v1.6 Beta and Major Changes

Hello Melons and Testers!

This is ChaoticNight07 reporting a bit earlier for the announcement. As promised since I released the "first public demo", I will be releasing 1.6A of my beta build today through the link; https://chaoticnight07.itch.io/rinoa-quest-beta . As usual, I will ask you request the password from me personally before accessing the beta if you want to become a tester. You'll also need Wine Bottler in order to run the beta on a Mac Computer or Linux. Recently though, I have been struggling through some moderate symptoms of scope creep, which I realize is quite common amongst indie and AAA developers. Although my other testers, including Rinoa whom is assisting with the game, have praised my improvements, they also complained about a fair number of flaws, which is understandable. 

I tried to make the current story feasible: "Rinoa Poison being the protagonist, who is the president of her nation fighting the Scammer Empire Suppoat, gets her identity stolen by the empire as they achieve an ancient spell involving Dark-Hat Hacking.  While she goes on the run from the empire and the usurped Rinoa Republic, she has to travel around the world to gather fragments of an equally destructive 'Light-Hat Hacking Spell to counter the growing darkness, reclaim her identity, and save the world."

I also felt that I was also struggling to find a hook to attract the player. I wanted to have the Era of Ancient Scambaiters play a huge role in the hook. And as people felt that Rinoa being the president of the Righteous Republic of Rinoa Poison makes the story fairly uninteresting. Instead, I decided to have her as a commander of an Elite Division of Scambaiter Troops as well as the daughter of the current president of the nation. This will mean that despite being the child of the president, she doesn't have all the privileges nor does she own everything. Hopefully, this could help reduce many issues and holes in the plot.

On another note, one of the ways I still wanted to help with navigation of large maps and the overworld in the game is that I have, as courtesy of Aerosys, I was able to add a minimap plugin which has icons which shows the places one could go. For towns and cities, we have icons specially for places like the Inn, Item Shops, Next Maps, Out of Bounds areas, along with Weapons and Defense Dealers. For the overworld, we have icons for towns and cities, dungeons, places of interest, and for both types of maps, Next Objective. I wanted to experiment with navigation first before obtaining more assets. Instead, I have been using assets I presently own, especially for the minimap. I have noticed that the minimap in the overworld needed time to process. For that, there is a wait time when entering the overworld.

On that note, I have been juggling advancing the plot and fixing the beginning and the prologue, meaning I have and will make an effort to finish developing this game. If you have any questions, please do let me know. In the meantime, do enjoy the beta and happy testing!

- Friendly Neighborhood Melon and Aspiring Developer, ChaoticNight07