POST 2 - FUN VALUES

W. D. GASTER - CONTINUED 

 

In the last post, I mentioned several greyscale NPCs that speak about Gaster. These NPCs are known internally (in the code) as “Gaster followers”, and appear based on a hidden value, the FUN value. Your FUN value is set randomly between 1-100 every time you start a new game, and different events can occur over a range of these values. Some events are rare enough to require an additional chance roll, so even if you land on the correct FUN, the event may still not happen. 

 

This helpful diagram lays out the events that can occur, the FUN values they can occur on, and their probability of occurrence. It was created by the Reddit user “maxdefolsch”. 

 

There are many events, and all of them tie back to Gaster (and/or DELTARUNE, to some extent!) but the most important of these are the ones in the 60 range. 

 

As you can see, the Gaster followers fall in this range, with varying degrees of probability. Another important event, however, is the sound test room. In it, you walk into a usually normal room but are instead greeted with a menu in which you can select several songs to play. One of these songs is a short, haunting piano jingle labelled “Gaster’s Theme”, and once you’ve selected it, you can’t select any other song until the sound test ends of its own accord, after which you’re dropped into the room as normal. 

 

This theme is subject to a lot of debate within the fandom on where it may or may not appear in certain songs on the soundtrack to either game, but it’s generally agreed that it appears in more songs in DELTARUNE than in UNDERTALE. 

 

The most important FUN event is the one that occurs on value 66. There is a 100% chance that an additional hallway appears between two regular rooms (and once exited, cannot be found again), but only a 10% chance that a grey door will spawn in it. The door leads to a simple grey room, which contains only a single black-and-white sprite of a man in the center. It does not have collision, and if interacted with, it will act surprised, fade away, and play a sound effect as it disappears. It is known internally, and to the community, as the “mysteryman” sprite. 

 

To this day, that sprite is the best reference we have for how Gaster may look. Though it hasn’t ever been outright confirmed to be him, there are several routes of association, and it has been nearly ubiquitously accepted by the fandom as his approximate design. 

 

There’s still a little more UNDERTALE Gaster content to cover, but after that, I’ll be moving on to the implications this may all have for DELTARUNE.