V13.5 Update | May Luck be on our side

hi!!!!!!!!! mom said it's my turn on the dev blog

It's been roughly a month since testing has begun, so I figured this would be as good a time as any to post an update on the goings-on with the game right now. We've all been hard at work to get stuff finished up and are excited for people to see all the new stuff! But of course, keeping radio silence on here isn't the way to go or ppl will start sending me asks on tumblr again asking why there hasn't been a dev blog post yet and being very sad about it so let's get into it all, shall we?

The current state of testing

First up, Jan will be leaving on a holiday for roughly a week starting this weekend! He's taking a well deserved break before all hell breaks loose later this year LOL. However, that doesn't mean stuff in regards to testing will come to a standstill. A good couple of our dev members are actively involved with fixing bugs we come across (both scripts and events!), so testing will continue as usual.

Speaking of which, we're still on internal testing! This is mostly because we want to be reaaaally thorough with the game ourselves this time around (unlike what happened with V13), so we can catch as many issues as possible ourselves before moving on to alpha testing. As of right now, a lot of us are on testing Chapter 11, and ACT 1 is completed by almost everyone! There's only a tiiiny bit of event work left for the update as a whole, which is expected to be feature complete shortly after Jan is back from his trip and he's able to work on it again. Most of the graphics are done now as well with only a few sprites left on the backlog, which should all be done before alpha starts. Weeee, progress!

That being said, the plan was to actually start on ACT 2 testing sooner than we did, but Jan spent a good amount of time polishing a bunch of the content in ACT 2 to be more enjoyable as well. Sometimes a part of the game/story needs a little extra ~*Pizazz™*~ and that's ok. Especially considering it means the experience for you guys will be better! We'll probably be stuck on GDC for a little while anyways because that place is Beeg™ and therefore the amount of bugs that have been discovered is also Beeg™. There's also the fact that we've got a Quest Log now and that we have to update/add it as we go through the game ourselves. Jan has been doing main story + major sidequests which is honestly Quite The Task. I've been doing the sidequests that were missed/hadn't been updated properly yet to even have a log, so he doesn't have to do everything himself, but I can definitely tell you that it's a lot of work for a game as big as Rejuvenation dflkjsdflksdfllasjdalsk

Oh, and for those wondering about the opinions so far on Terajuma considering that place got a massive overhaul... It was a huge success! The team really really enjoyed all the changes, and it really turned a weak arc into a very very strong one. I really highly recommend checking out the place in a new run or going back after you're done going through the new stuff in .5.

Unfortunately it's not all fun and games with testing. Aside from the usual game-crashing stuff where there's a typo in a script somewhere that can be fixed rather easily, we've ran into a pretty concerning bug that we haven't been able to fix that will ever so rarely straight up crash your game out of nowhere, no warning/error popup or anything— and with barely any rhyme or reason to it happening. This is not to cause a panic because Haru's doing their utmost to find a solution for the problem (EDIT 4-8-2023): which is looking to possibly be caused by MKXP-Z having upgraded to Ruby 3.1. The chances of it happening at all are pretty low as well, with most of us having ran into it only once or twice—aside from Alex, who is Game Crash Georg, gets 10000 crashes a day, is a statistical outlier and should not be counted— but there is a chance that we won't have a fix for this by the time the update comes out considering that downgrading back to an older version of Ruby is currently broken. All we can do right now is give the advice in advance that you save often when .5 is out so in the case it does happen, you won't lose a lot of progress and you'll also know that this is a known issue.

think of it as working with any software that is unstable, for example after effects. i speak from experience. that shit will crash for no fucking reason so you gotta hit save often!!!!!!! treat it like that!!!!!!!! be vigilant!!!!!!!!!!!!

In all seriousness, we'll keep you guys posted about this problem. If the bug persists into public release, we'll put a warning alongside the download/update post to make sure people are aware of it, but we'll keep trying our best to fix the issue before it even gets to that. please send haru your thoughts and prayers.

To wrap this segment up on a happier note however, here's some more OOC stuff from during testing. There's already some funny stuff in the column next to the dev blog, but why not share a little more? We're all taking this very seriously I promise.

Beans! ok moving on.

Last minute sprite updates!

Because I just can't help myself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sowwy. Speaks for itself, here's a couple of VS portraits I've updated recently! I showed a few on twitter before (which are included in here in case you missed them), but there's a couple that I hadn't posted publicly in here yet as well. I know some of these changes might be quite drastic and may take some getting used to (particularly Ana and Ren from what I've heard so far), but I'm trying to bring the sprites a bit more in line with the official art and have style be consistent across the board. And stuff is still subject to change even between now and release!! So maybe some will get some minor changes even after I post this.

okay but WHAT is with the title of the dev blog. none of this is related to it. wtf

Good question! But also stop being hasty or I will CRY and SCREAM and throw you to be PECKED AT BY THE BIRDS. I was just about to get to explaining this.

gosh. ugh.

Anyways, the title is related to something we teased all the way back in the dev blog from October of last year (GOD IT'S CLOSING IN ON HAVING BEEN A YEAR HELP ME) and has finally been fully realized into a brand new feature to Rejuvenation. In particular, it's related to this smug bastard— Mr. Luck.

Don't remember him? Now you do! If you don't, that's fine too. Don't worry about it. Either way, he's a character you can find at the start of the game in East Gearen, in a circus tent! Prior to .5 he 1) did not have a proper design, and 2) only existed for the option for people to switch between difficulty modes. However, what with intense being gone coming next update and with passwords being a thing, this functionality of his has become essentially redundant, and has since been removed. So what are we gonna do with him? We can't just remove him from the game, he's got some (albeit minor) story involvement, so we have to figure out something else to use him for.

So clearly, the correct course of answer here is to go all-out with this clown, and have him offer a lot more than just a difficulty swap. Introducing Black Prisms and Prism Pokémon!

Before going into what Mr Luck has to do with this, let me explain Prism Pokémon first. When getting a wild encounter, you'll have about an 1-in-100 chance to run into a Pokémon holding a Black Prism, and they look like this! You can recognize them by the rainbow aura around them.

This isn't just cosmetic though! Upon entering a battle with one of these, the Prism Pokémon will get a +2 boost on all of its stats thanks to the prism it's holding. If you manage to catch it, you'll be able to take its Black Prism off of it! Not only that, but these Pokémon generally tend to have better stats, so it's worth catching them for that as well. However, putting a prism on one of your Pokémon does not give the +2 omniboost to your own Pokémon. It really only works on the enemy wild encounters you find. Buuuuuuuuut if you want, you can just keep the prism on your mons if you want to keep the rainbow aura purely for cosmetic purposes. every pokémon can celebrate pride now!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEAHHHHH

But um... That aside, what does Mr. Luck have to do with these Black Prisms? Well, it's pretty simple. He collects them. He'll offer all sorts of things in trade for the prisms, including contracts that can help you in all sorts of ways! He can increase the odds of running into shinies, make it so that there's a chance that wild Pokémon have egg moves by default, increase the amount of money earned in battle... Or even change your character appearance.

Just don't worry about the fine print! ...Or do. There might be some downsides involved, after all. Can't have everything handed to you on a silver platter, now can it? He's got the smarmy businessman look down pat as well, so there's bound to be some fishy stuff involved. But it's funnier if you find out for yourself what those... Er, little snags are. Tread with a small amount of caution!

He's also got a cute little assistant called Doxie that you'll see for yourself if you visit him, and will trade you all sorts of useful items if you've got prisms to spare for things that aren't Luck's own contracts. It includes items such as valuables you can sell for big money, cell imprints and even glitter balls! They won't be cheap however, so if you want to get your hands on those, make sure to keep catching those Prism Pokémon if you come across them.

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That about covers it for this dev blog! Hope you're all excited for the new features─ Oh, wait. Just one more thing, as a little ~*Treat™*~.

For people on fresh playthroughs, there are a lot of new, hidden things to find. Some things you'll only be able to find/understand on your second playthrough or beyond. Unless, of course, you use a guide on your first playthrough, which is just unfun so booooo if you do. smh

Best way to view all these little new things to discover as.... Hm, inconsistencies. Yes, that'll do. Exciting, no? And I'm sure we're not the only ones excited about it. :)

That's all I'll spill on the matter though, so hope you'll enjoy looking for all the little secrets when the update comes out!

For now, see you next post!!!!!! We're so close!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!