Beyond Lunch
From Slinkiwiki
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Before Beyond Lunch
In the year 1997, a young shy kid, who had been alone since his best friend moved away, decided to sit at a lunch table near a guy he sort-of recognized. Over time, he sat closer, and became part of the group. This would be known as the first and last time that kid would ever do something like this.
A tradition began. Every day after lunch, the locker numbered 666 would be kicked. It was often joked that the locker was actually bottomless, and that inside lay a dreaded demon just waiting for somebody to open the locker and set him free.
It was joked that a game would be made: "Beyond Lunch: An eternal story! Not THE eternal story, but another one."
The child misheard this, and thus, Beyond Lunch: An internal (later "inside") story was born.
Between Beyond Lunch and Before Beyond Lunch
It was mostly an ongoing joke. Make a game about thwarting a Locker Demon. The child would come in every day with more script about how the story would go. How they'd all find pets, and there'd be Ace who would always stand over them dramatically in the wind and save them at the last second. They'd all ride Motorcycles for some reason. Head to Florida. Have various hijinks. Stuff like that. The artist of the group designed the Locker Demon and the pets and remains credited for the general idea of Lunch, and the child who found these people designed everything else and would go onward to work on the game.
Soon after planning started, the child's best friend came back. After a teary reunion, it was quickly decided that he should also dramatically reappear to save the three Just In Time from the Locker Demon.
During Beyond Lunch
The original incarnation of Beyond Lunch was a fairly simple Qbasic RPG. It used some graphics for movement but had a text based battle engine. It was infamous for using oldmap.mid, and tended to break a lot due to poor use of Memory. The creator only made a handful of midis, and the rest were taken from FF3 (the NES one, not the American one) and Seiken Densetsu 3. Unique to this version is the Lavos (cardboard cutout) boss, that attacked everyone with beam attacks. This fight almost promises that memory will run out before its completion. The artwork was done using the primitive Circle-Art. Its final version was .9 before it was realized that Lunch could look so much better.
Mechanics
BL's stat growth was not very well done. HP went up by 8% a level, and would max out fairly early. Not that you can hit a very high level fighting cars. Atk and Defense had pre-set levels they'd be set to each level. MP also went up 8% a level. There were no other stats.
Battles were pure-random. Each step you took had a random chance of entering a battle. This was prone to shoving you in multiple battles at a time.
The battle engine was turn-based, and pure random. There was no Speed stat, and it was a real crap-shoot seeing who'd attack first. Running away had a 100% chance of working. Using an item allowed you to go again. There was no coding for Misses, and all hits connected all the time.
You didn't upgrade weapons. Instead, you upgraded attacks. For instance, Greg begins the game with Slice, which does roughly 25 damage. Later on, he learns Dice, which does about 40 damage. Slink would also learn Magic Slice (Use 1 MP for more damage), which begat Magic Bash, which begat Holy Bash.
HP max was 10001. MP and stats maxed at 1001. The max level was 101. It was planned that if you went to the Locker Demon at level 101, you'd be able to unlock level 102, which gave a notable boost to all stats beyond the normal max. There's no saying if this would have actually been implemented, though. The general max damage that could be done by a BLT attack was 15000 (Ultimate Power Release).
Secret Ending
You could access a secret ending by running away from the first battle. The hero would say "Screw this, I'm going home", and he would not go on the adventure after all. Supposedly, the BLT manage to beat the Locker Demon without his help. I guess they bought a whole bunch of potions.
Beyond During Beyond Lunch
Version 2.0 was created using full graphics for the battle engine, bouncing numbers, an Insanity limit-break bar, and a very short lived "Beyond lunch only" art style that was also used for the Beyond Lunch comic. It also sported a brand new map song, which still exists in modern Lunch as a song for a certain dungeon. This would be the last version of Lunch to use the original Mechanics. This is also the only version to use the Insanity Bar (A parody of FF7's Limit Break bar).
Mechanics
Everything was now done with graphics. There were even bouncing numbers, done via lots and lots of coding. Movement was smooth, rather than having the sprite appear in the next tile, coding was done to have him move from one tile to the next. This wasn't perfect, as sometimes he'd jump back before moving forward (most noticable at the top and bottom edges of the screen).
Battles were randomized by figuring out how many steps would be taken. It was roughly 5-40 steps between each battle.
In 2.0x, the stats were Strength and Defense, which rose by percents. HP rose 8% and MP rose 8%. This meant hitting max HP fairly early. Speed went up by .1 a level (Speed ranged from .5 to 3, and determined how fast the "fake-ATB" bar would fill).
In 2.05, an actual stat system was implemented. Agility modified Speed slightly, Vitality controlled HP growth, Intellect modified MP growth, Strength was separated from Attack, and Attack was separated from Weapon Power. This would allow for the switching of weapons, and also allowed a more even growth of stats between level 1 and 101.
Running away had a 100% success rate. There were no misses, and all hits connected.
Lost forever?
Version 2.05 was lost in an HDD crash before it was ever released, and now only exists in memory. It had Chris join and went as far as the Classroom. The battle engine and leveling system was cleaned up, and Stats were implemented. The number bounce system was finished and allowed up to 5 numbers to bounce. There were still some glitches concerning dying, since before then it was just Our Hero doing the dying, but they were in the process of being worked out. Chris's Insanity was also finished, but it is no longer known what it did.
Before Beyond Beyond Lunch
A Visual Basic and C++ version of BL were started, but didn't get very far. Some new midis were created, but not much else was actually completed. Things looked bleak indeed for the game created by a naive child until...
Beyond Beyond Lunch
Rpgmaker 2003 was released, enabling a "Final fantasy style" battle engine. The main factor keeping the child from using RPGmaker was his disdain for the first person battle engine, but now that was no longer a problem. He set off to finally see his game come to completion!
Five years later.
60 new midis were written, 500 new sprites crafted, 50 cutscene pictures (to be) cutted, an opening FMV animated, and a modernization of the old story was modernized. This version of Beyond Lunch changed and filled the original story while maintaining a few key events, especially in the first 20 minutes of the game.
The first segment of the game is largely a tribute to the older versions of Lunch, and are chalk full of fanservice. Greg starts with 2.0x's HP, and .09's MP. Cars, Trucks, and the Bus have the same HP as their original incarnations, and use the same moves (Punch and Run Over). The Bully is largely the same as the original, maintaining his Punch and Kick moves. Many of the original dialogs, as silly as they were, were maintained (but cleaned up a little), and a bunch of new dialog was added.
Past the school area, the game ceases its fanservice and begins the modern version of the storyline. Some key events are kept (the entire Georgia Mountain segment, for instance), but a good 80% of the story is either brand new or changed considerably.
Hax?
Slink hacked the EXE's resources in order to make custom icons for items, and to remove "Class" from the Status screen. He also created an "EXP" icon because "Ex" just looked silly. He also made one for "LVL" to replace "Lv". This is because RPGmaker only allows 2 characters for HP, MP, EXP, and LVL. Slink is a stickler for making things look proper, and wishes it was more noticable that he hand-crafted "EXP" and "LVL" through the use of Mad Hacking. Okay, so he ran a Resource tool and did the editing in Photoshop. It's still KIND of hacking, isn't it? Guys?
Beyond Beyond Lunch's Beginnings But Before Beyond Lunch's Bringing About
.09 and 2.0x have been abandoned, but the RPGmaker version (Officially version 4.0) is still in the works, and will be completed sometime this year. We hope. Please, god. All three versions still exist, and only 2.05 was Lost to all of Space and Time.
