Good evening! ...well sorta a good evening. This devlog, while probably the most anticipated so far, is most certainly going to be the most disappointing to a lot of you. We are not ready to showcase the big reveals yet that we hyped up last month. We need more time, so I hope you understand. That being said, please look forward to those reveals next month as they will 100% be ready to showcase by that time. Additionally, this devlog isn't all doom and gloom, we do have some exciting stuff to talk about!

Porting to Undertale Decomp

The efforts of our lead programmer, LuigiUTMC, for the past few weeks, have been to port the project to Undertale Decomp.

Let's dive into what this means for the project 🧵

Since the project's initial conception, we have been using Undertale Linux v1.001 as a base for our operation. This is because we wanted to have the best inputs possible for the project to appeal to speedrunners, as speedrunners use Undertale Linux v1.001. Our initial goal for the project, was very very small. Far smaller than where we are at now. Since our goals for this project are getting massive, and features are getting harder to develop, we are switching from Undertale Linux v1.001, as that version runs on a lower version of Gamemaker. Which if you didn't know, is the engine Undertale runs on.

What is Undertale Decomp and how does it benefit us?

To put this in the most basic of terms, Undertale Decomp is essentially a decompilation of the Xbox version of Undertale. This version of Undertale, is the highest version of Undertale, far surpassing the latest released version that is currently available on Steam. This means, it has the highest version of Gamemaker that was released along with Undertale.

Essentially, Linux v1.001, while possible to use, is making the project development time go very slow. Especially with how big it keeps getting in scope. If we want to support this long term, and achieve bigger goals with this, it is a very smart idea to port to Undertale Decomp while we aren't that far into development. Once this is finished, and the project is ported over, we can once again start making more progress at a much faster rate!

Initially, we believed that this wasn't going to take very long; but porting to Undertale Decomp, was a task that we severely underestimated. This is essentially going to give us the same amount of programming work, as if it was starting from scratch. Now, I want to make it clear we aren't starting from scratch, but the work that needs to go into this, is essentially the same amount of effort as if we were.

This is probably disappointing to some, but believe me when I say, the wait for this will be worth it. Using this higher version of Gamemaker will be extremely beneficial in the long run. If we don't do this now, we will have to do it later when the project expands in scope again. Then it would take even longer to port over. We have to do this now and we don't have much of another choice.

To hopefully alleviate any of your concerns as to this taking months to complete, our lead programmer is currently a third of the way through of porting. We don't anticipate this taking any longer past this devlog.

What about the input system?

Undertale Linux v1.001 has the best input system possible for speedrunners. Undertale v1.08 and above, you can basically call Undertale Minus because of how bad the input system is. For example, v1.08 (the latest steam version) has 1 frame of input lag no matter what. This is horrible for speedrunners, and as someone who does this game full time as her job, I understand the criticism. Which is why I wanted to use Linux v1.001 as a base to begin with.

This is why, we are porting the input system from linux v1.001 to the Undertale Decomp version. This means that when you finally get your hands on Undertale Plus, you should notice no difference whatsoever between that version and the linux version. Now both parties are satisfied. We can use the latest version of Gamemaker for easier development and the input system is the exact same as if it was on Linux v1.001. The goal is for the input system to be identical and hopefully with extensive bug testing we can perfect it.

So does this mean Undertale Plus will be released on Xbox?

No. We are using a decompiled version of Undertale Xbox that runs natively on PC to acquire the highest version of Gamemaker we can access. The way you will patch your legally obtained copy of Undertale to play Undertale Plus will be the exact same. There are no plans to port over Undertale Plus to any other console outside of the PC version. If you have the PC version of Undertale, you will be able to play Undertale Plus when it comes out.

What have we been doing?

Alright, enough talking about porting to Undertale Decomp. Let's show you some cool stuff.

We decided to release a preview song for our OST! This song is called "Battlegrounds". We won't reveal where it plays, but we hope you'll enjoy it! Please keep in mind that this is an extended version of the song, and the whole song may not make an appearance in the final release or may be altered.

Undertale Plus OST Preview - Battlegrounds

Additionally, colored sprites are almost finished! There's around 4 colored sprites left that need to be finalized and battle backgrounds are wrapping up completion as well! Most of the team has now shifted over to doing damaged/hurt sprites and some battle backgrounds are being redone in a 2nd pass to make sure they look 100% as good as possible.

We really wanted to show you more this month and I apologize for not being able to. We just aren't ready for those insane reveals yet. I do want to make it clear, that next month's devlog will for sure be the biggest one yet. We just need a little bit more time and we'll be ready to show off the features we've been working on for the past few months! I hate not being able to say anything just as much as you really want your hands on this mod. Now I know how Toby feels when working on Deltarune.

You may be wondering what the concept art we showed at the top is...

...it's best we don't talk about it.