Hey there!

As the month began, many of us have been dealing with personal responsibilities and other obligations (e.g. classes and work), and so development has been slower. While we originally hadn't planned to do a progress report this month, we've ended up deciding to do a smaller one which covers our current development priorities and general updates since last month.

We've also decided on a change in format! Before, the content of our devlogs would generally vary month to month (e.g. sneak previews, development insights, community spotlights, etc.) based on what we felt would be feasible. In order to maintain consistency, and so our readers know what to expect, we're changing things up:

• "Progress Reports" -- Our smaller posts, which mostly cover progress updates.

• "Dev Updates" -- Our more in-depth posts! These generally include progress updates and community spotlights, though may also include sneak previews and longer development insight sections.

Since these devlogs are generally written by one person (that's me, Beethovenus!), it'd be better for us to stick to smaller posts for the foreseeable future. These take time to write! We highly recommend following us on Twitter to keep up-to-date with our plans for monthly progress reports, and more!

Before we jump into this month's progress report, here's something we recently posted!

From September 14-18, our good friend FmsDraws hosted an Undertale OC poll tournament on Twitter! Our very own Count Koffin-K was included, and pitted against various original characters -- and so we decided to have a little fun with it!

The above video is a compilation of animations we posted to Twitter -- written and animated by Maximus (on such short notice, too!), and with some assistance from Devilredd with assets. #KOFFIUSSWEEP

With that being said, let's start!

Progress Updates

As we've been making more progress, our development priorities for Starlight Isles have shifted from those of our August 2022 Progress Report. Before, it looked something like this:

• Stardust Woods major content -- functionally complete, besides a post-village sequence (writing, assets, implementation) and some miscellaneous minor writing additions and polish adjustments.

• Koffin Keep fully playable -- complete, with all needed assets & content implemented.

• Starstruck Village preliminary work -- proceeding smoothly.

Now, we're turning our attention more towards Starstruck Village as a whole. Both Stardust Woods and Koffin Keep (particularly the former) still require various bits of writing related to resets, route variations, and minor details -- though for now, those are going to be lesser priorities while we focus on major content.

Currently, we're focusing the most on Starstruck Village major content. This includes:

• Creating the necessary assets and writing needed for major village interactions (e.g. NPCs, overworld and environment interactions, cutscenes, etc.) and implementing them in-game.

• Finalizing the script for major boss fights -- pre-fight cutscenes, battle progression & ACTs, dialogue and flavor text, post-fight cutscenes, and route-based variations.

• Implementing major boss fights in-game with necessary assets, attacks, and mechanics.

In terms of our general progress since last month:

• Writing -- We're nearing the completion of a major boss fight's script (pre-fight, battle, and post-fight), with another boss fight in preliminary stages for progression/structure. Various things needed for Starstruck Village have been written.

• Artwork -- Most currently needed overworld assets for Starstruck Village have been finalized. We still have to create some overworld, environment, menu, and battle sprites.

• Soundtrack -- Currently no major progress to report here besides planning and further development on in-progress tracks.

• Programming -- Implemented more interactions and events.

That's everything for now!

We hope you all enjoyed this month's progress report -- even though there's a lot more behind the scenes which we aren't ready to showcase or talk about in-depth, we're really excited to eventually see people's reactions. See you all next time!

- Beethovenus and Team Switched