BETA

Man, time seems to fly. It's already been about 5 years ago since I finished my first game, BETA. And a little over 10 years ago since I first created the project in 2007. As a way to celebrate the anniversary of the release of BETA, I thought I'd go over the entire thing and polish it up a little. Add some new things here and there and work out some of the smaller bugs that still remained, even after all the updates it's already had in the past.

Instead of listing the boring patch notes, which you can find in the other blog entry, in case you need every little detail, I'll go over some of the bigger changes that I've made.

NEW CONTENT
Let's start with the good stuff. New content, yay. Yes, a new optional quest has been added to the game. It involves beating up stuff, so obviously it fits right in with the rest of the game. To access the quest, you must make it to the 2nd night, and then choose to either go for a walk, or to visit Eldin (depending on which path you're on). Unfortunately for those who chose to not help out Matthew after beating him on the rooftop, as that will cause the new quest to not appear at all.
If you've made it this far, talk to Mr. Fatass who's waiting just right in front of the villa for you to help him out find his missing children and beat up all the evil squirrels in the woods, just outside of the town area.

Inside the woods, you're tasked with finding the 8 missing children who are hiding in the far corners of the map. Additionally, you'll be assaulted by mad squirrels, and at the end of it, the big boss is waiting for you.


As a reward for taking out Badbonez and bringing back all the children to Mr. Fatass, Roth will receive the Squirrel Suit. As with any other unlockable outfits in the game, it grants no special bonuses, but it might just satisfy your inner-furry.
And speaking of new outfits to wear, Roth's blue-haired appearance in his brief visit to Gielinor is now unlocked after making it through that quest. It also comes with the wide range of facial expressions that the other outfits provide (unlike in the previous versions of the game, where it had only the default face).

QUALITY OF LIFE
One of the things that kind of dragged down the gameplay experience of BETA as a whole were the many inconveniences and poorly thought out pieces of content. I've gone through the entire game and picked out the worst ones, and improved upon them. Some of the most notable improvements:

Cow Racing no longer requires manual input to move forward, and jumps are done with much more freedom. The cow now runs forward on its own, while the player only has to move up or down to change lanes. Jumping no longer requires you to stand still on a dirt patch and then interact with it. Jumping is now done whenever and wherever, with a simple press of the SPACE key. That's all it takes. As a result, this mini-game feels much more intuitive to play.
This was my first major mini-game ever created in RPG Maker, and it really showed. It was clunky and new players usually required several failed runs to get the hang of it. Hopefully, the new version will provide a better experience.

Next, the battle against the ninja on the rooftop... this one really suffered mostly from text boxes popping up on every attack, or every time getting hit. With the newest update, no more. All of the texts are placed inside picture balloons that show up at the top corner of the screen, where they don't interfere with the gameplay. In addition, health bars now display the amount of health Roth and the ninja have left before going down.


While on the topic of health bars, these have also been applied to the King Cyborg Jigg (KCJ) boss battle, both for Roth, as well for the current target, making it easier to track how much more hits you're able to take. And man, that finisher for beating the KCJ was so lame in the old version of the game. I totally improved upon that, with Roth now shooting at it in a beam of light and having the boss go down in a sea of explosions. Way cooler!

For some of the less flashy improvements: hitting a dialogue option again after having it selected it before now returns a shortened version so you don't get stuck in another row of dialogue boxes you've just gone through. The same goes for talking to certain NPCs, or examining objects again - most of these will now result in shortened dialogues if they contained more than a single text box.

REWRITTEN
Now, it's not like I've rewritten the entire game. Far from it, as that would not only take way too long, I wouldn't want BETA to not be BETA. That said, there certainly were some really poorly written lines of dialogues, or boxes with text that felt completely redundant, adding nothing really to the scenario. I've ploughed through all of the game code and hunted down these so that I could rewrite them, or remove them entirely in some cases.
I've also condensed some of the poorly spaced out lines of dialogue (which there was A LOT of) and made texts fit on fewer lines to save space, and in quite some cases, clicks.

All in all, I really enjoyed working on BETA once more. Well, the game code really is a nightmare to look at, but the game itself is pretty solid and plays just fine. Who knows, I might be back here again in another 5 years for the 10-year anniversary update. For now... I'm going to take a break and work on some other things instead...