                THE BLUE CONTESTANT v1.0
                               by Lysander86

1. INTRODUCTION

Well, this was sort of a silly idea! What better way to spend the final
days of law school than by creating another RM2K game? I had two weeks
to spare (it was either this or studying, after all!) so in those two
weeks I cooked up the idea for this game you're about to play and brought
it all the way through to execution. It's finished now, and it's a complete
game.

Of course, since the whole project only took two weeks, it's a fully complete
*very short* RM2K game - you'll probably be able to finish this one in an hour
or so... but hopefully you'll have a good time doing it. I like to think of
BLUE CONTESTANT as the RM2K equivalent of a short story, so as long as you
don't expect something epic and massive like ABL, I think you'll like it.

2. FEATURES

- See enemies before you fight them, and avoid them if you like! No invisible
random encounters in this one... and it's possible to finish the game while
only fighting three battles! Of course, a lot of that depends on your skill... ;)

- The Class System: choose from one of six character classes, each with its own
strengths and weaknesses. Not every Class is going to be able to handle every
situation, so you have the ability to change classes (for a modest fee in Class
Points) at any time during the game. Some of the abilities of each Class are
undocumented, so be sure to play around with them.

- Percentage Completion System: at the end of the game, the rate at which you
collected items, destroyed monsters, opened treasure boxes, etc. are all calculated
and you are given a percentage score based on how well you did. This is then
computed into an Overall Percentage. (Rushing through as fast as I could, my Overall
Percentage most recently was 26% - I'm sure you can do better than that!) Or you
could try to get as low a percentage as possible while still completing the game!
Or take a page from the Final Fantasy 1 gang and try to finish the game using only
a single Class...

- Title System: BLUE CONTESTANT tracks more than just the Overall Percentage factors.
It also keeps track of your general playing style, and at the end of the game, gives
you Titles based on it. There are 19 different Titles you can be awarded, and while
you won't be able to get them all during the same game, try and get as many as you
can! I'll keep most of the Titles a secret, but just to give you an example, when my
wife playtested the game for me, the only one she got was "Cautious" - the title you
get when you save your game a lot.

3. A FEW NOTES

There are a few curious things about the way BLUE CONTESTANT is coded. First of all,
every Class has its own MP gauge, so if I'm a Medic and have half of my MP, and then
I change my Class to Gambler, I will then have full MP. However, if I then change back
into Medic, I'll have half of my MP again. HP doesn't work this way - if you change
between Classes, your HP will stay at roughly the same percentage.

One difference between this and my other games involves saving. In this one, you need
to actively stand on a save point and push the OK button to bring up the save menu,
instead of just opening the menu and saving at that time. A little difference, but
it was necessary due to a small change in coding.

Also, don't use the Walk Through Walls cheat. Most games don't like this to begin
with, but BLUE CONTESTANT reacts particularly badly to it. If I catch you doing it,
it's Game Over for you, and save points are pretty far apart. So don't use it. That
said, BLUE CONTESTANT is a much more difficult game than ABL or BOT - once you get
the hang of it and know how to go about playing and where it's a good idea to change
Classes, it becomes much easier. But until then, the difficulty curve is fairly high.
In other words, if you're a Student and only have 10 HP or so... don't go fighting
Sky Dragons. ;)

4. HIGH SCORE WEBPAGE

I thought I'd try something fun for this game: maintaining a webpage to put high scores
on. Near the end of the game, you'll be given the option of saving a TBC Stats file.
Send that savefile to me at lysander86@hotmail.com, and after checking to make sure
there isn't any cheating going on (so be good, boys and girls!) I'll post the score
and Titles you received on the webpage. Here's the URL:

www.angelfire.com/rpg2/lys86

I may not run this webpage for long, so send those savefiles in while you still can,
and impress all your friends! :)

5. AND THAT'S IT!

It's been a hectic two weeks, but at least this time I didn't miss any deadlines.
I hope you enjoy THE BLUE CONTESTANT, and check out my other games, too! If you
have any questions or comments, or get horribly stuck, let me know! :)

Lys
April 28th, 2003