, since there's no GOLD fee yet, we had to play by the gentlemen's rule when it came to changing songs. Unfortuantely, a few people didn't feel like following that rule, so now being muted disallows you from changing the song.

So have you ever thought about how Ralsei's face on his portraits completely changes once he takes off his hat? I mean, it's majorly different.

Well, luckily, there's an awesome mod that fixes this issue, featuring redrawn portraits that are no longer completely different (and also just generally look way better).

(https://gamebanana.com/mods/601389)

Well, why do I bring that up? Well, Flophawk, the creator of that mod (and generally a really cool person who does a lot of really cool things) recently joined the team and suggested I just outright replace all of the bad original Ralsei portraits with her much better ones. I didn't do that. But, I did decide to at least include them as an optional costume for Ralsei that players can choose to use instead of the original one.

(I mean, realistically, this is the better one that everyone should use, I just don't want to replace the original sprites outright.)

On that note, floppo also updated Siffrin and drew their new custom portraits!

And Siffrin now also has their own unique regular encounter theme, too! Take a listen!

Siffrin is by far the skin I'm most excited to use when the full game releases. They're still not entirely finished, but they will be one of these days. If you haven't played In Stars and Time yet, I highly recommend it.

Oh, remember how I mentioned that I also help out with "a friend's really cool fan-game"? And how I said to "expect skins based on characters from that game to be added to MTO in the future"? Flophawk is that friend and here's the first of those skins.

Remember Frisk? Well, this is the cooler Frisk. Frisk from FH!StoryShift! Once again, FH!StoryShift is still in very early development, but it's still really promising. I mean, look at them go! Basically, they're Frisk with a cooler design, more personality, actual poses and better sprites. Admittedly, they don't entirely fit the art style, but given how I just inserted regular old Sans Undertale into FH!SS, I think it's fair.

Before we talk about new features, let's wrap up talking about skins.

Spep is back and better than ever! With slightly updated sprites, a new optional bad comic sans font and the return of his removed pose? What removed pose you may ask? Well, did you know that the "infinite fun" pose (a reference to an easter egg in TS!Underswap) was actually implemented into the game before TS!Underswap's first demo officially released? But, before then, the pose wasn't purple. Now, the original variant and its purple variant can co-exist.

Also, Spep now has the same TS!Underswap UI as Crossbones and TS!Papyrus.

Wario makes his grand return with new animations, poses and expressions. Just like Waluigi, he can jump now. He even uses a shoulderbash animation when running. Oh and I also redid his typing sound.

And here's good old Spamton, who's seen some major enhancements. From changes to how his portraits are animated, to a new KEYGEN portrait (proper color changing included) and an increase in poses from 1 to.. 14??? That's right!! Laugh to your heart's content! Laugh with a big face! Skip around without a care in the world! Raise those arms! Make your salespitch! Embrace the dark! Be shocked! Fidget with your hands while you slide side to side in a sine wave! Do a funny little dance!

Get all the Spamtong you could ever want!! Public BETA free download soon!

And then we have The Batter with new field sprites. As a nice little detail, his talk sound now only plays for the HOME costume, since the sound byte is specifically from that game and not the original OFF. (Purification not yet included.)

Finally, here's a small new feature that makes a huge difference. With characters now having a lot more expressions than in Legacy, finding and getting to the one you're looking for can be a hassle. That's why I have implemented the portrait selector!

Simply hold SHIFT while scrolling through portraits to access the portrait selector, allowing you to quickly scroll through your portraits while previewing adjacent portraits. And when you're done, just release SHIFT. It's quick, simple and convenient!

Additionally, kicks and bans have been fully implemented.

Now, this might not sound exciting at first. However, proper moderation tools are one of the big three conditions we have to meet for a proper public BETA release. And, well, now those proper moderation tools are ready and we have met one out of three criteria points! All that's left is ensuring proper stability via another private BETA test and getting a server, then public testing can begin! Isn't that exciting? By the time of the next devlog, we might already have a public BETA build on the Discord server. I don't know about you guys, but I think that's extremely exciting!

I'm really happy with the progress I'm making. It might still take a while until a full release of the game, but we are extremely close to our first public BETA release of this version of the game. Make sure to join the Discord server for when that happens, since it'll only release there!

Until then, have a good day!