#ZiUkagaka

[zichqec]

I forgot to reblog this one.

I wrote this, please go read it!! We did SO much this year.

Also some other things that happened with my ghost stuff that I didn't share in the post (since it was about community things and not me):

I overhauled my website. There's still work to go, but it's a lot better on the whole now, and is much easier to add new stuff to.

I also made a ghost in the month of August, and the shell for him is one of the best shells I've ever made. Certainly the most complete.

I made a bunch of free code assets, I released like... somewhere between 8 and 11 ghosts??? And a bunch of balloons and stuff too. I haven't been keeping up AT ALL with posting my ghost activities here lol, you have to go to my website for that.

And some other stuff besides. It's been a big year, and I'm so happy to see all the progress we're making.

Summary of 2023 in the Ukagaka Dream Team

Hey folks! I wanted to write up a summary of all the things our community has gotten up to this year, and celebrate everything we've made and done. A lot happened in 2023!

I wrote the summary as an article for the 伺か Advent Calendar 2023, and you can read it here.

Do check it out, there's a lot to see! If you've been out of the loop for a while, this may be a good way to get caught up. Additionally, if you're not in our Discord server, then there are some things in that article that will probably be new to you.

I think the trajectory the community is on is very good right now, with more and more English resources coming out all the time, making ghost development more accessible and varied. The next few years will be an exciting time for English ukagaka!

If this article goes over well, I'd like to continue writing summaries each year. So, let us know what you think.

I look forward to seeing what 2024 brings for ghosts!

[zichqec]

SSP Angel v1.1.0

It's SSP Angel's release anniversary! 🥳 🎉

To celebrate, we've brought you an update with corrections to various information, additional glossary terms, a ton of new content, an optional floating animation for Angel, and more!

Some highlights from the changelog:

Added ~100 new non-tip dialogues, bringing the total to 200.

Updated some incorrect information and wording, in the tip dialogues and in the menus.

Corrected/updated glossary definitions: AYA, Dressup, Freeshell, Ghost/Ukagaka/Nanika, Interval, Kawari, MAKOTO, SHIORI, Sakura Script, Satori, Surface, Ukadoc.

New glossary definitions: Animation, Element, Middleware, Owner draw menu, and Supplement.

Added new questions to the "How do I" menu: Fast forwarding through text, Using the ghost explorer.

Added the ability to ask who they are in the question menu, to have them reintroduce themselves.

Added a new troubleshooting option related to installation trouble. This information was originally in the "How do I" menu and has been moved.

Added a dressup to Angel that allows her to float up and down.

Added a response for switching to the PH Gijinka shell, and responses to that shell's hat dressup.

See the full changelog on my website. Get the update via network update, or download them from the link above if you don't have them yet!

[zichqec]

ATM Machine v2.0.0

An update to a ghost that everyone here definitely knew about, because I definitely didn't just not post the original version to Tumblr!

Do you want to work for a bank and service their ATM? No? Well now with the power of ukagaka, you can! Work your boring day job and earn a small but steady flow of cash, while listening to annoying bank advertisements. Or maybe there's another way to earn funds more quickly...?

Changelog:

Added custom artwork for the shell. The original clipart is now available as a separate shell called Joypixels.

Added a custom balloon, called Unyu Bank Notes. If you already have ATM Machine installed, you will need to install the balloon separately from here.

The balloon's 6 color options can be changed between in ATM's menu.

Added 200 dialogues.

Added 2 minigames, which can be accessed after you "log in".

Migrated to the Simplicity Template. As such, the ghost now has responses to various SSP functions, the same as Simplicity.

Updated to YAYA Tc571-8.

Added crime.

You can download the ghost from my website, or read about it more on our wiki!

(Not sure what ukagaka are? Start here!)

It also comes with...

Unyu Bank Notes v1.0.0

A silly money and Unyu themed balloon with 6 color options in 5 sizes each.

Download the balloon here, or read more about it on our wiki.

That's all for now! Happy April Fools' Day, yes this is a real update/release.

[zichqec]

Do you want to hang out with a tired old man in a cave? Of course you do!!!

Made during the month of August, Xander's Refuge is a ghost made with the prompt "a ghost of an ancient deity that always seems tired, and is looking for a safe place to hide". He's a very straightforward ghost, but he has about 100 random dialogues to entertain you.

Besides this, he also makes for a good idle companion! Even between dialogues, he will sometimes change poses so that he's not sitting still all the time. This includes an idle smoking animation! He'll do this even if you turn his dialogues completely off.

And that's it, that's the ghost! As I said, extremely straightforward. But, I hope you will enjoy him nonetheless! There is a fair bit of content here, and my main focus was keeping the scope super small so I could make it all as polished as possible.

Download him from my website here!

(By the way, I overhauled my website and moved URLs! It's not totally finished yet, but you should browse around the indexes. I have many ghosts and related things available!)

Don't know what a ghost is / how to install this? Read up here!

Also, if you want to read more about this particular ghost and how he works, check out his page on the Ukagaka Dream Team Wiki!

[zichqec]

points at flamingo and funkylittlemothman I helped make those 😊

This event was a lot of fun, and all the ghosts are so different from each other! It’s really cool to see

Idea Adoption Jam Results

Here are the results of the Idea Adoption Jam!

For the first and hopefully not last Idea Adoption Jam, 7 people decided to adopt some ideas, making a total of 8 ghosts!

There were 9 ideas adopted, with most people adopting at least 2 and SmokyCinnamonRoll adopting 4 ideas and making 3 ghosts!

Half of that was made in 72 hours qualifying for the 72h Challenge and 3 out of those were made in the first 24 hours!

Surprisingly, all the ghosts were made from scratch!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the first jam I hosted!

@​funkylittlemothman (Venelona, Zichqec)

Answer The Door (SmokyCinnamonRoll) (Check the readme for content warnings!)

Eye See U (SmokyCinnamonRoll) (Check the readme for content warnings!)

If I Can't Have Shrimp No One Can (Galehaut, Galla, Zichqec)

Mailbox (Zdzisiu) (Check the readme for content warnings!)

Model Skeleton (Ecclysium, Zdzisiu)

Pancake GWRAWRURULRG (Ecclysium, Galla)

Гэта Звычайны Кот (SmokyCinnamonRoll)

[zichqec]

Multiverse Sans Phone Event Fix

This is not my ghost and I am not offering to do any development work for him. But on several occasions, folks have entered our Discord server looking for help with a bug in one of MVSans's phone events that completely prevents progression. So, I decided to make a little patch for him to make this easier.

This is what the intro to the bugged event looks like:

If you've seen this text and clicking the "Click to continue" option does not work, then this patch will fix it for you.

Download the patch here

To install the patch, follow these steps:

Download the file above, it should be called mv_sans_phone_fix.nar.

Open MVSans.

Check in his settings to ensure that you're on the latest version. This patch was made for v1.4.2 Stable, and may cause other versions to break. (If you're not on the latest version, update or download a new copy of the latest version.)

While MVSans is running, drag and drop the mv_sans_phone_fix.nar onto him. He should appear to be installing something.

When he is done installing, he should appear to reload. He will not say anything about completing the installation, that's normal. The ghost is now patched. (If he does say something, it's likely an error. If so, please report it to me and I can try to help.)

If you had already seen the intro to this bugged event, then please close and reopen the ghost. This should bring up the intro again, and you should be able to proceed.

If you have any problems with this supplement file, please do tell me about it! But it's a pretty small fix, so as long as you use it with the correct version of the ghost, it should be fine.

If you have any other problems with this ghost, you can send an ask to the @ukagakadreamteam blog, or ask in our Discord server. There is also a page for him on our wiki which has some general information about him.

My knowledge of this ghost is very limited, as I haven't used this version very much. So, other people who have used it may be able to help you more.

[zichqec]

Simplicity Template v1.0.7

I don't post much here these days, so I've skipped a few update posts for this template. But this one is an important one, so I thought I would share it here also.

It has now been a year since I released the Simplicity Template out into the world, and what a year it's been! People have made a lot of really cool stuff with it, and seeing my work making an impact has been very humbling.

I've made a lot of little updates to the template here and there over the past year, cleaning things up, and fixing a few bugs. There are a few more things I would still like to clean up, but today's update is pretty small, despite its significance. Here's the changelog:

Updated YAYA to Tc571-8, and updated the base dic files.

This includes an update to YAYA's English error messages! The translation has been cleaned up and should be easier to understand.

Updated some links in the readme that were out of date.

Fixed the readme stating the incorrect version of Simplicity Template.

You can download the latest version of Simplicity Template here.

The wording of some of YAYA's error messages have been confusing for a long while. But starting today, I hope that that's going to become a thing of the past. With a cleaned up translation, hopefully creating ghosts in YAYA will be smoother in the future, for new and veteran devs alike!

Note: if you have a ghost (in YAYA) that you're currently working on, you can update YAYA to get these updated error messages! The newest release is available here.

If you're not sure how to update YAYA, I have a guide about it here.

Happy ghost-making, everyone!

[zichqec]

8/20 Hydrate Shell Jam 2023 Results

Hello, and I hope today finds you hydrated! If you're not aware, yesterday (8/20) was Hydrate Day, and that means we had the 8/20 Hydrate Shell Jam in the Ukagaka Dream Team discord server!

In 2020, @internetteacup and I made a drink reminder ghost on 8/20, called Hydrate. Since then, many folks have made shells for it to give it different looks! The only """rule""" I've given is that any given shell must be something that could—at least in theory—hold liquid. And folks have taken that idea and made all kinds of strange and fun "drinking apparatus" with it!

So, now I host an event on 8/20 where folks have 1 day to make shells for the ghost! It's a fun creative exercise, it's a really easy way to get into ukagaka dev if you've never done it before, and we have a lot of fun seeing what folks make.

I hosted this event last year as well, but never shared it on Tumblr. You can see the results of that here!

So, with that context given, here are the results of this year's event! We had 11 entries by 9 participants, most of which have dressups of some kind, and a few which are animated.

See all the entries and their download links under the cut!

After the rainfall, by Zichqec. A leaf with water droplets, which sticks to the right side of the screen!

Dollhouse Drinks, by Galla. Tiny pixel cups, which come in a wide variety of colors!

Haiidrate :3, by Okuajub. A cat paw shaped cup, with various drinks inside!

Hot Spring, by StrangelyKai. A nice pixel art of a hot spring!

Hydrate Enhancer, by idk. A shell based on MiO brand water enhancers, which comes in a variety of flavors!

Milkshake, by Aegisghosts. A decadent milkshake, with several flavors, each with their own tasty looking toppings!

Paint Splatter, by StrangelyKai. A splat of paint, which comes in a variety of colors and patterns, and even has instructions on how to add your own!

Planetary, by WhatAPhantasia. A whole entire planet to drink! Comes with an appropriately sized straw, and some other dressups.

Reassurance Bucket, by OdieDogXP. The reassurance bucket from The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe! Comes with a few sticker dressups.

Tiered Bowls, by Zichqec. A set of tiered bowls, which hang from the top of the screen! A dressup can be used to turn the water on or off.

Very Sad Statue, by SmokyCinnamonRoll. A very sad statue which weeps eternally!

[zichqec]

This has been a long time coming. It used to be something we dreamed about, but now it's reality and I'm so glad.

Please please check this out, and read my article about it as well. I contributed to this and put so much work into it.

I think this will do a lot to make English ghost development easier!

Ukadoc has been translated into English!

Ukadoc, the official documentation for SSP, has an English translation now!

For those that don't know, Ukadoc not only includes information about all the various SHIORI Events and SakuraScript tags you can use in ghosts, but also information on how to set up files like install.txt and descript.txt, information on how the overall file structure of ghosts/balloons/ etc. should be set up, guides to setting up shells, nar files, network updates, and more! There is a ton of information contained in this document, and it is an invaluable resource for developers.

And as of this month, it's available in English! No more fussing with machine translation and struggling to parse the multitude of run-on sentences and mangled terms. Our translation is readable without the extra steps, and you can view it here.

The translation isn't perfect, about half of it was done with machine translation and a lot of tenacity. If you find a wrong translation or something confusing, please report it or submit a fix on the project's repository.

A ton of work went into this project. If you'd like to learn more about the project and how it came together, there is an article here with information! Please check it out!

[zichqec]

SSP Angel v1.0.0

SSP Angel is a ghost intended to serve as a guide to SSP and ghosts! They’ve got lots of tips for beginners to help get you (or someone you know) started with ukagaka. If you’re intrigued by this ukagaka thing but aren’t sure where to start, check them out! And even if you’re a long-time user, you might learn something new!

They have lots of things you can ask in their menus about how to work SSP, as well as a glossary, and a list of key combinations. They will also give you tips as part of their random dialogue. Though, if that’s not your cup of tea, fear not! You can toggle the random tips off, and they will function like a normal ghost. They have over 100 dialogues completely unrelated to SSP.

They also have some optional balloons you can download through their balloon settings menu, which have additional color options. You can pick and choose which color to use for which character!

This ghost was a collaborative effort, made possible through the efforts of @elderflowerprince, @thatoddhaystack, @gallathegalla, and myself. A lot of work went into this, and I can’t thank my collaborators enough for helping me see this through to completion!

Download them here, and check out their page on the Ukagaka Dream Team wiki, as well!

[zichqec]

Simplicity Template v1.0.0

Hi. It’s me again, emerging from the depths of ukagaka hell to bring you new and strange things.

So here’s the thing about ghosts, I helped make this one called Needle for ghost jam 2022, and it’s kinda sorta maybe the best thing I’ve ever participated in. And it maybe kinda triggered a big shift in how I think about ghosts. And I think maybe, the process doesn’t need to be nearly as complicated as it is. 

Right now, the existing ghost templates are very, very big. Everything everywhere will tell you that making a ghost is a long project that requires a lot of dedication. And that can be true! There are some wonderful and detailed ghosts out there that take a long time to produce. But as we’ve seen in ghost jams, that’s not necessarily true! Ghosts don’t HAVE to be big! Ghosts don’t HAVE to be complicated! And even ghosts with a lot of content don’t have to be a huge project that eats up months of your life! Just about everything in the existing templates is optional, but I always feel like I’m cheating or doing a bad job if I skip things.

The more I think about it, and with a lot of the work I’ve done lately, I think it is easy to get burned out by the amount of tedious work you have to do filling in side functions that many users won’t ever see. New devs may find those functions uninteresting, or confusing, or just simply overwhelming from the sheer amount of them. And I think a lot of folks may not realize they can be omitted entirely without causing any harm to the ghost! SSP has default dialogues for the stuff that there need to be dialogues for!

Additionally, I’ve started to see more possibilities for ghosts lately, and the existing templates are making me feel very boxed in. Many ghosts right now have the same premise of “X character but on your computer”, and I don’t have anything against that, but there’s lots of other interesting ideas out there that we haven’t explored hardly at all! What if it’s not that a character has appeared on your desktop, what if you’ve appeared in their world! What if you’re not actually human? What if they know you already! There are so many things I would love to see happen, and some ideas that I’m hoping to start exploring myself.

Anyways! That was a whole lot of words for me to introduce my new template. I’ve made a new template called the Simplicity Template, and these are the things I hope it accomplishes:

Makes ghost making less intimidating for new developers by having less to fill in

Helps more ghosts reach completion by getting straight to content first, with very few side features to fill in

Gives developers more freedom to experiment and try new ideas, and to break away from the current formula

If any of that sounds interesting to you, give it a try! You can always add in more features later and build upon the simple base that is here!

[zichqec]

Ukatranslator v1.0.0 release

Read more and download it here

This little ghost can help you run the dialogue of other ghosts through machine translation! This is nowhere near as good as getting a real translation of a ghost, of course, but hopefully it will still be a useful tool anyways!

This is still a bit rough around the edges, but I wanted to make it available as soon as possible. Please let me know if it gives you any issues! Also, please ensure your SSP is up to date! Ukatranslator makes use of features that were added as late as SSP 2.5.32, and will have issues running on older versions.

This ghost is also available in german, thanks to the hard work of @koguri3108! If you’re interested in translating it to another language, please check the notes in the readme, or get in touch!

And I also have to thank Ponapalt, who updated both SSP and YAYA to make this ghost possible. The option to automatically open translations in your browser would not work without his efforts!

[zichqec]

Another ukagaka event! I wasn't expecting to make so many things over this weekend, but I got a lot done and I'm very happy with all of it ^^

If you're interested in ghost dev, you should join us and try out making a balloon or a shell for an existing ghost! It'll get you started and teach you some of the basic things you need to know

Etc. Jam 2023 has finished up in our Discord server, and here are the results! We had a really great turnout, with 27 entries by 11 participants.

6 of those entries were completed within the first 24 hours of the event, and 6 of our participants took on the variety challenge, where they made at least two submissions of different types (e.g. a balloon and a calendar skin)!

A lot of folks tried out making things they'd never made before, and several of the entries were made specifically for the benefit of other aspiring developers! So if you're interested in becoming a ghost developer, be sure to check out the new offerings!

Without further ado, please check under the cut for the entries from this event! You can also read more about the event on it's page of our wiki.

Balloons

Bob, by FrankT:

[Download]

Pixeloon, by StrangelyKai and Galla:

[Download]

Sky Balloon, by OdieDogXP:

[Download]

Terminal Balloon, by Vita:

[Download]

VN Style, by Idk:

[Download]

Wedges Balloon Pack, by Galla and Zichqec:

[Download]

Shells (for existing ghosts)

Cavatappi, for Noodle, by Zichqec:

[Download]

Conchiglie, for Noodle, by Zichqec:

[Download]

Correctly Drawn Flamingo, for If I Can't Have Shrimp No One Can, by Galla:

[Download]

Farfalle, for Noodle, by Zichqec:

[Download]

Flele Template, for FLELE, by Idk:

[Download]

Macaroni, for Noodle, by Zichqec:

[Download]

Needy, for Needle, by Idk:

[Download]

Penne, for Noodle, by Zichqec:

[Download]

Rotini, for Noodle, by Zichqec:

[Download]

Freeshells

Computer Bug, by Vita:

[Download]

Hammock Buddies (DEMO), by WhatAPhantasia:

[Download]

kittypunk, by SmokyCinnamonRoll:

(This one is only available for download in our Discord server!)

Strawberry Shortcake, by Aegisghosts:

[Download]

Calendar skins

Catlendar, by Zdzisiu:

[Download]

Eyeball Tracker, by WhatAPhantasia:

[Download]

Irken Doom English, by WhatAPhantasia:

[Download]

Irken Doom Irken, by WhatAPhantasia:

[Download]

MLP Calendar, by OdieDogXP:

[Download]

Terminal Calendar, by Vita:

[Download]

Wedges Calendar Skin Pack, by Galla and Zichqec:

[Download]

Guides

Notepad++ tips to improve your ghost dev experience, by Zichqec:

[Read]

[zichqec]

FLUX v1.0.0 Release and Cibus Shell v2.0.0 Update

Download both here!

FLUX is a spiritual successor to FLELE! It’s backwards compatible with most FLELE shells, can use playlists made by FLELE, is available in multiple languages (currently English and Polish), and makes it very easy to add custom shell dialogue/functions! It can also notify other ghosts of the currently playing song, if other devs are interested in using that information. And, it supports more .mp3 and .wav files than FLELE does, thanks to recent SSP updates, since it uses built-in Sakurascript commands to play music instead of a saori!

Check the link above if you want to see more details about the differences between FLUX and FLELE. FLUX comes with a single shell to start out with, but I also updated my Cibus FLELE shell to be compatible with FLUX and have a bunch of custom dialogues! So make sure you download her new version if you want to check that stuff out and see how it works.

If you’re interested in translating FLUX to another language, please check the documentation in the files, or get in contact with me! I would love to see FLUX in as many languages as possible.

If you’re interested in making a shell for FLUX, there’s also documentation for that, and for the system that makes custom dialogue possible! I’m happy to answer any and all questions you may have about it.

[zichqec]

I made a calendar skin for the ukagakas! I don’t know anyone who actually uses the calendar feature, but I wanted to give it a go anyways.

Download it here!

This is based on @zarla-s‘s Undertale balloon! The red heart is your current selection, the other hearts are different types of events you can set, and the yellow box is the current day.

Ghosts may not say anything when they finish installing a calendar skin! This is normal, I don’t know of any english ghosts that are actually set up to detect when you’ve installed one of these(for any ghost makers out there, set up an elseif reference0 == “calendar skin” in the install dialogue). But if you open your calendar (through the menu or press Ctrl D) and right click, you should see it when you hover over skins!

[zichqec]

He used to be an adventurer like you, then he took an arrow in the knee.

And by that I mean, I’ve made a ghost of a Skyrim Guard! He doesn't do most of the normal ghost things, just sits on your desktop and says random guard dialogue, but you can try out a proof-of-concept quest if you're in Whiterun hold(the default)!

He also has different shells for each hold, which you can travel to through his menu. His dialogue changes dynamically depending on which hold you're in!

Honestly, he’s a pretty silly ghost XD But I hope to keep updating him and flesh out the quest system a lot!

Get his .nar here!

Install instructions under the cut.

Also, I’ve created a website for these things! You can check it out here.

To use a ghost, you'll need a program to run it in. If you're on Windows, I recommend using SSP. If you're not on a Windows computer there are some options available, but I have not tested them myself. Mac: Ukagaka on Macs, NiseRingo, PlayonMac+SSP, WineBottler Linux: NINIX-AYA

For those using SSP, go ahead and download the complete install package from the website. When you run it a catgirl should appear and say something in Japanese. Drag and drop a .nar file from any of my ghosts on her, and she should install them for you. Once she's done, right click her, hover over 'change ghost', and select the appropriate ghost!

If you get an error window in Japanese when you start SSP, it probably can't find any ghosts to run. You can try dropping the .nar file onto that window. If that doesn't work, click the first button and point it towards your ghost directory(It should be \SSP\ghost). If the right click menu is in Japanese, the language option is the 4th one up from the bottom. Select English, restart SSP(you can close it with the bottom option), and you should be good to go. If the catgirl will not install any ghosts for you, you can unzip the .nar file and drag the contents into the \SSP\ghost folder. Your unzipped folder should have subfolders called 'ghost' and 'shell' on the top level. Restart SSP and look in the right click menu again, and they should be in your list of ghosts. Instructions on how to use each ghost are in their readmes, which should automatically pop up when you install them! If it doesn't appear, you can see it by opening them, right clicking, and going to information>Read me.