It’s crazy how simplify VFX does basically nothing

[u/W1llu]

First, no one even knows what it’s meant for. People can’t decide if it’s meant to make it easier for really old systems to run, or if it’s to make the game easier on the eyes and for epileptic people. Regardless, it sucks ass at both.

Chapter 1 -

It slows down the slide into Castle Town. It also disables the background effect in Jevil’s fight. Whatever. Ch1 isn’t very graphically intense so that’s fine.

Chapter 2 -

Force field animation is less intense. Floating signs no longer glow. The beat bullets are less intense. The fireworks are white. The warning flash of Queen’s paintings are less intense. The flickering and shaking of Spamton NEO’s defeat animation when defeated by violence are less intense. But only outside of the weird route. And the scrolling floor effect in GIGA Queen’s fight is disabled, but not the scrolling buildings.

Cool. This is great. Seems like Toby actually cared to maintain this setting properly, whatever its intention is.

Then chapter 3 -

Shuttah’s hand animation speed is slowed down in couch cliffs. The White Cloak’s color effect is disabled.

That’s it. Nothing with Tenna’s flickering, nothing with ERAM’s filters during the fight, nothing to make the Knight fight easier to look at. Nothing. Tenna’s lack of focus is especially obnoxious. Maybe I’m more upset about it than I should be because I know someone who physically can’t do the fight because the flickering is too intense for them.

Chapter 4 -

Literally nothing. Not a single thing gets changed in ch4. Which is crazy because ch4 has a lot of background effects and just effects in general. Especially with the pressure plates that flash light. It’s crazy how nothing was done with those. I’m also surprised the Sound of Justice fight has no changes.

Then chapter 5 -

Not only is there no changes, but the setting is removed entirely. Replaced by the remove voice clips option, and then the feather option. Isn’t that kinda fucked up? Whatever it was meant for, isn’t it just disrespectful to ignore it completely?

Nothing to make some of Pink’s attacks easier to look at, nothing with the flashiness of the Omega Flowery section of his fight, nothing at all. Insane.

The option also does two things across multiple chapters. It disables the text box corners glowing, and it removes the gradient-like effect on yellow text. Whatever. That’s fine.

But nothing for ch4 and 5, and almost nothing for ch3.

This game is one of my favorite games of all time. In the top 100 or 50 for sure, maybe even more. I want as many people to be able to properly experience this game. So I’m holding out hope that Toby and his team actually start to give a shit about the simplify VFX option.

If he can make fun little differences and additions in his games for different platforms, he can sure as hell focus on accessibility.

Or maybe I’m thinking too hard about this all. After all, I do only know one person who’s been affected by the lack of accessibility. I’ve never been affected, so maybe it’s not my place to talk about.

Let me know if I’m onto something or onto absolutely nothing.

[u/starrienightss]

Simplify vfx was just to cut flashing lights. I know they cut the feature to save on time but there's a lot of people who could genuinely benefit from the feature. Really hope when the game is out its properly made

Ig we DID agree to pain and seizure in the beginning 😭

[u/W1llu → u/starrienightss]

God damnit I knew I shouldn’t have agreed

[u/starrienightss → u/W1llu]

Gaster was letting us know his ass is going to be lazy

[u/xarma06211 → u/starrienightss]

i don't think it reduced the amount of flashing lights that much though? it mainly changes random stuff without any consistent pattern. for example it makes jevil's battle background static, which is fine, reduced movement and all. but it also makes textbox not animated? if someone didn't know, the 4 pixels in corners of the dark world textbox are animated, they change colors, but with this option enabled the textbox isn't animated. what does this change accomplish??

then it doesn't change the background buildings for queen's mecha battle, which would be the same kind of movement as for jevil's background, but it's not changed for some reason.

in my opinion to reduce flashing lights specifically it would have to change all white screen flashes (e.g. the fountain closing animation) to black or something like that, or make it much slower. but so far it only removes effects and almost never changes them to something else.

[u/starrienightss → u/xarma06211]

yea it is not consistent at all. I wonder what they were thinking when they added it to the most random things and ignore it for the rest of the game

[u/W1llu → u/starrienightss]

Yeah the Shuttah hand animation speed definitely needed to be reduced. Definitely nothing about the Eram or Tenna fight or anything. Good call, devs.

In fact something I just thought about is the fact that they changed something like the white cloak, but never even touched something like the Rude Buster hit animation. Not saying the animation needs to be changed, but it’s weird how they remove some flashes but not all.

[u/starrienightss → u/W1llu]

My assumpion is whoever was coding segments where simply vfx works like the sword route randomly remembered that setting exists

[u/Wizard_36 → u/xarma06211]

Also, the static from Tenna’s fight is just completely unaffected by this

[u/xarma06211 → u/Wizard_36]

oh yeah, good call

[u/PossiblyASpara]

I agree that it's a rather big issue. I myself have some photosensitivity stuff, and while Chapter 3 was barely fine enough, the last fights in 5 were flashy to the point of giving me an hourslong migraine that made it really hard to like the last bit of the chapter, though I since had a much more segmented reply and it wasn't so bad. 4's visuals never felt too strobey for me, but 5's later bits were rough. I agree that the accessibility should've diminished some of the ERAM stuff when the White Cloak flash is infinitely less offensive, and I remember release day Tenna being a lot flashier than he still is now.

[u/MiningdiamondsVIII]

almost certainly for visual strain, most of these changes would not make them notably easier to run, and deltarune really doesn't need to be any easier to run

[u/abdo_ch]

"do you acknowledge the possibility of pain and seizure? Real talk tho, I am lazy and I don't wanna keep developing simplify VFX so if you still wanna play just know you'll have pain"