Ladies and gentlemen, all the inhabitants of planet Earth and those ones who’ve decided to become our companion. I wish you a Happy New Year 2022, and I can honestly say…

/breaks his lemonade glass on the floor/

COUNFOUND YOU, 2021!!

Phew… Sorry, I just needed it. So much has accumulated that I just don't even know where to put it all. The second half of the year was terrible despite the fact that A) I’m an optimist and try to find the positive aspects in everything, B) there was good things, but there was also something that constantly hit you on the head, like some kind of a machine. But let’s get it straight. You just sit back and read this final post, and I’ll try to explain to you why there was so little news about the game this year and what was going on with the project all this time. Take a seat, I’m starting.

✨ NEGATIVE SIDES OF THE YEAR ✨

Everybody says that the last two years have been very difficult. And part of that is true. A lot of things have happened that have ruined a lot of people’s lives, but for me, 2020 was a simple year. Now this one… I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, or it’s because I’ve had my senior year in high school or the world just goes crazy, but this year has become suddenly complicated for me.

I’ve had many things fell on me, from difficulties in the family and ending with a load at school, that sometimes it feels like I live in a mountain of papers to fill in, and no matter how hard I try, the mountain doesn’t go down. Because of all this, time and nerves are getting less and less, and I don’t talk about Ksan at all – he’s balancing the second year between life and death, burying himself from something and rising up in creative impulse. We are both inundated with projects and ideas that we want to implement. Ksan has work in physics and diplomas as opposed to translating games and songs, as well as creating his own novels, I have a school diploma, which we need to take at the beginning of the second half of the year (I’m writing on game design), constant work in order to get good grades and a recent desire to try myself in writing music (but I won’t work on the OST for the game 😅) and, in fact, DT itself. You have to constantly rush between all these things in order to make them good and at the same time to have some time to do something else. And you can’t do it all at once, so you have to sacrifice something, in our case, posts. I just have critically little time to write them, but okay, time would be something. That’s another problem we’ll talk about later.

Plus FGD! SwapFell was cancelled. We've been working on it for 4 years, and now the game's page is dead. I'm gonna really miss this project and those characters that I created...

In general, if you look at it this way, then, fortunately, there wasn’t something terrible, but one way or another it affected the development process of the game radically, which is what I want to talk about.

✨ WHAT’S UP WITH DT? ✨

I’ll be honest with you, our audience, because that’s what I appreciate about people – honesty and openness, and that’s why I’m going to talk about all the difficulties we’ve had behind the scenes.

The first thing that happened to us was my fatigue. Not from the whole project, no, I would never dare freeze it, but rather from the endless writing of a script that I’ve been writing for almost two and a half years and I still can’t finish it. Because of this, during the summer, while on a journey, I mainly dealt with sprites rather than text, and at the beginning of August I finally stopped editing the document, having never opened it until now. But the truth is, I did work on the text for the game: for example, I’ve spent a whole month polishing the TARDIS system, which I’ll talk about a little later. Just wait for the end of the article, okay?

Anyway, I had a break from DT for three months. For three months I couldn’t bring myself to open the script and continue to edit it, and most of the time I was pointlessly clicking on the folders with sprites and watching what was already done. But after the sudden release of Deltarune, I got some inspiration, and it was partially preserved until today, but in the same month another misfortune happened that drove me even more into longing.

I remember it like it was yesterday. On September 2, in the morning, Ksan, who is a programmer and, in fact, the godfather of the universe and who has been with me since 2017, announced that he was leaving both the project and the UnderTale fandom. He explained this by his fatigue, my high expectations and that he then had a difficult period in his life. At that moment, something died in me. Without him, a person who’ve became my hands, I simply couldn’t do anything. DT froze and might not come to life anytime soon. Of course, I could start looking for people who would become new programmers, but given that I still haven’t been able to find a musician yet, let alone spriters, I would hardly be able to do this. So I didn't know what to do. Fortunately, two months later, Ksan's life improved and he returned, but those two months were still a torment, and if it wasn’t for one person, I would have had a hard time getting out of there. We’ll talk about them in gratitude. Now, as he struggles through the difficulties of his student life, Ksan continues to help me, but as his powers and time become limited, the question of finding a new programmer remains open. So, if you happen to have friends who are good at programming, or you’re a programmer yourself, I’d appreciate it if you respond – I’ll return the favor. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can find someone, let's see what comes of it.

Well, another problem was that I almost stopped communicating with people that were somehow related to the project. At first it was a guy who wanted to try to become a musician (if you’re reading this, then I'm sorry), then Alice, our concept-artist, fan # 1. Today, I’ve established a connection with almost everyone, but it affected the development, as I was mostly alone with myself (as I had before, though), but then I immersed myself even more deeply.

And, as I mentioned before, because of the huge amount of time that goes into other important things, I don’t have time to do anything meaningful for DT, which means I don’t have the material for a full post, but write every two weeks that I wrote another 200 pages and I don’t want to, plus we’ve already discussed this before.

That’s why I’m silent for several months – I just have no gameplay records or beautiful pictures that I could show, like other projects do, so every time I manage to do something valuable (which happens rarely), I immediately run and show it to you. Everything else is shadow progress.

Why didn’t I tell you about all this before? I wanted. I even kept a draft of the post that was supposed to come out in September, two weeks after the Ksan incident, but due to the release of Deltarune, it was moved to October and further because of my uncertainty about the subject, I simply couldn’t tell you about it. I guess I was delaying the realization of what it really was, and as history has shown, not in vain, because if I told you about it then I would have to apologize later for the outdated information. And so everything more or less worked out. In short, this year hasn’t been fruitful for DT. However, there have been some good things.

✨ POSITIVE SIDES OF THE YEAR ✨

For example, I made my first BIG tour of my country, visiting both the capital and other major cities that many never even dreamed of visiting. During this trip, I was still working on the game, but typing or drawing on the go is inconvenient, so I mostly kept my diary at the time.

Another huge and, perhaps, the most striking event of the second half of 2021 was the release of Chapter 2 of Deltarune. Well, here’s the thing, and Toby knows how to please in the most unexpected moment, when you least expect it. After all, he’s a wonderful man, and I’m convinced once again. I was so impressed by this game that I even wrote a huge essay in which I put out all my thoughts about the release and, I have to say, I was just singing praises for Toby’s genius and his team. However, due to the size of it, I couldn’t translate it, but tell me, if you’re interested in reading it, I’ll translate it. As a result, I ended up with a really big inspiration that I still live on, and I’m itching to do DT again.

Oh, and also Russel T Davis returns to Doctor Who. This is good news for the whovians, because seeing what happens to the show because of Chibnell... It's awful. I finally watched series 11, and it wasn’t that bad, but the first glimmers of problems that will be in the future are already visible. Unfortunately, there were no special ideas that could somehow be introduced into DT, which is not very encouraging. There was something, but I'm not sure yet that we’ll be able to implement it in the near future.

Now I am comparing the results, and everything is equally divided. So, when I said that this was a terrible year, I exaggerated a little. It was both good and bad, like any other year. But this year is over, and it’s time to think about what we’re going to do next.

✨ WHAT’S NEXT? ✨

The most important thing on my to-do list is to finish the script. It’s already done, just to finish the epilogue. I’ll also try to do something more often so that you don’t sit for months and think that either I or the project is dead. I can’t promise that it will work out and the development will move further, because, again, now it’s going to get even worse with time due to the upcoming exams, but… I think I can try. At least complete the script, and then we'll see. I will also try to find people who can help with the game, for example, at least one spriter, musician and part-time programmer. Again, I don’t know if I can, but until we do, we won’t know.

And now we move on the last point of the post – thanking the people who were with me all this year and supported me and my work.

✨ GRATITUDES ✨

@ksan. Despite the difficulties that we went through, despite the fact that sometimes we didn’t understand each other and found ourselves on opposite sides of the same business, I’m still very grateful to you for being with me this year. You’re a great developer, artist and person. Strength to you in the new year, I hope you and I will continue to make games at least sometimes – I really need you. 🌸 

Sveta (#1 fan). You’re the person without whom none of this would have happened. You supported the project for the first two years of its life and you continue to support it to this day - this is incredibly important to me. Although we may have split up a little bit, I'm glad that everything worked out. You are rightfully awarded the title of "# 1 DT Fan", and maybe one day I will give you a T-shirt with this slogan. I’ll try to keep you informed as often as possible this year. 🌸 

Alice. A friend who also supported me and my work. As in the first two cases, we’ve grown apart in style, and I hope you still remember me. May we finally find the strength to communicate again and, perhaps, to keep working together. 🌸 

@FroggyBoat. Cool guy who wanted to help with the DT soundtrack. Unfortunately, I’m not the best team organizer, so I’m sorry if I don’t give you the assignment, but you should know that you’re very talented and I am sure that you can achieve a lot one day! 🌸 

@8bitkyanii . This man was the first to offer money to support us. Although I was never able to open PayPal, I’m incredibly grateful to him for that response. That was very supportive, so if you’re reading this, thank you so much!

Toby Fox. For all his creations and for being such a beautiful man. 🌸 

And to all DT community subscribers. Thank you, all of 241 people for being here and asking us from time to time about the game’s statement, is it alive or not – it is and we’re working on it. 🌸 

And as a proof of that, and also as a kind of gift, I present to you the first video of the in-dev version of the game. This is the TARDIS control room – a place that I spent a lot of time working on. Here you will change control settings, launch the game and receive various information. We show you the last function here – the rest of them will be showed in future.

Well that’s all for today. I wish you all a good holiday and a good mood. Meet this year with your family or friends, don’t be alone. We’ll get back soon!

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!✨✨✨

The OUTTERS, 2021

Tags

#DT #doctortale #au #undertaleau #undertale #doctorwho #dw #13thdoctor #tardis #tardis_interior #rpg #devvlog #gamedev #news