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135-528: Undertale is a 2015 2D role-playing video game created by American indie developer Toby Fox . The player controls a child who has fallen into the Underground: a large, secluded region under the surface of the Earth, separated by a magical barrier. The player meets various monsters during the journey back to the surface, although some monsters might engage the player in a fight. The combat system involves

270-415: A cult following . About a year after release, Fox commented that he was surprised by how popular the game had become and though appreciative of the attention, he found it stressful. Fox said: "It wouldn't surprise me if I never made a game as successful again. That's fine with me though". Ana Diaz of NPR stated that Undertale "shaped the entertainment tastes of an entire generation", and that it "took on

405-598: A rigid motion : other rigid motions include rotations and reflections. A translation can also be interpreted as the addition of a constant vector to every point, or as shifting the origin of the coordinate system . A translation operator is an operator T δ {\displaystyle T_{\mathbf {\delta } }} such that T δ f ( v ) = f ( v + δ ) . {\displaystyle T_{\mathbf {\delta } }f(\mathbf {v} )=f(\mathbf {v} +\mathbf {\delta } ).} If v

540-572: A rotation in Euclidean space . rotates points in the xy - Cartesian plane counterclockwise through an angle θ about the origin of the Cartesian coordinate system . To perform the rotation using a rotation matrix R , the position of each point must be represented by a column vector v , containing the coordinates of the point. A rotated vector is obtained by using the matrix multiplication R v . Since matrix multiplication has no effect on

675-413: A scale factor that is the same in all directions. The result of uniform scaling is similar (in the geometric sense) to the original. A scale factor of 1 is normally allowed, so that congruent shapes are also classed as similar. (Some school text books specifically exclude this possibility, just as some exclude squares from being rectangles or circles from being ellipses.) More general is scaling with

810-614: A vector v = ( v x , v y , v z ), each homogeneous coordinate vector p = ( p x , p y , p z , 1) would need to be multiplied with this projective transformation matrix: As shown below, the multiplication will give the expected result: Since the last component of a homogeneous coordinate can be viewed as the denominator of the other three components, a uniform scaling by a common factor s (uniform scaling) can be accomplished by using this scaling matrix: For each vector p = ( p x , p y , p z , 1) we would have which would be homogenized to A convenient way to create

945-456: A "potential problem" due to the decreasing nostalgia factor for each new character and ever-increasing size of the roster. The Undertale fandom has also been noted for the creations of various fan games that offer unique stories and gameplay mechanics based on the Undertale world. Among the most anticipated fangames was the spinoff Undertale Yellow , which after seven years of development

1080-432: A child and completes objectives in order to progress through the story. Players explore an underground world filled with towns and caves, and are required to solve numerous puzzles on their journey. The underground world is the home of monsters, many of whom challenge the player in combat; players decide whether to kill, flee from, or befriend them. Choices made by the player radically affect the plot and general progression of

1215-514: A circus troupe performed in front of the Pope during his weekly audience at the Vatican to the tune of "Megalovania", drawing parallels with MatPat's symbolic gift of the game to Pope Francis. Undertale 's fandom has been among the most prone to fan theories due to the mysterious nature of many plot elements. A commonly proposed theory by the fandom is that Chara, the first human who fell into

1350-430: A complex image is to start with a blank "canvas" raster map (an array of pixels , also known as a bitmap ) filled with some uniform background color and then "draw", "paint" or "paste" simple patches of color onto it, in an appropriate order. In particular the canvas may be the frame buffer for a computer display . Some programs will set the pixel colors directly, but most will rely on some 2D graphics library or

1485-403: A metafictional reading. Implicit metafiction is described as a mode of showing. Direct metafiction establishes a reference within the text one is just reading. In contrast to this, indirect metafiction consists in metareferences external to this text, such as reflections on other specific literary works or genres (as in parodies) and general discussions of an aesthetic issue. Since there is always

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1620-414: A model for the construction of 'reality' rather than a reflection of it. Reality itself became regarded as a construct instead of objective truth. Through its formal self-exploration, metafiction thus became the device that explores the question of how human beings construct their experience of the world. Robert Scholes identifies the time around 1970 as the peak of experimental fiction (of which metafiction

1755-458: A mom", and "genuinely cares" about players' actions. Initially, Toriel had to be killed in order to progress the game, but Fox changed it before the release of Undertale 's demo. Papyrus and Sans are named after the typefaces Papyrus and Comic Sans , and their in-game dialogue is displayed accordingly in their respective eponymous fonts. Both characters are listed in the game's credits as being inspired by J.N. Wiedle, author of Helvetica ,

1890-545: A natural process, as it expressed the stories of those within it. Fox felt the importance to make the game's monsters "feel like an individual". He cited the Final Fantasy series as the opposite; "all monsters in RPGs like Final Fantasy are the same ... there's no meaning to that". The character of Toriel, who is one of the first to appear in the game, was created as a parody of tutorial characters. Fox strongly disliked

2025-670: A new life through memes". Reid Young, CEO of Fangamer , said that the game became "an absolutely dominating force". The character Sans has been well received by players, being the subject of many fan works. Professional wrestler Kenny Omega has expressed his love of Undertale , dressing as Sans for the October 30, 2019, episode of All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite . Sans's addition as a Mii fighter costume in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate garnered positive feedback from fans, although The Commonwealth Times considered his addition to be

2160-507: A number of metafictional elements in both its gameplay and story. When players participate in a boss battle on a second playthrough , the dialogue will be altered depending on actions in previous playthroughs. Undertale is set in the Underground, a realm where monsters were banished after war broke out with humans. The Underground is sealed from the surface by a magic barrier with a singular gap at Mount Ebott. A human child falls into

2295-533: A province, they arrange for a sham governorship of a village on their estate. At one later point, Don Quixote visits a printing house where Avellaneda’s book is being printed and the protagonists encounter a character from that book, whom they make swear that the Quixote and Sancho in Avellaneda’s book are imposters. It is with LOVE as with CUCKOLDOM — —But now I am talking of beginning a book, and have long had

2430-413: A relationship between the text in which indirect metafiction occurs and the referenced external texts or issues, indirect metafiction always impacts the text one is reading, albeit in an indirect way. Critical metafiction aims to find the artificiality or fictionality of a text in some critical way, which is frequently done in postmodernist fiction. Non-critical metafiction does not criticize or undermine

2565-406: A separate scale factor for each axis direction. Non-uniform scaling ( anisotropic scaling , inhomogeneous dilation ) is obtained when at least one of the scaling factors is different from the others; a special case is directional scaling or stretching (in one direction). Non-uniform scaling changes the shape of the object; e.g. a square may change into a rectangle, or into a parallelogram if

2700-496: A small Japanese fan community slowly emerged, leading to an unofficial fan localization patch being released in early 2016. Since Fox had envisioned a Japanese translation as an eventual goal while working on the game, he consulted a number of different companies, eventually choosing 8-4, which had previously translated Aquaria and Shovel Knight . To ensure a consistent voice for the game, 8-4 chose to employ only one primary translator, Keiko Fuchicho, even though it would lead to

2835-474: A sound model for certain techniques such as mitered joints and the even–odd rule . Layered models are also used to allow the user to suppress unwanted information when viewing or printing a document, e.g. roads or railways from a map , certain process layers from an integrated circuit diagram, or hand annotations from a business letter. In a layer-based model, the target image is produced by "painting" or "pasting" each layer, in order of decreasing depth, on

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2970-546: A specific order. The ordering is usually defined by a single number (the layer's depth , or distance from the viewer). Layered models are sometimes called "2 1 ⁄ 2 -D computer graphics". They make it possible to mimic traditional drafting and printing techniques based on film and paper, such as cutting and pasting; and allow the user to edit any layer without affecting the others. For these reasons, they are used in most graphics editors . Layered models also allow better spatial anti-aliasing of complex drawings and provide

3105-510: A story being authentic (a device frequently used in realistic fiction) would be an example of (non-critical) truth-centred metafiction. In 1615, Miguel de Cervantes published a second part to his Don Quixote , which had appeared ten years earlier in 1605 (the two parts are now normally published together). Cervantes produced the sequel partially because of his anger at a spurious Part Two that had appeared in 1614 written by Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda . In Cervantes’s Part Two, several of

3240-451: A text system for an RPG. After completing it, he came up with the idea of creating a battle system. This system, which was created using the game creation system GameMaker: Studio , informed how Fox wrote the story, as both are intertwined. He wanted to develop a role-playing game that was different from the traditional design, which he often found "boring to play". He set out to develop a game with "interesting characters", and that "utilizes

3375-458: A thing upon my mind to be imparted to the reader, which if not imparted now, can never be imparted to him as long as I live (whereas the COMPARISON may be imparted to him any hour of the day)—I'll just mention it, and begin in good earnest. The thing is this. Of the several ways of beginning a book which is now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is

3510-406: A translation matrix can be obtained by reversing the direction of the vector: Similarly, the product of translation matrices is given by adding the vectors: Because addition of vectors is commutative , multiplication of translation matrices is therefore also commutative (unlike multiplication of arbitrary matrices). In linear algebra , a rotation matrix is a matrix that is used to perform

3645-466: A webcomic series about a skeleton named after the font of the same name . Papyrus in particular was conceived as a sketch in Fox's notebook; he was originally a mean spirited character named " Times New Roman " who wears a fedora. The game's soundtrack was entirely composed by Fox with FL Studio . A self-taught musician, he composed most of the tracks with little iteration; the game's main theme, "Undertale",

3780-405: Is a fixed vector, then the translation T v will work as T v ( p ) = p + v . If T is a translation, then the image of a subset A under the function T is the translation of A by T . The translation of A by T v is often written A + v . In a Euclidean space , any translation is an isometry . The set of all translations forms the translation group T , which

3915-408: Is an instrumental part) and names a lack of commercial and critical success as reasons for its subsequent decline. The development toward metafictional writing in postmodernism generated mixed responses. Some critics argued that it signified the decadence of the novel and an exhaustion of the artistic capabilities of the medium, with some going as far as to call it the ' death of the novel '. Others see

4050-500: Is called metalepsis , an implicitly metafictional device when used in literature. Metalepsis has a high inherent potential to disrupt aesthetic illusion and confronts the reader with the fictionality of the text. However, as metalepsis is used as a plot device that has been introduced as part of the world of The Eyre Affair it can, in this instance, have the opposite effect and is compatible with immersion. It can thus be seen as an example of metafiction that does not (necessarily) break

4185-421: Is described as a mode of telling. An example would be a narrator explaining the process of creating the story they are telling. Rather than commenting on the text, implicit metafiction foregrounds the medium or its status as an artifact through various, for example disruptive, techniques such as metalepsis . It relies more than other forms of metafiction on the reader's ability to recognize these devices to evoke

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4320-401: Is explicit, critical indirect metafiction). Fourth, he covertly foregrounds the fact that the characters in the novel are fictional characters, rather than masking this aspect, as would be the case in non-metafictional writing. Therefore, this scene features metafictional elements with reference to the medium (the novel), the form of art (literature), a genre (realism), and arguably also lays bare

4455-613: Is frequently used as a form of parody or a tool to undermine literary conventions and explore the relationship between literature and reality, life and art. Although metafiction is most commonly associated with postmodern literature that developed in the mid-20th century, its use can be traced back to much earlier works of fiction, such as The Canterbury Tales ( Geoffrey Chaucer , 1387), Don Quixote Part Two ( Miguel de Cervantes , 1615), " Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz " ( Johann Valentin Andreae , 1617), The Cloud Dream of

4590-407: Is isomorphic to the space itself, and a normal subgroup of Euclidean group E ( n ). The quotient group of E ( n ) by T is isomorphic to the orthogonal group O ( n ): Since a translation is an affine transformation but not a linear transformation , homogeneous coordinates are normally used to represent the translation operator by a matrix and thus to make it linear. Thus we write

4725-484: Is killed as well. British mystery novelist and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz took a highly metafictional approach to his series of satirical murder mysteries that began with The Word is Murder in 2017. Horowitz casts himself as a modern-day Dr. Watson who is hired by a brilliant but enigmatic ex-Scotland Yard man named Daniel Hawthorne to chronicle Hawthorne's cases. Alongside the mystery plots, Horowitz mixes anecdotes about his own professional and personal life as

4860-610: Is known as inverting color or color inversion , and is often used in graphical user interfaces for highlighting, rubber-band drawing, and other volatile painting—since re-painting the same shapes with the same color will restore the original pixel values. The models used in 2D computer graphics usually do not provide for three-dimensional shapes, or three-dimensional optical phenomena such as lighting, shadows , reflection , refraction , etc. However, they usually can model multiple layers (conceptually of ink, paper, or film; opaque, translucent , or transparent —stacked in

4995-415: Is not commonly used in dimensions higher than 3; there is a notion of a rotational displacement , which can be represented by a matrix, but no associated single axis or angle. Rotation matrices are square matrices , with real entries. More specifically they can be characterized as orthogonal matrices with determinant  1: The set of all such matrices of size n forms a group , known as

5130-422: Is possible to clear the game without killing a single enemy. Monsters will talk to the player during the battle, and the game will tell the players what the monster's feelings and actions are. Enemy attacks change based on how players interact with them: should players choose non-violent options, enemy attacks are comparatively easy, whereas they become less easy if players choose violent options. The game relies on

5265-480: Is revealed to be a reincarnation of Asriel accidentally created by Alphys's experiments. During the fight with Asgore, Toriel stops the battle and is joined by the other monsters the human befriended. Flowey ambushes the group, absorbing the souls of all the humans and monsters in order to take an older Asriel's form. During the ensuing fight, the human manages to connect with the souls of their friends, and eventually defeats Asriel: He reverts to his child form, destroys

5400-510: Is the third-highest rated Windows game released in 2015, and among the top 50 of all time. It was temporarily the highest-rated PC game of all time on Metacritic after release. Praise was particularly directed at the game's writing, unique characters, and combat system. GameSpot 's Tyler Hicks declared it "one of the most progressive and innovative RPGs to come in a long time", and IGN ' s Kallie Plagge called it "a masterfully crafted experience". Daniel Tack of Game Informer called

5535-406: Is used, with the x axis to the right and the y axis up, the rotation R( θ ) is counterclockwise. If a left-handed Cartesian coordinate system is used, with x directed to the right but y directed down, R( θ ) is clockwise. Such non-standard orientations are rarely used in mathematics but are common in 2D computer graphics, which often have the origin in the top left corner and the y -axis down

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5670-446: The special orthogonal group SO( n ) . In two dimensions every rotation matrix has the following form: This rotates column vectors by means of the following matrix multiplication : So the coordinates (x',y') of the point (x,y) after rotation are: The direction of vector rotation is counterclockwise if θ is positive (e.g. 90°), and clockwise if θ is negative (e.g. -90°). If a standard right-handed Cartesian coordinate system

5805-756: The "genocide" route. YouTuber Markiplier refused to complete his initial play-through of the game, stating that he was "not having fun" due to fan demands. In July 2016, during a summit about the Internet held at the Vatican , YouTube personality MatPat gifted a copy of Undertale to Pope Francis . MatPat explained his choice of gift by referencing the year 2016's status as the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy , and connecting this to Undertale ' s overarching theme of mercy. Later, in January 2022,

5940-416: The 13th greatest game of all time. After previously teasing something Undertale -related a day earlier, Fox released the first chapter of Deltarune on October 31, 2018, for macOS and Windows for free. Deltarune is "not the world of Undertale ", according to Fox, though characters and settings may bring some of Undertale ' s world to mind, and is "intended for people who have completed Undertale ";

6075-693: The 1950s, based on vector graphics devices . These were largely supplanted by raster-based devices in the following decades. The PostScript language and the X Window System protocol were landmark developments in the field. 2D graphics models may combine geometric models (also called vector graphics ), digital images (also called raster graphics ), text to be typeset (defined by content, font style and size, color, position, and orientation), mathematical functions and equations , and more. These components can be modified and manipulated by two-dimensional geometric transformations such as translation , rotation , and scaling . In object-oriented graphics ,

6210-631: The 1980s, contemporary Latino literature has an abundance of self-reflexive, metafictional works, including novels and short stories by Junot Díaz ( The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao ), Sandra Cisneros ( Caramelo ), Salvador Plascencia ( The People of Paper ), Carmen Maria Machado ( Her Body and Other Parties ), Rita Indiana ( Tentacle ), and Valeria Luiselli ( Lost Children Archive ). Also in Latin America, but much earlier, Ecuadorian writer Pablo Palacio published his experimental novella Débora in October 1927. Some of

6345-402: The 3-dimensional vector w = ( w x , w y , w z ) using 4 homogeneous coordinates as w = ( w x , w y , w z , 1). To translate an object by a vector v , each homogeneous vector p (written in homogeneous coordinates) would need to be multiplied by this translation matrix : As shown below, the multiplication will give the expected result: The inverse of

6480-426: The 4 entries of a rotation matrix with 2 rows and 2 columns. In 3-dimensional space, every rotation can be interpreted as a rotation by a given angle about a single fixed axis of rotation (see Euler's rotation theorem ), and hence it can be simply described by an angle and a vector with 3 entries. However, it can also be represented by the 9 entries of a rotation matrix with 3 rows and 3 columns. The notion of rotation

6615-565: The Annoying Dog's frequent interruptions a standout, and Kill Screen considered absurdity a signature quality of Fox's humor. The game's visuals received mixed reactions. Giant Bomb ' s Walker called it "simple, but communicative". IGN ' s Plagge wrote that the game "isn't always pretty" and "often ugly", but felt that the music and animations compensate. The Escapist 's Croshaw remarked that "it wobbles between basic and functional to just plain bad". Other reviewers liked

6750-543: The Japanese version taking longer to release. She was supported by a small team of editors and proofreaders, and a programmer which modified the game to work with Japanese writing systems . Before the translation began in early 2016, Fox provided development notes and annotated dialogue to the team, and he continued to support and advise them throughout its creation. As PC gaming is less prominent in Japan, they concurrently made

6885-590: The Matthew Crump Cultural Innovation Award and Most Fulfilling Crowdfunded Game from the SXSW Gaming Awards . Undertale garnered awards and nominations in a variety of categories with praise for its story, narrative and for its role-playing. At IGN ' s Best of 2015, the game received Best Story. The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Undertale for Role-Playing/Massive Multiplayer Game of

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7020-655: The Most Fulfilling Crowdfunded Game, and awarded it the Matthew Crump Cultural Innovation Award. The same year at the Steam Awards the game received a nomination for the "I'm not crying, there's just something in my eye" award. In 2019, Polygon named the game among the decade's best. In 2021, IGN listed Undertale as the 20th greatest game of all time , while in Japan , a nationwide TV Asahi poll of over 50,000 players listed Undertale as

7155-760: The Nine ( Kim Man-jung , 1687), The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman ( Laurence Sterne , 1759), Sartor Resartus ( Thomas Carlyle , 1833–34), and Vanity Fair ( William Makepeace Thackeray , 1847). Metafiction became particularly prominent in the 1960s, with works such as Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth , Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov , "The Babysitter" and "The Magic Poker" by Robert Coover , Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut , The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles , The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon , and Willie Master's Lonesome Wife by William H. Gass . Since

7290-403: The Underground from Mount Ebott and encounters Flowey , a sentient flower who teaches the player the game's mechanics and lies about "LV", or "LOVE", in an attempt to kill them. The human is rescued by Toriel , a motherly goat-like monster, who teaches them how to survive conflict in the Underground without killing. She intends to adopt the human, wanting to protect them from Asgore , the king of

7425-468: The Underground. The human eventually leaves Toriel to search for Asgore's castle, which contains the barrier to the surface world. They encounter several monsters, such as the skeletons Sans and Papyrus , two brothers who act as sentries for the Snowdin forest; Undyne , the head of the royal guard; Alphys , the kingdom's royal scientist; and Mettaton , a robotic television host Alphys created. Most of

7560-1036: The Year , Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction , and the D.I.C.E. Sprite Award . Undertale was nominated for the Innovation Award, Best Debut, and Best Narrative at the Game Developers Choice Awards . In 2016, at the Independent Games Festival the game won the Audience Award, and garnered three nominations for Excellence in Audio, Excellence in Narrative, and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize . The SXSW Gaming Awards named it

7695-469: The ability to avoid combat, opting for friendly conversations instead. Jesse Singal of The Boston Globe found the game's ability to make the player empathize with the monsters during combat if they opted for non-violent actions was "indicative of the broader, fundamental sweetness at the core" of Undertale . Reviewers praised the game's writing and narrative, which IGN ' s Plagge called "excellent". The Escapist 's Croshaw considered Undertale

7830-472: The aesthetic illusion. One contemporary example of metafiction in a video game is Undertale , a 2015 role-playing game created by Toby Fox and Temmie Chang. Undertale has many examples of metafiction, with the largest overall example being how the game uses one of its characters, "Flowey the Flower", to predict how the player will view and interact with the game. Flowey was given the ability to "save/load"

7965-419: The artificiality or fictionality of a text and can, for example, be used to "suggest that the story one is reading is authentic". While all metafiction somehow deals with the medial quality of fiction or narrative and is thus generally media-centred, in some cases there is an additional focus on the truthfulness or inventiveness (fictionality) of a text, which merits mention as a specific form. The suggestion of

8100-403: The barrier, and expresses remorse for his actions before leaving, revealing the human's true name as Frisk . The human falls unconscious and is awoken to see their friends surrounding them. The monsters peacefully reintegrate with the humans, while the human has the option of accepting Toriel as their adoptive mother. A third ending, known by fans as the "No Mercy" or "Genocide" ending, ensues if

8235-476: The best-written game of 2015, writing that it "is on the one hand hilarious... and is also, by the end, rather heartfelt". Destructoid ' s Ben Davis praised the game's characters and use of comedy, and compared its tone, characters, and storytelling to Cave Story (2004). PC Gamer ' s Richard Cobbett provided similar comments, writing that "even its weaker moments... just about work". Undertale ' s absurd humor attracted praise; Game Rant found

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8370-409: The best—I'm sure it is the most religious—for I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second. In this scene Tristram Shandy , the eponymous character and narrator of the novel, foregrounds the process of creating literature as he interrupts his previous thought and begins to talk about the beginnings of books. The scene evokes an explicitly metafictional response to

8505-475: The case of one or more negative scale factors. The latter corresponds to a combination of scaling proper and a kind of reflection: along lines in a particular direction we take the reflection in the point of intersection with a plane that need not be perpendicular; therefore it is more general than ordinary reflection in the plane. In projective geometry , often used in computer graphics , points are represented using homogeneous coordinates . To scale an object by

8640-468: The case where v x = v y = v z = k , the scaling is also called an enlargement or dilation by a factor k, increasing the area by a factor of k and the volume by a factor of k . Scaling in the most general sense is any affine transformation with a diagonalizable matrix . It includes the case that the three directions of scaling are not perpendicular. It includes also the case that one or more scale factors are equal to zero ( projection ), and

8775-414: The characters are assumed to have read Part One, and are thus familiar with the history and eccentricities of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. In particular, an unnamed Duke and Duchess are delighted at meeting the pair they have read about and use their wealth to devise elaborate tricks and practical jokes playing on their knowledge. For example, knowing from Part One that Sancho dreams of becoming governor of

8910-522: The complications involved in adding another difficulty setting. The game's dialogue system was inspired by Shin Megami Tensei (1992), particularly the gameplay mechanic whereby players can talk to monsters to avoid conflict. Fox intended to expand upon this mechanic, as failing to negotiate resulted in a requirement to fight. "I want to create a system that satisfied my urge for talking to monsters," he said. When he began developing this mechanic,

9045-413: The concept of completing the game without killing any enemies "just evolved naturally". However, he never considered removing the option to fight throughout development. When questioned on the difficulty of playing the game without killing, Fox responded that it is "the crux of one of the major themes of this game", asking players to think about it themselves. Despite not having played it, Fox was inspired by

9180-413: The concepts of Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (1997), which involved the player repairing the damage of the "Hero" and increasing their "Love Level" by helping people instead of hurting them. Fox also cited Cave Story (2004) as a general inspiration for the game. According to Fox, the "idea of being trapped in an underground world" was inspired by the video game Brandish . Fox was partly influenced by

9315-536: The decision to release Undertale for consoles, with the porting also being handled by 8-4. After the localization's announcement, many fans were surprised by the decision to use the Japanese pronoun oira ( おいら ) for Sans, leading to the term oira shock . The localization was released for PS4 and Vita on August 16, 2017, and for PC on August 22. Undertale received "universal acclaim" from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic . There, it

9450-437: The enemy, or attacks them until they have low HP (but are still alive), they can then choose to spare them and end the fight without killing them. For some boss encounters to be completed peacefully, the player is required to survive until the character they are facing has finished their dialogue. The game features multiple story branches and endings depending on whether players choose to kill or spare their enemies; and as such, it

9585-439: The expected result: Such a scaling changes the diameter of an object by a factor between the scale factors, the area by a factor between the smallest and the largest product of two scale factors, and the volume by the product of all three. The scaling is uniform if and only if the scaling factors are equal ( v x = v y = v z ). If all except one of the scale factors are equal to 1, we have directional scaling. In

9720-406: The fabled checker paint which used to be available only in cartoons ). Painting a pixel with a given color usually replaces its previous color. However, many systems support painting with transparent and translucent colors, which only modify the previous pixel values. The two colors may also be combined in more complex ways, e.g. by computing their bitwise exclusive or . This technique

9855-447: The fictional process, putting emphasis on one or more of these aspects. These developments were part of a larger movement (arguably a meta referential turn ) which, approximately from the 1960s onwards, was the consequence of an increasing social and cultural self-consciousness, stemming from, as Patricia Waugh puts it, "a more general cultural interest in the problem of how human beings reflect, construct and mediate their experience in

9990-479: The fictionality of the characters and thus of the novel itself (which could be classified as critical, direct, fiction-centred metafiction). The Eyre Affair (2001) is set in an alternative history in which it is possible to enter the world of a work of literature through the use of a machine. In the novel, literary detective Thursday Next chases a criminal through the world of Charlotte Brontë 's Jane Eyre . This paradoxical transgression of narrative boundaries

10125-521: The finished release. 2D computer graphics 2D computer graphics are mainly used in applications that were originally developed upon traditional printing and drawing technologies, such as typography , cartography , technical drawing , advertising , etc. In those applications, the two-dimensional image is not just a representation of a real-world object, but an independent artifact with added semantic value; two-dimensional models are therefore preferred, because they give more direct control of

10260-515: The font Wingdings , his role as the royal scientist, and creating the CORE (a magical and technological power source for the Underground's monsters who live in the most populated areas) within Undertale only to "fall into his creation" and have his body shattered across time and space. Upon the release of Deltarune , players en masse speculated that Gaster played some role in the plot of the game and

10395-399: The game after the "True Pacifist" route, requesting you let the characters live their life in the best possible way. This presents the player with an indirect choice, to ignore Flowey, or to ignore the game. The game is fully prepared for both of these options, and, if you perform a "Genocide" route by ignoring Flowey and killing everyone, he assists the player in their mass murder, until Flowey

10530-532: The game due to the engine's lack of support for these platforms. A patch was released in January 2016, fixing bugs and altering the appearance of blue attacks to help colorblind players see them better. Sony Interactive Entertainment announced during E3 2017 that Undertale would get a release for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita , and a retail version published by Fangamer. These versions were released on August 15, 2017. A Nintendo Switch version

10665-465: The game had an estimated total of three and a half million players on Steam. Japanese digital PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita sales surpassed 100,000 copies sold by February 2018. By March 2019, Undertale was one of the ten best-selling indie games on the Switch. As of August 29, 2024, Steam Spy estimates that Undertale has sold between 5 and 10 million copies on Steam. Undertale quickly developed

10800-459: The game's combat system "incredibly nuanced", commenting on the uniqueness of each enemy encounter. Giant Bomb ' s Austin Walker praised the complexity of the combat, commenting that it is "unconventional, clever, and occasionally really difficult". Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of The Escapist commended the game's ability to blend turn-based and live combat elements. IGN ' s Plagge praised

10935-432: The game's soundtrack. Tyler Hicks of GameSpot compared the music to " bit-based melodies ". The Undertale soundtrack has frequently been covered by various styles and groups. As part of the fifth anniversary of the game, Fox streamed footage with permission of a 2019 concert of the Undertale songs performed by Music Engine, an orchestra group in Japan, with support of Fangamer and 8-4. Undertale 's first demo

11070-433: The game, instead leaving it optional to players. He also did not wish to introduce fetch quests , as they involve backtracking, which he dislikes. In terms of the game's difficulty, Fox ensured that it was easy and enjoyable. He asked some friends who are inexperienced with bullet hell shooters to test the game, and found that they were able to complete it. He felt that the game's difficulty is optimal, particularly considering

11205-412: The game, like how a player is able to save/load a game file in most video games. Flowey uses their powers to see the world play out differently based on his actions, such as being nice to everyone, and killing everyone. This follows a similar way the player would experience the game, being nice to everyone, and being prepared to murder everyone. However, Flowey stops you, and directly asks you not to restart

11340-479: The game, with the player's morality acting as the cornerstone for the game's development. When players encounter enemies in either scripted events or random encounters , they enter a battle mode. During battles, players control a small heart which represents their soul, and must avoid attacks unleashed by the opposing monster similar to a bullet hell shooter. As the game progresses, new elements are introduced, such as colored obstacles, and boss battles which change

11475-443: The graphics: Daniel Tack of Game Informer felt that the visuals appropriately match the characters and settings, while Richard Cobbett of PC Gamer commended the ability of the visuals to convey emotion. By the end of 2015, according to a preliminary report by Steam Spy , Undertale was one of the best-selling games on Steam , with 530,343 copies sold. By early February 2016, the game surpassed one million sales, and by July 2018,

11610-400: The human before their confrontation, revealing that the human's "LOVE" and "EXP" are acronyms for "level of violence" and "execution points", respectively. Sans judges the human based on their accumulated "LOVE" and "EXP". The human then fights Asgore, but Flowey interrupts, killing Asgore, stealing the human souls and transforming into a more powerful form with their power. During this battle,

11745-424: The human calls the souls for help in weakening Flowey. After the battle, the human leaves the Underground. They then receive a phone call from Sans, detailing the state of the Underground after the human's departure, with the specifics depending on who was killed or spared. If the player kills no monsters before completing a "Neutral" ending, they can reload their saved game to complete the "Pacifist" ending. Flowey

11880-442: The image is described indirectly by an object endowed with a self- rendering method —a procedure that assigns colors to the image pixels by an arbitrary algorithm. Complex models can be built by combining simpler objects, in the paradigms of object-oriented programming . In Euclidean geometry , a translation (geometry) moves every point a constant distance in a specified direction. A translation can be described as

12015-623: The image than 3D computer graphics (whose approach is more akin to photography than to typography). In many domains, such as desktop publishing , engineering , and business , a description of a document based on 2D computer graphics techniques can be much smaller than the corresponding digital image—often by a factor of 1/1000 or more. This representation is also more flexible since it can be rendered at different resolutions to suit different output devices . For these reasons, documents and illustrations are often stored or transmitted as 2D graphic files . 2D computer graphics started in

12150-415: The impact the player's actions are having on the game's world. When the human reaches Asgore's castle, Sans attempts to stop them, but fails and is slain. Flowey kills Asgore in an attempt to obtain mercy, but is killed by the human. Chara , the first fallen child who befriended Asriel, then appears and erases the world. To enable further replays of the game, the player must give their soul to Chara, restoring

12285-436: The machine's graphics card , which usually implement the following operations: Text, shapes and lines are rendered with a client-specified color. Many libraries and cards provide color gradients , which are handy for the generation of smoothly-varying backgrounds, shadow effects, etc. (See also Gouraud shading ). The pixel colors can also be taken from a texture, e.g. a digital image (thus emulating rub-on screentones and

12420-415: The medium as a storytelling device ... instead of having the story and gameplay abstractions be completely separate". Fox worked on the entire game independently, besides some of the art; he decided to work independently to avoid relying on others. Temmie Chang worked as the main artist for the game, providing most of the sprites and concept art. Fox has said that the game's art style would likely remain

12555-491: The monsters are fought, with the human choosing whether to kill them or to spare and possibly befriend the monster. During their travels, the human learns that many years ago, Asriel, the son of Asgore and Toriel, befriended the first human who fell into the Underground. When the child abruptly died, Asriel used the child's soul to pass through the barrier, intending to return the body to the surface. The humans living there attacked and killed Asriel, causing Asgore to declare war. In

12690-496: The music separately, and connect them on a track. To celebrate the first anniversary of the game, Fox released five unused musical works on his blog in 2016. Four of the game's songs were released as official downloadable content for the Steam version of Taito 's Groove Coaster . Undertale ' s soundtrack has been well received by critics as part of the success of the game, in particular for its use of various leitmotifs for

12825-429: The name Deltarune is an anagram of Undertale . Fox stated that this release is the first part of a new project, considering it a "survey program" to determine the project's future direction. Fox clarified that Deltarune will be a larger project than Undertale , stating it took him a few years to create the game's first chapter, much longer than it took him to complete the Undertale demo. Chapter 2 of Deltarune

12960-406: The novel emerged as the dominant literary form, narrative literature dealt only with the extraordinary or the allegorical – with kings and queens, giants and dragons, sublime virtue and diabolic evil. There was no risk of confusing that sort of thing with life, of course. But as soon as the novel got going, you might pick up a book at any time and read about an ordinary chap called Joe Smith doing just

13095-406: The novel, where such a scene might be more willingly accepted by the reader) the metafictional reflection is foregrounded. Additionally, the narrator addresses readers directly, thereby confronting readers with the fact that they are reading a constructed text. Has it ever occurred to you that novelists are using up experience at a dangerous rate? No, I see it hasn't. Well, then, consider that before

13230-523: The player kills every single monster in the game that can be fought. This involves continuously triggering random encounters in each area until no more monsters remain. Going down this route changes many aspects of the game: the game's soundtrack becomes more ominous, and most other characters are absent from the Overworld, having evacuated to escape the player's rampage. The few remaining characters that can be interacted with have changed dialogue, reflecting

13365-410: The player navigating through mini- bullet hell attacks by the opponent. They can opt to pacify or subdue monsters in order to spare them instead of killing them. These choices affect the game, with the dialogue, characters, and story changing based on outcomes. Outside of artwork and character designs by Temmie Chang and other guest designers, Fox developed the entirety of the game by himself, including

13500-425: The player question the bounds between the fiction of the video game and the reality of them playing the game. According to Werner Wolf, metafiction can be differentiated into four pairs of forms that can be combined with each other. Explicit metafiction is identifiable through its use of clear metafictional elements on the surface of a text. It comments on its own artificiality and is quotable. Explicit metafiction

13635-424: The present day, Asgore has collected six souls from fallen humans, of which he needs one more to destroy the barrier. The game's ending depends on how the player handles encounters with monsters. If the player completes a playthrough without killing any monsters (or killed some but not all of the monsters) they experience the "Neutral" ending. The human arrives at Asgore's castle and is forced to fight him. Sans stops

13770-412: The problem (and by addressing a problem of the novel one is just reading but also a general problem, the excerpt is thus an example of both direct and indirect metafiction, which may additionally be classified as generally media-centred, non-critical metafiction). Through the lack of context to this sudden change of topic (writing a book is not a plot point, nor does this scene take place at the beginning of

13905-463: The release of Undertale , he was best known for composing music for the webcomic Homestuck , starting in 2010. Undertale was the first full game that he wrote. According to Fox, he was casually reading Misplaced Pages in December 2012 when he found its article for array data structures , something Fox didn't have knowledge of. After reading the page, he thought about how he could use it to create

14040-406: The same if he had access to a larger team of artists. He found that "there's a psychological thread that says audiences become more attached to characters drawn simply rather than in detail", particularly benefiting from the use of visual gags within the art. Retrospectively, Fox described Undertale as "a huge katamari of things that [he likes] that [he] combined arbitrarily," adding that part of

14175-451: The same pixel. See also Portable Document Format#Layers . Metafiction Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasizes its own narrative structure in a way that inherently reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story-telling, and works of metafiction directly or indirectly draw attention to their status as artifacts. Metafiction

14310-408: The screen or page. See below for other alternative conventions which may change the sense of the rotation produced by a rotation matrix . Particularly useful are the matrices for 90° and 180° rotations: In Euclidean geometry , uniform scaling ( isotropic scaling , homogeneous dilation , homothety ) is a linear transformation that enlarges (increases) or shrinks (diminishes) objects by

14445-483: The script and music. The game took inspiration from several sources, including the Brandish , Mario & Luigi , and Mother role-playing game series, bullet hell shooter series Touhou Project , role-playing game Moon: Remix RPG Adventure , and British comedy show Mr. Bean . Undertale was originally meant to be two hours in length and was set to be released in mid-2014, but experienced delays. The game

14580-495: The self-consciousness of fictional writing as a way to gain a deeper understanding of the medium and a path that leads to innovation that resulted in the emergence of new forms of literature, such as the historiographic novel by Linda Hutcheon . Video games also started to draw on concepts of metafiction, particularly with the rise of independent video games in the 2010s. Games like The Magic Circle , The Beginner's Guide , and Pony Island use various techniques as to have

14715-410: The sides of the square are not parallel to the scaling axes (the angles between lines parallel to the axes are preserved, but not all angles). A scaling can be represented by a scaling matrix. To scale an object by a vector v = ( v x , v y , v z ), each point p = ( p x , p y , p z ) would need to be multiplied with this scaling matrix : As shown below, the multiplication will give

14850-399: The silliness of internet culture , as well as comedy shows like Mr. Bean . He was also inspired by the unsettling atmosphere of EarthBound . Fox's desire to "subvert concepts that go unquestioned in many games" further influenced Undertale ' s development. Fox found that the writing became easier after establishing a character's voice and mood. He also felt that creating the world was

14985-524: The songs were composed specifically for the game. " Megalovania ", the song used during the boss battle with Sans, had previously been used within Homestuck and in one of Fox's EarthBound ROM hacks. For each section of the game, Fox composed the music prior to programming, as it helped "decide how the scene should go". He initially tried using a music tracker to compose the soundtrack, but found it difficult to use. He ultimately decided to play segments of

15120-541: The sort of things you did yourself. Now, I know what you're going to say – you're going to say that the novelist still has to invent a lot. But that's just the point: there've been such a fantastic number of novels written in the past couple of centuries that they've just about exhausted the possibilities of life. So all of us, you see, are really enacting events that have already been written about in some novel or other. This scene from The British Museum Is Falling Down (1965) features several instances of metafiction. First,

15255-412: The speaker, Adam Appleby (the protagonist of the novel) discusses the change the rise of the novel brought upon the literary landscape, specifically with regard to thematic changes that occurred. Second, he talks about the mimetic aspect of realist novels. Third, he alludes to the notion that the capabilities of literature have been exhausted, and thus to the idea of the death of the novel (all of this

15390-655: The story "was almost written improvisationally at the last minute". The defensive segment within the battle system was inspired by the Mario & Luigi series, as well as bullet hell shooters such as the Touhou Project series. When working on the battle system, Fox set out to create a mechanic that he would personally enjoy. He wanted Undertale to have a battle system equally engaging as Super Mario RPG (1996) and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (2003). Fox did not want grinding to be necessary at any point in

15525-824: The techniques he employed in the book include stream of consciousness and metafiction. The term 'metafiction' was coined in 1970 by William H. Gass in his book Fiction and the Figures of Life . Gass describes the increasing use of metafiction at the time as a result of authors developing a better understanding of the medium. This new understanding of the medium led to a major change in the approach toward fiction. Theoretical issues became more prominent aspects, resulting in increased self-reflexivity and formal uncertainty. Robert Scholes expands upon Gass' theory and identifies four forms of criticism on fiction, which he refers to as formal, behavioural, structural, and philosophical criticism. Metafiction assimilates these perspectives into

15660-483: The underground and is credited to causing the destruction inflicted in the Genocide route, is the narrator of the game. Among all theories proposed by the fandom though, the story regarding the former royal scientist W. D. Gaster is often cited as the deepest rabbit hole in the story of the game. The Gaster story has very few pieces of evidence confirmed to have been known by the community outside of his association with

15795-560: The use of the companion character Fi in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword , in which the answers to puzzles were often revealed early. Fox also felt that role-playing video games generally lack strong mother characters; in the Pokémon series , as well as Mother and EarthBound , Fox felt that the mothers are used as "symbols rather than characters". In response, Fox intended for Toriel's character to be "a mom that hopefully acts like

15930-481: The various characters used throughout various tracks. In particular, "Hopes and Dreams", the boss theme when fighting Asriel in the Pacifist run, brings back most of the main character themes, and is "a perfect way to cap off your journey", according to USgamer ' s Nadia Oxford. Oxford notes this track in particular demonstrates Fox's ability at "turning old songs into completely new experiences", used throughout

16065-743: The virtual canvas. Conceptually, each layer is first rendered on its own, yielding a digital image with the desired resolution which is then painted over the canvas, pixel by pixel. Fully transparent parts of a layer need not be rendered, of course. The rendering and painting may be done in parallel, i.e., each layer pixel may be painted on the canvas as soon as it is produced by the rendering procedure. Layers that consist of complex geometric objects (such as text or polylines ) may be broken down into simpler elements ( characters or line segments , respectively), which are then painted as separate layers, in some order. However, this solution may create undesirable aliasing artifacts wherever two elements overlap

16200-463: The way players control the heart. Players may choose to attack the enemy, which involves timed button presses. Killing enemies will cause the player to earn EXP (in turn increasing their LOVE) and gold. They can use the ACT option to check an enemy's attacking and defending attributes as well as perform various other actions, which vary depending on the enemy. If the player uses the right actions to respond to

16335-598: The world and causing a permanent alteration to the Pacifist ending. Undertale was developed by Toby Fox across 32 months. Development was financed through a crowdfunding campaign on the website Kickstarter . The campaign was launched on June 25, 2013, with a goal of US$ 5,000; it ended on July 25, 2013, with US$ 51,124 raised by 2,398 people. Fox had little experience with game development; he and his three brothers often used RPG Maker 2000 to make role-playing games, though few were ever completed. Fox also worked on several EarthBound ROM hacks while in high school. Before

16470-470: The world." Due to this development, an increasing number of novelists rejected the notion of rendering the world through fiction. The new principle became to create through the medium of language a world that does not reflect the real world. Language was considered an "independent, self-contained system which generates its own 'meanings. ' " and a means of mediating knowledge of the world. Thus, literary fiction, which constructs worlds through language, became

16605-452: The zero vector (i.e., on the coordinates of the origin), rotation matrices can only be used to describe rotations about the origin of the coordinate system. Rotation matrices provide a simple algebraic description of such rotations, and are used extensively for computations in geometry , physics , and computer graphics . In 2-dimensional space, a rotation can be simply described by an angle θ of rotation , but it can be also represented by

16740-485: Was an attempt to link both Undertale and Deltarune together aside from sharing the same characters. The game appeared on several year-end lists of the best games of 2015, receiving Game of the Month and Funniest Game on PC from Rock Paper Shotgun , Best Game Ever from GameFAQs , and Game of the Year for PC from The Jimquisition , Zero Punctuation , and IGN . It also received Best PC Game from Destructoid , and

16875-547: Was made available for download in the crossover title Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in September 2019, marking the character's official debut as a 3D model. This costume also adds a new arrangement of "Megalovania" by Fox as a music track. Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai noted that Sans was a popular request to appear in the game. Music from Undertale was also added to Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum 'n' Fun! as downloadable content. After Undertale ' s release,

17010-409: Was nominated for multiple accolades and awards. Several gaming publications and conventions listed Undertale as game of the year , and others have since listed it as one of the greatest video games ever made . Two chapters of a related game, Deltarune , were released in 2018 and 2021. Undertale is a role-playing video game that uses a top-down perspective . In the game, the player controls

17145-449: Was performed and released in 2016 by saxophonist Norihiko Hibino and pianist Ayaki Sato. A 2x LP vinyl edition of the Undertale soundtrack, produced by iam8bit , was also released in the same year. Two official UNDERTALE Piano Collections sheet music books and digital albums, arranged by David Peacock and performed by Augustine Mayuga Gonzales, were released in 2017 and 2018 by Materia Collective. A Mii Fighter costume based on Sans

17280-445: Was released by video game music label Materia Collective in 2015, simultaneously with the game's release. Additionally, two official Undertale cover albums have been released: the 2015 metal/electronic album Determination by RichaadEB and Amie Waters, and the 2016 jazz album Live at Grillby's by Carlos Eiene, better known as insaneintherainmusic. Another album of jazz duets based on Undertale ' s songs, Prescription for Sleep ,

17415-633: Was released for Windows and OS X in September 2015. It was also ported to Linux in July 2016, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in August 2017, the Nintendo Switch in September 2018, and Xbox One in March 2021. The game was acclaimed for its thematic material, intuitive combat system, musical score, originality, story, dialogue, and characters. The game has sold at least five million copies and

17550-424: Was released in 2023 and met with immense popularity by fans on multiple social media networks. Undertale ' s fanbase has also been subject to controversy, leading to it gaining a negative reputation. Part of it was due to the disagreement between fans over the correct way to play the game. After the game's release, some live streamers were harassed by fans of the game for killing in-game enemies and attempting

17685-555: Was released on March 16, 2021. As with the PlayStation 4 and Switch versions, the Xbox One version features unique content specific to that platform. All the console ports were developed and published by Japanese localizer 8-4 in all regions. Other Undertale media and merchandise have been released, including toy figurines and plush toys based on characters from the game. The game's official soundtrack, Undertale Soundtrack ,

17820-412: Was released on May 23, 2013, which at the time was said to account for about 25 percent of the full game. It had an initial release timeframe of Summer 2014. The game was released on September 15, 2015, for OS X and Windows , and on July 17, 2016, for Linux . Fox expressed interest in releasing Undertale on other platforms, but was initially unable to port it to Nintendo platforms without reprogramming

17955-447: Was released on September 17, 2021, after Fox acquired a team to help him with further development. Once all chapters are complete, the game will be released as a complete whole; Fox stated that he does not have an anticipated timetable for completion. Deltarune is planned to have only one ending, regardless of what choices the player makes in the game. Although the first two chapters were released at no cost, Fox plans to charge players for

18090-402: Was revealed during a March 2018 Nintendo Direct , though no release date was given at the time; Undertale ' s release on Switch highlighted a deal made between Nintendo and YoYo Games to allow users of GameMaker Studio 2 to directly export their games to the Switch. The Switch version was released on September 15, 2018, in Japan, and on September 18, 2018, worldwide. The Xbox One version

18225-407: Was the only song to undergo multiple iterations in development. The soundtrack was inspired by music from Super NES role-playing games, such as EarthBound , bullet hell series Touhou Project , and the webcomic Homestuck , for which Fox provided some of the music. Fox also stated that he tries to be inspired by all music he listens to, particularly those in video games. According to Fox, over 90% of

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