Why Does Ralsei's Sprite 'Glitch' here?

Have you ever seen Ralsei's sprite suddenly break during a Snowgrave run? What's causing this to happen? Is it a bug? A result of speedrunning? Or... is Toby trolling us again?

0:00 What is this sprite glitch
0:35 Why do sprites usually glitch
0:52 Finding the Sprite and forming a Hypothesis
1:24 Testing the hypothesis
1:56 Toby, Why?
2:48 WAIT A SECOND!!!
3:02 Oh God Half the Video is an Outro

The voice of Ralsei was Hollarity

The video I referenced in particular is found here:

[HalfBreadChaos]

FAQ (NEW AND IMPROVED!)

~~NEW~~~
Q: Wait, so is the sprite used for the Sweet Cuppin' Cakes battle or not? (3:00)
A: Alright so! The sprites used for the Sweet Cuppin Cakes battle are ralsei_dance, which are indexed from 0-7 (ralsei_dance_0, ralsei_dance_1, etc)

The sprite used for the Snowgrave cut scene is not one of those sprites, it's it's own sprite ralsei_dance_2 which has a single index, so it's named ralsei_dance_2_0.

Thank you to Nyako Holiday of the Underminer discord for catching this! Have I mentioned I'm not a coder?
~~~~

Q: "Wait we were supposed to?" (2:15)
A: Okay so Toby likes to put double entendres in the dialogue, y'know text that reads differently as subtext.

For example when Ralsei says "there's a fork in the path, " what he's literally referring to is the actual physical split in the road, but as subtext the game is also hinting that this is where the story can diverge into the Normal Route and the "Snowgrave" Route, which would be a "fork in the path" of the story.

Toby does this quite a lot. Ralsei saying "Wait we were supposed to-" could then be interpreted in the straight forward way "We were supposed to switch to Susie's perspective and watch a cutscene" but it's also perfectly applicable to the sprite-change. Ralsei was "supposed" to fall asleep, and then be woken up by Susie, and that didn't happen. So having that line after that sprite-change is a pretty funny double entendre.

Q: I don't get it what's this video about?
A: This is what I get for not putting a "play both Deltarune routes" disclaimer...

Ahem in Deltarune there are 2 routes, the 'normal' route and the 'weird' or "snowgrave" route. In the normal route you see a cutscene with Susie and Noelle, but in the 'Weird' route, that doesn't happen. instead Ralsei falls asleep waiting for it, and then Susie comes out and wakes him up when the cutscene is over.

However sometimes, very very rarely, Ralsei won't fall asleep! Instead he'll do a weird dance-pose, which looks like a glitch, but why would that be happening? This video is me trying to understand this "glitch."

Q: Is it a glitch?
A: No. It looks very deliberate. The closest it could possible be is a 'joke' the devs forgot to remove, but I doubt it. This sort of rarely-occuring joke is in line with Toby's previous work, the most obvious example being the Fun Events in Undertale, but there's also a similar sort of rarely occurring sprite-gag in the room you obtain the Apron in (in Undertale). Any time you enter that room there's a 1/30 chance a mysterious shadow will appear on the far right side of the screen. That sprite is typically used for mercenaries, and seems to imply one of them is stalking you before you reach the resort.

The only thing about this joke that's odd for Toby, is the exclusivity to The Snowgrave Route. Usually jokes and gags, even RNG ones, are removed from The Evil Routes of his games, such as The Egg, which cannot be obtained in Chapter 2 when on this Route. Having a gag like this *specific* to this route is very weird.

Q: Wait, so is the sprite used for the Sweet Cuppin' Cakes battle or not? (3:00)
A: I thought it was, but then *riiight* as I went to upload I realized that no, the sprite called for the Noelle-Room cut scene (ralsei_dance_2_0) is in fact *not* used for the Sweet Cuppin Cake battle. The sprites for that battle are all labeled ralsei_dance_(number). (so, ralsei_dance_0, ralsei_dance_1, etc) Having a "2_0" breaks that pattern and is weird and difficult to explain.

Normally I would assume this was a prototype of ralsei_dance_2, but it does not match the ralsei_dance_2 sprite at all, so that can't be right. The second guess, then would be that it's meant to be a prototype of ralsei_dance_0, but then, why is it labeled 2_0? Typically older, or prototype versions of sprites are renamed to "old" or "prototype."

The only other exception I can think of, off the top of my head, is the kris_talk_tube (the thing in your room in queens' mansion). There are 3 versions of that sprite, kris_talk_tube_old_0, which is a metal-gray sort of color, kris_talk_tube_old_2_0 (which is purple) and kris_talk_tube_0 (the blue, final version). But in this case, 2_0 is being used to indicate that there are 2 different "older" unused versions, and that simply isn't the case for ralsei_dance_2_0. (that or we have a ralsei_dance_old_0 unaccounted for somewhere). So why....?

The other time we see "name_#_#" formatting in the files is when the game is specifying which chapter, for example "krisb_defend_ch1_0" but this is not typically done for chapter 2 sprites, and even if it were, it should have the "ch" for chapter to indicate that.

Listen, Toby's naming schemes are weird and inconsistent sometimes, abandon hope all ye who enter here. This sprite might be a prototype for the dance animations, or it might be a weird spooky sprite that Toby named dance_2_0 just to stop dataminers from wonder what it's for. Without asking him directly, there's no way to know for sure.

Q: How are you accessing the game data?
A: Undertalemodtools made by krzys-h! You can find them on the Underminers discord! But... I'm kind of nervous about direct linking them because the version keeps changing and I can't seem to find the hub page with the latest versions.

Q: Why not just search for cutscenes by dialogue?
A: That can work sometimes but it requires knowing the exactly dialogue, and how the code is going to display it, which is hard because it sometimes injects random symbols into places that are hard for me to anticipate. Searching via sprite is more reliable in a case like this, although more tedious.

Also I'm bad at coding and reading code, so I will probably often take the sub-optimal path to find things, as I flail around wildly in the dark.

Q: Why are you using a TTS?
A: this channel uses TTS, don't worry about it.

Q: But what if I don't like it?
A: Sorry bruh, you're in the minority, the Patreons paying my bills voted to keep it.

Q: Okay but what if I *really* like the TTS! Can you tell me which TTS it is so I can check it out for myself?
A: The TTS is called Nuance.

Q: Did you just call Ralsei 'they?' (0:19)
A: Aw crap! In my effort to use the correct pronoun for the nb characters it would appear I over-correct and started using nb pronouns for masculine characters? Darn it! My brain is pretty glitchy, I'm still working out the bugs. If I use the incorrect pronoun, I promise no disrespect is ever intended.

Q: What are *your* pronouns?
A: I keep forgetting to put this information somewhere accessible but, I prefer they/them.

Q: Who voiced Ralsei?

Q: Who was that speedrunner again? I want to check them out but the description is being buggy.

Q: Where's your Patreon? I want to throw Kromer at you!

[TheRealSuperKirby]

I imagine toby saying something like "I was gonna have a random chance that ralsei would dance to pass time, but it didn't fit the serious tone of the rest of the route so I just left a single frame in there for fun"

[jakethatdog]

Honestly, this sprite does just look like Ralsei got so tired of waiting they just decided to lean up against the weird computer chip potted plant thing and wait in a more comfortable spot, and yeah, it is definitely something toby added for spice with speedruns, I cannot really see it being anything else with the code you showed as well as it being a wholly untouched sprite in the "place it is reused from"

[jpsalis]

that "Wait, we were supposed to --" line is kind of ominous, though it could just be a troll. If not, this would imply Ralsei knows about the cutaway to the other two protagonists in the neutral route, but simultaneously doesn't know about the 1 hour of gaslighting we forced noelle to endure.
At the same time, I'm kind of curious - What other random dialog events are there that we're not aware of?

[stevo]

I'm imagining that this sprite was supposed to be part fo the dance animation but it looked too weird, so Toby just made it randomly appear here for memes

normal game design decisions

[alexgreen]

The vibe I kind of get is Ralsei looking at the player like, 'really? you're really trying to do this? ' very much judging

[kyan]

There's something UNNERVING about that sprite. Ralsei long legs, staring at your soul... it's funny but unnerving, is like ruining the whole mood. Something unexpected.

[greyscaleadaven]

This kind of feels like fun value stuff toby puts in to mess with the player lmao, just this time it's less obvious. The whole line of code making this happen just tells me that it was completely intentional, and he probably wanted us to think it was a glitch, look into it, and be terrified when we find out it's not

[љјхгхј]

Something that I dont think people talk about is the twisted sword. You can craft the twisted swort in ralseis town in the bakery where you can fuse items like the white and pink ribbon into the twin ribbon. For the twister sword you need the thorn ring and the pure cristal. The pure cristal is unused and its descriptiom reads " the shadow purified by the cat" and thats probably catty or seam

[rekaraker]

Between this and Spamton's randomized recruitment sprite, plus all the unused items in the game code that bizarrely still have comments and interactions from all your party members, I almost feel like Toby's doing... “something” ...with the concept of unused/dummied content, doing things you're not supposed to do, and seeing things you're not supposed to see.
Given the game's emphasis on concepts like chaos, freedom, and the meta game code elements from Undertale, it seems like doing this would even fit the narrative.
But to what end, I have absolutely no idea. 💭

[aspectofthecat]

Hey.
This is...mostly unrelated to the video, but I just wanted to thank you for the amazing content. Videos like the ones you make were some of the biggest joys to me even back when deltarune hadn't released and everything was Undertale! And just when I thought I had finally stopped, your channel came along, rose in popularity and blew my mind.
So thanks. You've gotten another subscriber in a sea of thousands of them.

[andrew_cunningham]

Lacking any and all evidence, my bet is that whoever was working on the Ralsei dance animation took a few passes to get it looking right, and by chance this particular WIP sprite ended up so uniquely cursed that it became an inside joke for the devs, and Toby just shoehorned it in here as a really dumb Easter egg. Kind of like a watered-down sequel to the ugly Gloomwood table.

[steepslopesmm]

just a tip for the future
you can usually find cutscene controllers more easily by going to the room the cutscene is in and checking the list of objects in that room
and when you find it, it'll probably be used multiple times, so in the code for it, search for the room name or some dialogue from the cutscene you're looking for

[CardboardEggLBP]

It almost looks like Ralsei is standing on his tippy toes, looking up at us wondering as to why we aren't doing anything in that moment, not even responding to him. That's at least how I look at that sprite but it probably is just a fun little thing.
Though I do find it funny how he got so thrown off by Susie coming back that he let "Wait! We were supposed to --" slip out. Makes me wonder if the "we" was really just Ralsei waiting on us to start the cutscene or at least give an answer on if we wondered what was going on with her. Cause I find it weird how Ralsei acts all calm and collected when in the normal route, we say we aren't curious. So why would he be okay with skipping out there, but not here? Was he really that flabbergasted by the sudden jump?

Deltarune's wild.

[soopGnat]

Ha. First time I saw this sprite show up, I thought I was tripping. Turns out it's literally just a random chance of happening. I feel both relieved and confounded. I am envious of Toby's capacity for silliness, among other things.

[Greatwolfpearl]

I love this new ‘instant noodle’ technique. That way you can keep the algorithm and us theory hungry monsters at bay!

I’m still not sure wether this is a glitch or another one of the billion instances of Toby showing is inner troll..

[GippyHappy]

It kinda feels like Ralsei is looking at the player judging them for doing the Snowgrave route, but maybe that’s just what Toby wants us to think

[ItsCosmoTewulf]

That standing pose that Ralsei's in is hilarious though. From now on I'm going to call it「THE STANCE」

[justsomegameplayrr]

2:29
spamton is being evaporated, and is crying for help before vanishing

[Spartanblood]

I like the small video format for small bits of info like this! Quality as always.

As for the content, I just wonder if that’s a placeholder sprite for a more serious ‘stare at the player’ one. Could be updated as more content’s added, since it could be a spoiler 🤷‍♂️