#ChoCho Dev Thoughts

[derpychocho]

"Good night, sunshine."

Happy 2nd anniversary,

One Romantic Date, Hold the Awkward!

A romantic date with THE GREAT PAPYRUS? Don't worry! Your friends are here to help! ...or maybe, that's the perfect reason to worry.

Character Art: @mmishee-art

Papyrus and Sans: @davetasticdave

Alphys: @twoallnighters

Undyne: @cellochicita-va

Sound Design: DanDoesVoices

Programming, Writing, UI Design, Project Management: @derpychocho (Me :3)

One Romantic Date, Hold the Awkward was my NaNoRenO 2022 submission! It was the first time I had ever led a team. And it was the first time I've ever gutted the UI as extensively as I did to build it from scratch. My focus that year was project management and UI design.

At the eleventh hour, I had lost some of what I was working on. Thankfully I managed to redo everything I lost and submitted before the deadline! I was so proud of myself and everyone that had a hand in working on this!

[derpychocho]

Thank you so much!!

Just to add my thoughts from a dev perspective, I think the full impact of the True LOVE/No Love route relies on the player going through and enjoying the True Love route first. In a way, I was banking on the player experiencing such a close connection with Sans first... only to sever it in the most heartbreaking way if they were curious enough to explore No Love after.

In addition, I wanted the No Love route to play off the visual novel mechanic. In an RPG, the grind comes from battling enemies. But in a visual novel, the grind comes from multiple playthroughs to try all the choices, eventually getting to the point of skipping through just to see something new.

When a player first goes through No Love, the images and the scenarios that unfold are devastating. But then the player learns that it's not enough. The player is given the task to find every choice combination if they want to progress down this path.

And so the multiple playthroughs of No Love begin. And they play those scenarios over. And over. And over. And over again.

Soon it gets to the point where those scenes that were once so devastating become... nothing. The player skips through it all just to get everything. Be it with the skip button or clicking through... it becomes a numb grind. "Seen it." "Read it." Skip, skip, skip. In that moment, those devastating scenes don't matter anymore. What matters is progressing.

So when the player finally progresses and they see the shiny new dialogue from Sans before the fight, they get to stop and think. They have one last chance to pick between the two core options of the entire visual novel:

Go back to being content in loving Sans the skeleton...

...or close the loop.

Dating Start!

The visual novel fan game.

I watched the gameplay on YouTube.

All possible choices...

The writing under the cut starts with exclamations of my distress, and ends with a coherent commentary on how experiencing such virtual scenarios can benefit the player.

I don't think there are spoilers... Other than the fact that you can go multiple ways through the game.

The genocide route plus the attempted pacifist route afterwards.

HORRIBLE.

OMG.

And when you try to do the pacifist route again? Did you see how it ends?

MY GOD, NO. No. no. no no no.

What a sickening turn of events. This is... Ugh, I am nauseaus even thinking back to it.

No. No.

Ewwww noooo what the f-

I have been upset for DAYS after watching it. And the pictures and the dialogue is still burned into my mind.

TERRIFYING.

DISGUSTING.

EVIL.

Congratulations to the creators - and I mean it.

That is... so well made. Just... perfect punch after punch after punch to your heart. The creators ripped me apart into pieces.

Great job - again, not ironically.

That is a very, very well made game.

They knew exactly what to do to make it as painful as possible. To get all tears out of the player and to traumatize them for some time.

It's not brutal or cruel in a mindless way, no. No, no. It's way more intelligent than that. It creates such a horrific scenario, paired with the horrific pictures, that I don't think I'll ever forget it. And I only saw a YouTube video.

In comparison to Dating Start!, the normal UT Sans fight is like a happy picnic in the park.

"But it's just a game, aren't you overreacting?", you could ask. Well, no. I am enjoying artwork like pictures, movies, games to get immersed into it and experience it all. If I keep my shield up and do not allow myself to feel what the characters are feeling... then what's the point?

What's the point of even approaching art if I refuse to feel any of it?

So Dating Start! is obviously a game, but if you imagine it being a reality, imagine yourself holding that knife, it gets so painful that I want to wail and scream my lungs out.

That being said, I appreciate artists who create these kinds of difficult works so much.

I believe we choose a variety of art for ourselves because we need different stimuli. If our life was 100% fluff, we'd drown in it and become numb.

So we consume angst, tragedies, horror and other unpleasant works.

We consider those scenarios.

We think of the possible choices.

We come to terms with our worldview, or challenge it.

We grow.

We process those real emotions and learn so many things about ourselves and problem solving.

We keep developing our sense of conscience.

--------

And, to sum up I will say something to make sure I am understood correctly:

Let people explore all sides of humanity within the safety of their fantasies.

It is NOT possible to judge a person by what they create and what art they enjoy. Human mind is not black and white.

Choosing to perceive it like that: "violent art = violent person" is INCREDIBLY IMMATURE. Ridiculously childlish and small-minded.

So I am absolutely NOT judging anyone who for one reason or another enjoys doing the genocide routes in games. I enjoy to be the "bad guy" in games as well.

No judgement from my side. That should be... obvious, but I think it's not, so I am making sure to include that in my post.

[derpychocho]

me: i'm gonna make this UI nice and simple and not complicated. also me: -codes the UI so that the CTC and Choice heart changes color based on what trait the player selects and uses hex codes to colorize a single image file and also has a separate CTC for monsters-

[derpychocho]

I've been chugging away at an Undertale Ren'Py template for the free jam starter pack! It’s customized to fit the Undertale theme and the code is divided to make things easier to find.

Originally I was going to use image buttons for the quick menu in the textbox. But I realized that I liked the way the text buttons looked a lot more ^^;

Right now I'm considering adding a CG gallery to the template that can be turned on or off. We'll see!

Sans sprites by @zirkkun (which will also be available in the jam starter pack!)

[derpychocho]

Just took a look at the poll results! I’m glad to see there’s quite a number of people interested in participating in the jam! ^^ Honestly it’s more than I was anticipating!

I’ve been working on a few things behind the scenes—the biggest of which is solidifying the guidelines and drafting the jam page.

I’ve also been working on designing an Undertale inspired UI for a Ren’Py template! It’ll be pretty basic—hoping to make the code readable.

(Please ignore the placeholder scribbles lol)

[derpychocho]

I highly recommend this jam for those that want a challenge in order to make a VN from start to finish!

It doesn't matter if you're new to VN dev or a VN veteran! Everyone can join!

NaNoRenO 2023 is nigh! Make a visual novel from scratch in a month! Join the jam now!

[derpychocho]

I was looking through my Dating Start! code and I FORGOT I PUT ALL OF THESE 🤣🤣 This is when the player gets to name the human falling. There were some interesting names the player could have entered (not that they could use them).

[derpychocho]

I'm strongly considering hosting the Undertale VN/IF jam this year, since it's Undertale’s 10th anniversary. Maybe July - August, before September? Still trying to see if I'll have the energy to host, but I really want to!

I also want to see if I can make some Undertale specific resources (sprites, UI template) so that the barrier to entry is lowered for beginners!

[derpychocho]

I'm slowing chipping away at the Undertale UI template for the jam. I worry I've written too many comments LOL

But I just want to make sure everything is clear for newcomers that may not be familiar with Ren'Py.

and i had to really sit there and be purposeful with my comments because normally my comments are more like.... this (ft. DATING START! code comments)

[derpychocho]

Jumping into this one, too!

I'll be honest, I'm not sure how a 'Dating Start!' version of Megalosomnia would go. ^^;

The main driving force of 'Dating Start!' is the idea of "I would pick you. Every time. No matter the timeline." This is because, Sans' biggest concern is that everything would RESET. So everything he cares about would be taken away from him. How could he fall in love when a RESET would take the love of his life away? The reassurance that his SOULmate would find him every time is what essentially bonds both Sans and the player.

For a "Megalosomnia" version, it would have to play off of Baggs' biggest concern, whatever that may be. I'd have to really dig into his character to understand how that would play into the concept of SOULs in the Megalosomnia world.

what would a Date Start! with Baggs be like?

Considering @derpychocho made both games, I'm assuming 'Just and Experiment' IS that game ha ha

Though, 'Dating Start!' has the soul mates trope, so maybe the events of that game would go quite differently. Who knows~

Well except Cho I guess lol

[derpychocho]

I have been told I should make a Tenna VN

Tempting, but I don’t have the inspo/energy for it LOL

I’m trying to prep for the Undertale VN/IF Jam already ^^;

[derpychocho]

I coded three different ways to have a title/logo on the main menu!

Regular Text - default upon creation

Image (.png) - you can replace the placeholder with your own image

Undertale Logo Font - still debating on whether or not I want to implement this feature

You just have to set the one you want to "True" and the others to "False".

[derpychocho]

I finally have a functional CG gallery! I just gotta clean up the code a bit and maybe format it a little better?

Behold my mouse drawn placeholder CG (that will NOT be included in the starter pack asjkdklasd)

I finally realized why it wasn’t working was because I was calling the CG as the button instead of the button image as the button. So I kept having giant CG sized buttons 🤣

[derpychocho]

Soooooo I may have made something with my husband in three days for “Worst Visual Novel Ever” Challenge 2025…

Not going to lie, it was honestly very liberating to go nuts making a visual novel without having to worry about polish or if it’s even any good!

If you’re curious, you can play it here!

[derpychocho]

I’ve been struggling to pick an idea to develop and stick with it. It’s not that I don’t have an idea. I have so many! I guess I’ve been worrying that all my VNs have to be some super polished thing.

Maybe it’s okay to make a small, rough, unpolished VN—one that’s just to shake the rust off. Maybe I don’t have to have clean art or a solid story. Maybe I just need to make something. Anything.

I have two ideas I really want to make. But I’m not ready to jump into a bigger project just yet. I’d like to make a smaller thing first.

[derpychocho]

Just as a heads up, I've kinda been all over the place with this blog recently. It was always meant to be, first and foremost, a dev blog for any visual novels/fangames I was developing.

Moving forward, this blog will go back to being strictly dev related only. ✨