[Background Blog] Beek: Familiar Spirit Version 2.0

Hey Patrons, Compymono here!

Today I wanted to share one of the smaller projects I've been working on over the past month outside of Astatos and Nekojishi L&P.

For context, we've been aware that due to some depreciating libraries on Android, Beek is going to be needing a new patch to keep all it's functions working on the Google Play store starting next month.

At first I was hoping to be able to just open the project files and update everything to the newest versions, that didn't quite feel right knowing there were tons of unresolved bugs with the previous version.

So it's time to make a patch!

Except, the code is a complete mess... Beek was our first project released in Unity and the code architecture is fairly unconventional. During development I started out as the English localisation editor but later was tasked with getting the game to a releasable state.

Things like achievements, the Android port, and lots of the UI were handled by me, but the internal workings of the gameplay code remain a mystery to me to this very day. 😅

In order to do things right I decided to reprogram the game logic from scratch! While it sounds daunting, Beek's core mechanics are relatively simple so it's not so bad. (And I'm a much better programmer than I was in 2019)

My progress so far after 3 days.

• Updated the game engine version to that of Nekojishi: Lin & Partners, along with implementing our audio engine of choice, FMOD.
• Significantly reduced the file size of the game while retaining artwork quality.
• Boot sequence, save data structures and loading.
• Re-worked all game events to be based on UTC time, ensuring the game will always keep in sync with your local time.
• Various UI revisions.
• Core story scripting, messages, and replies.

While I have a few more things to implement (i.e. CG, gallery, settings, achievements, and story events) there are also a few extra goals I have in mind for this patch:

• Improve the UX with new tutorial popups that clearly communicate the mechanics rather than relying entirely on a text manual.
• Turn the Bookmarks UI into a dedicated save/load menu with multiple save files. (Almost impossible with the previous code!)
• (maybe v2.1) Implement a flow chart UI and track ending progress.

While it may seem a little strange to be putting this much effort into a patch for Beek so many years after it was released, I believe it's important to keep our games updated and accessible wherever possible. (That, and people are still playing Beek regularly!)

While I believe this update will be the definitive way to play, we aim to keep the downloads for v1.06 available on itch.io in order to preserve the original version of Beek. (And because the progress into your current run will be reset when this update comes out, sorry 😅)

While I don't have an ETA on when this will all be finalised, I hope that some people will be glad to see this game get an update!

- Compymono