Beta Update Version 0.17

Hey all! Bauske here.

My apologies for the lack of updates lately. Life stuff, stress, and general ADHD hurdles have had me scatterbrained over these past few weeks, but I've been trying to work on Micro Stream RPG when life allows. Progress has been slower than I'd like (I planned to have the game released by the start of Autumn), but the game is progressing. I'm working on new dungeons, new enemies, and gearing up for a release here hopefully in the next couple months.

Not too much in this update that's gonna really stand out to users or players, but some good backend things to hopefully make the game run as smooth as possible in the future. The biggest one is the database check. For some background info, the online database has a feature that can put the game in standby mode if there's some emergency or maintenance need. Beforehand, the game was pinging a database check at the start of every player's run to see if the database was locked or not, and I noticed it seemed to be having a negative effect. When I watched the game in action on streams, there appeared to be a big lag between players typing the "!rpg" command and their run starting. So I've changed it so the game only pings for database updates once every 10 minutes. I might adjust this in the future to an even lengthier time between checks, as hopefully this isn't even a feature that's necessary very often, but for now this should help the game run smoother.

That's the biggest change. Please let me know if the game runs better or (hopefully not) worse in the future. Sincerely. I love feedback, and player and tester feedback is always valuable! As for the rest of the changes, you can read about them below! Thanks again for playtesting Micro Stream RPG! Here's hoping for a launch soon, I'm very excited about it!

New features:

• Added a version check function. Going forward, Micro Stream RPG will check it's version against the online database to make sure the game is on the most recent version. If not, users will need to update the game to continue playing.
• Added in a fourth layer of parallax scrolling for the background to help give more visual depth to the areas.
• Added in functionality for "!heal" and "bauskeheal" (my own personal emote for healing) to be read anywhere in a chat message instead of specifically at the beginning. Now users can use the emote or command anywhere in their chat replies and the game will recognize them.
• New character sprites - Added in unique characters sprites for beta testers FoxThiefBran, AlexArcher_, and AnsuBlue.

Adjustments:

• Adjusted the database status check to only check once every 10 minutes instead of before each player starts. This will hopefully lessen any lag in starting a player's game.

~Bauske