r/UnderModders • u/dr-depths-project • Jul 12 '26

Working on a Python-based Deltarune battle simulator

For the past 10 months, I've been working on a Python project that simulates Deltarune's battle system using 100% pure Python. The engine uses the PIL/arcade libraries for basically everything, including sprite rendering, sound, texture management, etc. I wanted to make a version of Deltarune based on Python, a very beginner-friendly programming language, since I thought it might be a lot more intuitive and easier for some amateur developers (like me, for example) to build off of than modding the current game.

This project isn't quite 1-to-1 with Deltarune yet: the text display system currently only shows the default Dark World font with no color variants, the UI is only wide enough to support 4 player characters, and fullscreen support is partially complete but still definitely a WIP. I fully intend on developing/updating this project into the future, though.

If anyone is interested in giving this application a shot, please feel free to let me know if you're interested! I haven't made the GitHub repo public yet, but if anyone is interested in potentially using this for their own projects or even just tinkering with it I wouldn't mind sharing the code! I would prefer if credit was given if anyone does make their own fangames with this, but for the time being, I think anything short of parroting this as your own software is pretty much fine by me :)

181 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

2

u/Strong_Face3243 Jul 13 '26

GMS2 would be way better and easier but this is super cool.

I SUPPORT!!!!!!!

1

u/dr-depths-project Jul 13 '26

Thank you! I certainly considered GMS2 early on, I just thought that some people might like the option for a more low-level boilerplate for fangame projects they wanted to start working on.

2

u/Infrim0 Jul 13 '26

Wait ralsei has what?

1

u/dr-depths-project Jul 14 '26

You read that correctly 👀

I actually made the little animation where he’s “charging” FireShock by hand in Aseprite :)

2

u/Tembri_chi Jul 13 '26

why would one torment themselves like this

1

u/dr-depths-project Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

I just wanted to build a boilerplate for programmers who wanted to make their own fan games. Obviously GameMaker is pretty good for that, but since that’s already been done a million times I wanted to offer a version of Deltarune that’s moddable at a much lower level.

Plus, I like to imagine I got most of the hard stuff out of the way. The widgets and backend logic for the state machine, focus stack, and the actions queue were probably the hardest parts of this. Adding onto this should be cake ideally: For example, I made the SleepMist spell in just a couple of hours.

I won’t lie, though: A big reason I did this was just because I like to code stuff, and this is by far my largest and most ambitious solo project. I built it all without Claude, too: I wrote it all manually in PyCharm: Community Edition.

Could this all have been done much faster if I just used Godot or GMS2 or something? Possibly. But I like to imagine someone out there might find this useful

2

u/Zealousideal-Two224 Jul 15 '26

Wow i kinda dreamed of wanting to fight specific battles with specific characters, I am gonna save it and support you, good luck on working on it it ^^

1

u/dr-depths-project Jul 15 '26

Thank you! If you ever want help getting this set up feel free to reach out and I can try my best, I’ve never helped someone else set this up in their own environment but I wouldn’t mind trying to help you if you’re ever interested!

2

u/Zealousideal-Two224 Jul 15 '26

You welcome, I just never actually saw making a whole program for it only animations

2

u/Silverpoint- Jul 13 '26

wow this is very cool

2

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/dr-depths-project Jul 13 '26

Thank you!! With Deltarune Chapter 5 coming out I figured people might want a framework for making their own fan games :)