(Sprites by @YaBoiNando !)

Hi there!

Welcome back to the Skelestar Saga devlog. For those of you who are new, or haven't been keeping up, let me bring you up to speed:

• This is a fangame that was originally called "Shadowfell Saga", being very heavily based on Deltarune. The original version of the fangame was cancelled due to scope creep and several issues with development.

• Recently, I've been preparing to start a revival of the game with a new story and a new name, "Skelestar Saga". Almost everything about the game is being overhauled, re-thought-out or remade.

• I have been putting together a team to help with development.

So, what's new?

TEAM UPDATES

I've pulled together a few people to help work on the game!

These people ARE:

Levc EGM, composer of awesome music and game design wizard.
Goinks, world-building lore extraordinaire and skelebros specialist.
Galaxy, expert of keeping story beats cohesive and writing in-character.
YaBoiNando, god of concept art in human clothing.
Coolbic, 3d modeller from the moon and legend of visual design.

I picked these team members from the applications, plus a bit of reaching out. I wanted to keep the team pretty small this time, as I have a bit of trouble delegating and managing a lot of people at once. I've added a list of team members on the main page, as well as a list of credits for work made by previous team members that'll still be used! (Thank you!)

One thing you might notice is that there are no programmers on this list. Let's get into that!

THE PROGRAMMING SITUATION

One thing that concerned me for a short bit is I couldn't find a Godot programmer that's able to help with the game.

There are a few reasons why I decided to switch engines (which I'll get deeper into in a future post), but one side-effect is that it has been surprisingly tricky to find programmers in this community who use Godot. I was a bit worried that I would have to create the whole game from scratch myself...

Recently, I've been helping as a programmer for the Green Sans fangame. We've been making a lot of progress in recent weeks, enough that we have a solid foundation for almost all of the core systems of the game (overworld, c menu, battle). Because of this, I asked Backhand Samurai and Leandro (the other two coders on the team) if I could fork the engine to use as a starting point for Skelestar Saga, and they said yes!

Forking is a programming term for taking an existing code project and using it as a base to make something of your own. This basically means I already have a baseline version of some features (like UI functions, overworld functions, battle functions) which I can build on top of.

Forking the Green Sans engine saves a ton of time that I would have spent on project setup. For example, instead of making a Bros attack system from scratch, I can build it off of this existing quick-time-event system I made for Green Sans!

(I still have plenty I have to make from scratch like the 3d platforming mechanics, overworld bros moves and a big chunk of the battle system, but it's still a very good starting point!)

BIG CHANGES

I don't think I've given a full list of changes between "Shadowfell Saga" and Skelestar Saga yet. For those of you who are interested in what will be changed, here's a comprehensive breakdown!

Visuals

• 3D Dream-Team style visuals rather than 2D sprites. This is because 3D models are a lot easier to animate and/or change design elements on rather than 2D sprites. 3D visuals would also probably be easier to integrate into the world since we're using a 3D engine.

• The skelebros' designs have been changed. Papyrus now doesn't have hair, and Sans now has a distinct "vacation" design.

Story

• Toquelle's role has been filled by Flowey. Toquelle was meant to be Shadowfell's "Tutorial Fairy" type character, but she ended up being underdeveloped and difficult to write. Flowey is already established in Undertale as a parody of "Tutorial Fairy" characters, plus he's more thematically fitting and much easier to write around the Skelebros' antics.

• The food world is no longer a dark world. The story being so heavily based on Deltarune's lore during a time we knew little to nothing about Deltarune (only chapters 1 and 2 were out) was a bit of a silly move. The story is now set in a post-pacifist Undertale timeline, and the food world is just a silly parallel universe.

• The story will now take a bit more direct inspiration from Superstar Saga, with its intercontinental traveling theme.

Music

• The soundtrack will lean less heavily into Undertale and Deltarune's styles, more into Dream Team and Brothership's semi-acoustic synth-y styles.

• Our Maiden Voyage has been removed for now. The original game was set on a series of tropical islands, but to avoid similarities to Brothership I want to go a bit zanier with the setting. The old song just doesn't fit very well in the new setting, so it was removed. This isn't to say it'll go unused forever, though...

Speaking of music... We have a new area theme!

I wrote the song and did a lot of the instrumentation, then our wonderful Levc pulled together my messy draft and tied everything together with some backing instruments and good mixing.

Have a listen to it!

THE PLAN...?

So, this marks the start of development again! Hooray!

I'm gonna be completely honest, I don't know how long it's going to take to make this game. Between working on Green Sans, my music commissions, other programming projects and active job-hunting, my attention is going to be a bit split over this summer for the very least.

That being said, I'll give a very rough estimate and say expect to see SOMETHING released in about a year.

Two of the biggest things slowing down development of the original game were having to program every system from scratch in Gamemaker Studio (which, let me just say, is AWFUL for building 2.5d/3d platforming mechanics) and the sheer amount of sprite assets needed because of how animated Mario & Luigi-style games are.

In my opinion Godot engine is so much easier to work with because of the amount of tools they give you compared to Gamemaker (like a whole 3d collision system, base scripts for 3d movement, camera functions, object interactions etc). I also find it much easier to animate 3D models than to hand-draw spritesheets, so both of those problems have now been rectified!

The current plan is to make a small prototype (to nail overworld platforming and basic battle mechanics), make a slightly larger "tech demo" with no story (that may or may not be released for public feedback) and then finally, make the "full game"...

I want to make something short and sweet (~about an hour long AT THE MOST) so I'm not completely overwhelmed with scope creep again. Consider the "full game" sort of like a "chapter 1", since it'll likely be left open-ended. If there's high enough demand, we might continue the story down the line and make a "chapter 2" exploring the tropical islands idea (and including Our Maiden Voyage again).

Occasionally I'll be posting these devlog updates where I'll be showing off progress, but don't expect them to be a very regular thing!

Thank you for reading! It's kind of crazy having so many people stick around for this long, but this project is quite dear to my heart so it means a lot to me.

See you next time <3

-Paled