What if monsters won the war and humans were trapped underground? Welcome to the Tumblr blog for Versotale, an Undertale/Deltarune fanproject that follows the story of King Asriel Dreemurr traversing through an Underground populated entirely by humans.
His goal? Free them from their imprisonment.
Your goal? Help him. How you do so is in your hands.
The current state of the Sepia Intro sequence! A reminder that this is to document progress and does not inherently represent what the final version will look like!
Heyo! So, update related to the recent showcase video:
Firstly, the amount of reception this brief little showcase video has gotten has just completely floored me. Thank you all for checking this goofy little project out, and an especially big thank you to those who are sticking around!
Some Clarifications
I wanna clarify some things here since I see it popping up a bit:
Versotale is NOT a role-swap AU! The main point of divergence from the canon timeline is that monsters won the war and humans were trapped underground. As such, the story does not follow typical Undertale plot beats and roles.
There is not a Gamejolt page yet. I'm working on putting one together, but for right now, I'd encourage everyone who's interested to stick around and get updates here on this blog in the meantime
The contents of the video are HIGHLY subject to change! It is still INCREDIBLY early on in development, most of these rooms and such having only been completed within the last two/three months or so. I made this moreso to show what I'm working on as a brief showcase and less of a "This is EXACTLY how the beginning area is going to look and flow!" As some of the more critical among you have pointed out, there are some issues, particularly pacing- and writing-wise, that I am aware of and will make changes to. TL;DR - It can only get better from here.
I want to temper expectations and ask that you not expect regular massive leaps in progress! Aside from some help music-wise, I am currently a one-man operation at the moment. What you see here is a culmination of six months' worth of progress. And with real life existing and all, I would expect some quieter periods from time to time.
Last Thing
Seriously, thank y'all for the support you've shown. It's overwhelming. Seriously, it's, like, ACTUALLY overwhelming. I was, uh, NOT expecting this to gain as much traction as it did, so to have as many eyes on this project as I do now is, uh, quite a bit nervewracking lol! So, please bear with me as I regain my bearings and focus on planning what's next!
Look out for a showcase update video coming tomorrow! This one plays through the opening King's Promise cutscene up to the second save point. I'll link it in a new post here
It's about 16 minutes in length. I think you'll all really like it as an introduction!
Heyo! Welcome back. I come bearing some update news!
FANGAME PTRORGRESS! (I'm not retyping that)
The textboxes type more accurately to Deltarune in particular - now automatically shuffling to the next line for me rather than requiring a special "instruction character." There's a LOT of improvements to the textbox now, which was an absolute headache and a half to code, but since it IS the most fundamental required feature for all of an Undertale project to work, I think my time bashing my head in over making it function well was necessary.
The party member pathing code is ALMOST done. It's actually surprisingly not as challenging as I thought it'd be. I put it off for so long because I thought trying to code it would deal actual psychic damage to myself, but it doesn't seem to be that bad. (And I know now I'm gonna find some massive bug with my code that's gonna give me a headache trying to fix for 6 hours straight, but oh well, 'tis what I signed up for, was it not?)
Battle coding is... about the same as it was when I last talked about it however-many-months ago. I'm still not entirely sure where to place the first one that'd work best from a game design perspective - if it should be before or after a party member is added.
Some spoiler stuff I can't talk about, of course. But, like, not even in a cheeky little spoiler section, either. I want y'all to experience this for yourself for sure
The Next Showcase Video
I still do plan on the next showcase video being published before the end of January. I'm setting this more for myself so I get my ass in gear and finish it. It's not in any danger of NOT being released by then, but still, I work best with deadlines.
HOWEVER, I would like to point out that what you see in the video will still be in a very unpolished state. For example, the background graphics for the Surface cutscene are still very much not complete, there's no new music in yet, some animations are janky, Asriel is still (currently, might change soon) hijacking Ralsei's voice blip and Hercine's blip still (Also currently, might change soon) needs to be redone...
Etc., etc., you get the idea by now. Maybe I'm hammering it home too much, but I don't want expectations for this to be TOO high. It's still incomplete. And as time goes on, this beginning section is probably what I'll continuously make showcase videos for.
Final Thoughts
Anyway, that's about it from me! I hope to see you again sometime before the end of January! Thank you all for continuing to follow this small little love letter to Toby Fox's works, especially those of you who have stuck around with me for a whopping seven years through all this AU's ups and downs!
Welcome back, everyone. Hope you all had a very happy New Years! I come bearing a late present for you all: A Versotale update!
Game Progress
As I anticipated, I needed to take a break around the middle of November so I could focus on schoolwork. Now that we've been on break for a little while again and will continue to be for the better part of January, I've already gotten a sizable chunk of stuff done. Still not as much as I would've LIKED to have completed - There are still like only three fully-completed rooms at the moment, and even then they have a ton of WIP assets and first-pass dialogue and all - but, that is the way of coding a game solo, mostly from scratch, and with the occasional glances at Undertale's code, isn't it?
Unfortunately, while I really want to share stuff with you guys, it's all in some way a spoiler that I don't want to spoil for the people who'd rather experience everything fresh for themselves.
...
So, if you DO wanna experience everything fresh for yourself, feel free to bow out of this post here. If you're sticking around, enjoy some mild spoiler-y content, some character designs, and some fun vague allusions to things I still really wanna talk about! I need to give you guys SOMETHING after this long wait, right?
Game Progress: Slightly Spoiler-y Edition
The OPENING CUTSCENE you saw a while back has been tweaked slightly to make Hercine more likable, and so the dialogue can flow a bit more naturally.
Two new cutscenes have been added to the beginning, albeit with some rough visuals. These three all flow into each other, and if you're speaking through each line of dialogue, they only take up about six minutes total. Still, it is a TAD bit too long for my liking without any gameplay behind it, so there's a chance I might cut a cutscene or switch the order of things around so there's a brief gameplay section before the last one. Who knows.
Undyne has been redesigned. Undyne now sports some less bulky armor that combines aspects of her canon casual and armored forms. If she's gonna be there the entire game, she may as well have a visually-interesting design rather than the blob of bluish-grey her armor used to be. I'm sure some people will consider this a downgrade, which is always the risk you run when you redesign a character you've already shown off... but I personally just can't stand working with that old design any longer. The colors barely pop, it looks messy, the armor's boring and flat-colored and almost even blends into her scales, etc.
You didn't get to see the outdated Frisk design I had for this iteration of the project, and I'm glad you didn't, because upon writing more of their scenes and reconfiguring their personality, I HAD to redesign them again. I don't anticipate this one changing ANY time soon, but, as with Undyne, no promises.
Next up, some important human characters in the first area that AREN'T Frisk! You'll meet them later on, and I really hope you all end up liking them and the story behind them! In the meantime, here, have their designs. Again, they might change, but I'm comfortable with these for now.
That's all I feel comfortable showing off for the first area at the moment! I'm hoping to record everything up until the first save point and post it on YouTube at some point before the end of January (Again, as I must reiterate, in its very unfinished form), but no promises!
While that's all for the first area, I have been poking around with redesigning some of the later characters you guys have not even seen yet. Particularly, the primary antagonist of the new Cold West. I have to admit, I was a little worried that, if I didn't switch up his design, people would start comparing him to Clover since Undertale Yellow is still fresh in a lot of our memories right now, but... I think you guys will really like "The long scarf of the law." He's a fun character.
Alright, that's all from me! I hope you guys enjoyed this brief little peek at some mild spoiler-y content! I hope to be back soon with some neat stuff for y'all to see in action!
As I anticipated, things have been progressing a bit more slowly than over the summer. This is because of college classes starting up, and getting into some of the more complicated elements of coding this project. But, that doesn't mean I haven't made some REALLY good progress the past month or so! Can somebody say "Almost functional battle system?"
Apologies for the lack of frequent updates, as well! I was hoping to have more to show by now, honestly, but the damn battle system has been a real major pain in the ass to get right. I wanna make this fangame as good as it can be.
Wait... did I just say "Fangame...?"
Fangame?
Sooooooo... about the whole "Interactive webcomic" thing... I've been craftily obscuring the truth from you all for the past 2-3 months. I made the switch to coding an actual full-on game of Versotale in Gamemaker. And not a single person realized!
...Huh? What do you mean, "Everyone figured it out?"
Anyway, I know the switch sounds daunting. And I didn't wanna reveal this change until I was confident it was a better alternative than html and javascript and all that website crap. But the funny thing is... I got more work done in one month of game coding than I did an entire year on the website. It's almost like Gamemaker was built to make games, huh? I genuinely think that, had I continued trying to finagle javascript and css and html and all that, I'd still be just trying to figure out how to get Asriel to move on a screen. So... yeah, I think this was the right decision.
I don't think I'll entirely scrap the website, primarily because I want to make that the hub for all VT content.
I'll update you guys soon next time I have some significant non-spoiler progress to show off. In the meantime, have this!
Alright, so, things have been going super well. After the opening "King's Promise" cutscene, I've started implementing some of the room maps for the first area. The first area's basic tiles like walls, floors, paths, etc. are in a place I'm happy with. And, possibly the coolest thing I've managed to get done so far... the entire inventory system works as intended! Which makes me very happy.
I've also managed to code an NPC interaction system. That... was hell, but it works, so I'll take it! As of yesterday, I've started making headway on the battle system.
Don't have much else to say at the moment; just wanted to provide a brief little update. Since my next college term is starting up pretty soon, it's very likely I'll have a lot less time to crack out as much progress on this thing as I have this past month, so don't be alarmed if progress slows down considerably! That just means I'm being a good student probably.
Here, Have a Bonus
Behold, the old tileset for the first area! I made this when I was first rewriting the story. Now, it doesn't quite fit with the vibe I'm going for, feeling FAR too much like a traditional Ruins aesthetic, but I figured you all might still like it!
First real major test of the inventory system
Or, as I like to call it, "A soul-draining exercise in trial-and-error and careful observation until everything might maybe look correct... only to find out it doesn't; rinse and repeat process until everything works."
(Also, don't read into the items displayed here. They're just for testing. Though, if you very strongly believe you've got something figured out by analyzing the MTT-Brand Egg, then by all means, feel free to expound)
There are slight alterations to the base Undertale menu. While I was inspired to implement multiple item categories by Deltarune, I'm definitely not the first to do something like this. Team Switched's Underswap fangame is a notable example.
As you can see, it's not complete yet, but I figured you guys might find it cool. I hope you don't mind the rapid-fire updates within the past week. I've just been very legitimately excited about all the progress I've been making lately. They probably won't be as quick after this, but should any cool little non-spoiler things be completed, I'll gladly try to find a way to show them off!