Hello ladies, gentlemen and variations thereupon!
Update time!
Straight to the point, Beta 4 will be released in Summer '11!
Here are the things you can expect:
- Lance to return!
- A fight against the fourth and final lord, Azanya, Master of Fire! Defeating him will unlock all remaining barriers in the stages, essentially saving the Amafuso region and restoring peace!
- However, that's not the end. After all 4 Lord have been defeated, a final battle with their leader, creatively titled The Leader will occur. That's what is behind the 5th door in the warp mainframe. Dun dun DUN!!!
- 5 pretty awesome, hopefully pretty big levels. There's been a lot of levels that have just been pretty lazy, tiny 'breather' levels (e.g. aerbs mountains, mirosav beach), so I want to go all out with these ones.
- Bonus stages, behind the 6th door. A return to some parts of the Septo Region is in order!
- Return of May, who was last seen ninja disappearing in Septo Conquest.
- Return of Koga.
- Return of the player from Septo Conquest! He's now the King of Septo and still a loveable jerk.
- The mysterious cave in Luneth Town will finally be revealed!
Exciting stuff!
On a related and potentially sadder note, this will be the final beta of WARPED that I work on, and the final ROM hack that I'll do. That's not to say that AndyP159 won't carry on doing WARPED or another ROM hack (I don't know what his plans are), but it'll be without me. I've had a fun few years occasionally doing ROM hacks but I now think it's a good time to finish up and move onto new projects. Despite general awfulness as panned by the critics, I think Septo Conquest was pretty damn good, and hilarious! Much funnier than 99% of all the hacks that I see. Get a sense of humour everyone! Haha. I'm also pretty proud of how WARPED is turning out, and I think it's a good one to end on.
So thank you so very much for all the interest you guys have shown in mine and AndyP159's work, and this isn't the end of my ROM hack days quite yet, there's still the 4th beta to come!
Huzzah!