Hackedtale AU Guide

Basic Q&A

(Art by @PaladinOfVoltron)

What role will the NPCs outside of the Main Characters play?

Ok, so there's a reason that the NPCs are divided into the following two categories:

NPCs like Nicecream Guy, Bratty and Catty, Burgerpants, etc.

NPCs like Froggits, Whimsums, etc.

NPCs that are vendors or non-fighting characters can't cause Frisk additional harm and have individuality. Their roles will mostly be of compassion and support, and won't follow the adventure. The only exceptions would be the dogs, Lesser and Greater Dog, Dogamy and Dogaressa, and Doggo. They will appear in their fights where Frisk will struggle to complete the parameters to spare them.

NPCs that are from encounters (besides the dogs) could cause damage, and I don't want that! Sans is going to mess with the code that prompts random encounters to cause them not to happen, like applying a repel in Pokemon (I have no better examples). Those characters will be ambient or in passing, maybe like a Woshua trying to help clean Frisk's wound, a Vegetoid offering her a snack, or Shyren singing to her to get her to sleep. Little kind gestures from the monsters.

What type of code is in the Void?

Ok, so this is a complicated question that I had to research. Toby Fox made Undertale using GameMaker, which uses its own unique scripting language: GameMaker Language. After I found this out, I had to do research on scripting languages and the GameMaker Language.

So, a scripting language is a programming language that supports scripts: programs written for a special run-time environment that automate the execution of tasks that could alternatively be executed one-by-one by a human operator. Scripted languages are interpreted within another program (like JavaScript is put within HTML and then interpreted by the browser). Programming languages are compiled into a more compact form that does not need to be interpreted by another application in the same way. The compiled result is stand-alone. Sadly, all I knew when I started this were programming languages like C. I didn't learn JavaScript or Python for a few more months. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Gamemaker language structure has a lot of similarities to C (which probably shouldn't have surprised me, but I was happy to not have to learn new stuff for this language). Basically this means that, even though I'm unfamiliar with the commands, I can understand the structure and what the code is doing.

So yeah. The code in the Void is GameMaker Language.

How did the changes to Frisk's code affect her?

So, the changes that Sans and Flowey made to Frisk changed her from an Avatar to an NPC. The big idea for this is the fact that the monsters never seem to take any visible, physical damage from the attacks besides the blow that kills them. So, moving Frisk, who was never visibly taking damage, to the same code as them would allow her to take theoretical physical damage.

From that, I've decided that the only physical damage that would need to be healed on the monsters' bodies would be that one killing blow. Then they'd be fine. However, a human would take more physical damage while fighting, therefore the healing of the single killing blow would render the body livable, but would leave behind the other wounds.

The healing occurs when Frisk resets. For example, I decided that the first reset would occur after the fall. That's how a child could survive the fall from the Surface to the Underground, even with the golden flowers breaking her fall. Going on that, whatever injury killed Frisk wasn't the one that broke her legs. I haven't specified what that killing injury was, so feel free to decide for yourself! Anyways, after each reset, Frisk loses 1 HP (Doubling, as I said before, as both Hit points and Hope) to signify that her body is becoming less and less resilient. She starts the game with 19 HP instead of 20, because in this AU the first reset happens after the fall. The killing blow was something like cracking her skull or breaking her neck. Along with that, however, she received multiple cuts, bruises, and the broken legs mentioned earlier. But I've digressed.

This fact means she can lose 19 battles before her HP reaches zero. With each battle, her soul loses a bit of color, which I will be equating to losing her HP and determination as her soul and body weaken in tandem.

Since food and sleep only heal HP, not the body itself, all healing her HP will do is prolong her suffering after a killing blow has been struck. The upside is she can't receive another killing blow after one has been received, and she won't die of anything other than a killing blow, but that also means that none of her other injuries fully heal, and, no matter how much pain she's in, Frisk can't really die.

Except when her HP becomes 0. That means that any injury is a killing blow, and at this point she will no longer be able to reset. She'll be permanently dead.

But that won't happen, right?

How are Backdoors synonymous with Shortcuts?

This actually comes from a hacking term for a way to bypass security measures to access a system. So, yeah. It shows that Sans has become more versed in what he's doing. That's why I use only Shortcut in Book 1, both terms interchangeably as Book 2 goes on, and only Backdoor in Book 3.

What's the difference between a scripting language and a regular coding language?

I had to get this explained to me. The exact difference is in the way they work. So, the need to recompile is important in coding languages, but not in scripting languages. Changes made to the source code in scripting languages go straight from the compiler (or interpreter, as it is sometimes known in scripting languages) to output! That's how changes to the source code work in this story.

So yeah. That's the difference between scripting languages and coding languages.

What's the difference between Code and Magic?

Ok, so, I want to clear up another minor misconception that people might have: Magic versus Code. They're two completely separate things in this AU. The magic is an integral part of the monsters in the Underground, and would continue to remain attached to the characters even after they leave the Underground. After all, monsters are made of magic. It would be incredibly difficult to come up for an explanation for removing their magic and allowing them to continue existing outside the Underground. The Code and its influence, however, are exclusive to the setting of the game. The Code acts as a puppet master, controlling the characters and forcing them to follow the story of the game. It can only exist in the Underground, because that's the only place where it is physically present.