Hey everyone, it's the jolliest time of the year. It may not be a christmas present, but why not look at some more progress together?

Let's start simple! Since the last dev log, Floppo has updated the jukebox to split songs into different categories, making it a little easier to find a specific song you're looking for. There's also a very basic and unused system for songs to now have prices on them, but that feature is not yet complete.

She also went ahead and compressed all of the game's music files, effectively quartering the game's size. There were a few tracks I had to re-compress myself, but the majority of them sound basically the same as before! In the future, I do plan on releasing a mod for the game containing all the uncompressed music files as an optional download. It won't make much of a difference for most people though and I felt like an early version like this of an UNDERTALE fan-game shouldn't take up more storage than the original game. At least not until there's more to the game, anyway.

Since we've gone ahead and officially updated the game's theming/branding, i'd like to introduce its new title theme, which was also made by Floppo. It has been well-received so far, but if you haven't heard it before, please take a listen.

Next, let's talk about the return of a beloved feature from Legacy. In MTO Legacy, it was possible to click on players to view some of their stats, along with a customizable description. This description would then also appear when using the Check ACT in PvP. This was always one of my favorite niche features in the game, so it was very exciting to see how I could improve on it for this version of the game.

First things first, the UI for setting a custom check has been completely redone to be more in line with the Chat UI. The Top line will even preview the way other players will see your stats!

You can even add color, shake and wave modifiers like you can in chat.

Another nice new edition to the editor is that opening it up will load up your current check message, allowing you to simply edit the current one without forcing you to completely rewrite it.

I've seen plenty of fun custom checks so far, and even seeing them is better than before. In Legacy, you had to click on the literal hitbox of a character, which typically is much smaller than their sprite, making it kind of awkward to try clicking on them. This time, it'll instead check for the size of their actual sprite. While there are some characters with elaborate animations that are a little odd to click on, this does make things feel much better for the most part. In the future, I do intend on expanding on the "clicking on people" mechanic, allowing you to choose between players that are overlaid on another and quickly check their UNDERNET profile or send friend requests or perform admin actions and such, but for the time being it simply opens their check message.

You might have also noticed that it won't display their LV anymore. The thing is, the ATK and DEF displays already take up plenty of space and seeing as you can enable LV to be displayed as part of nametags, it felt like a better choice to just leave LV out of check messages, especially since you can't check monsters' LV anyway.

While this is by no means a crucial feature, it's one of those small, yet nice additions that just help add to the experience.

But that's not the only niche Legacy feature that I've brought back in a shinier, more polished form! One thing that would be absolutely necessary for any sort of public release would be UnderChat. As is, the map is already gigantic, so it would be important to have means to communicate between rooms. For those who don't remember, UnderChat was a basic global chat system. In Legacy, this was entirely handled via GameMaker Server's built-in chat system, with very little unique flavor. I decided that UnderNet deserved better than that though, so I got to work. Not that I could've used the GameMaker Server chat anyway, as we've moved away from that.

This is roughly what UnderChat looks like by default, featuring proper colored nametags. Additionally, this version of UnderChat also allows you to scroll through messages you've received. But the sidebar on the left does take up quite a bit of space, doesn't it?

If you've played Legacy, you might recall that "U" existed as a shortcut key to open UnderChat. It still exists here, but that version of UnderChat has a slightly altered design.

That's right, by "slightly altered" I meant "incredibly cool and awesome and sick". You still get a decent view of your surroundings with some snazzy visuals that don't stray too close from UNDERTALE's art direction. Generally, this is the version of UnderChat you'll probably want to use, the other one is, frankly, more of a little bonus than anything.

After finishing UnderChat, I also went back and updated the history for the regular chat system a little, adding support for colors and a visible scroll bar, along with faster scrolling.

That's not a lot of progress for two months, now is it? That's because we were focussed on finally releasing our first official public release of the game. That's right! Version 0.1.0 (and subsequently 0.1.1) has been released on our Discord Server! And you can go play it right now!

I've answered this question many times before, but to reiterate: The reason this version is exclusively available on Discord is because it's still lacking various features from MTO Legacy, including various skins, the ruins, all the encounters and most notably PvP. PvP, especially, is an incredibly beloved feature and I worry that there would be a lot of negative reception from people who aren't aware of the game being completely remade from square 1 if they saw the lack of it. As such, this version of the game will only release on GameJolt once all of Legacy's content and features are implemented.

Also, please note that this is still an incredibly early version of the game. It's prone to bugs and connection issues. That said, it seems like people have been enjoying it, so I'd like to share some fun screenshots of people playing the game.

Seeing people enjoy the new version of the game has made me incredibly happy and although we've faced a lot of problems when initially launching this version of the game, I do like to believe it was all worth it in the end. I hope I'll be seeing more of you in the game soon.

That said, I wish everyone a merry christmas and happy holidays. It's been quite an incredible year for me and I hope the next one will be even better. I've made new connections, learned new things about myself and finally gotten to share all of this hard work with you guys. I'll be seeing you guys next year, but for now, I'll rest.

oh yeah btw dont wanna make a big deal out of this or anything but my pronouns are they/them now, thanks