Mega Man RPG Prototype News & Updates

The way the prototype's game menu works has been revised slightly, though the changes have some far-reaching effects I think everyone should be aware of. Let me explain why this change occurred, and how it will change things moving forward.

When using the Edit menu to equip your robots with different abilities you also have the option to transfer them between players (as you likely already know). You may have noticed that the entire game menu is reloaded when this transfer happens, and that is to ensure that the player select and robot select screens are refreshed with the recent changes. Unfortunately, reloading the entire game menu means reloading both players mission select screens (which can be huge) and their robot select screens - naturally this made the process of transferring robots very tedious and time consuming.

Obviously this was not optimal and needed to be changed, so I did something about it. Now player selection, mission selection, and robot selection are all generated at the time they're needed and no sooner. This means instead of having everything available from the get-go when the page loads, it will instead load as you click around. If you click Dr. Light in the player select screen, it sends a request to the server for Dr. Light's missions, waits for a response, and then opens the next menu/step when it gets a reply. The same is true for the robot select - once a mission is chosen it asks the server which robots are available for that player and then moves onto next step when it gets a reply.

Because of this change, the prototype's main menu loads a bit faster initially (because it doesn't have to generate everything at once) but it does take a bit longer between menu selections - no longer will the transition from player to mission to robot select be super speedy and fluid - now it has to contact the server with each step to ensure options is up-to-date. This might be a bit annoying to long-time users and can create problems if you're click-happy and don't wait for the next menu to load, but those are the breaks. At the very least, transferring robots between players should be much less hassle and less time consuming.

An advantage to this change, however, is that dynamically generated missions can be re-generated simply by going back or forward one step in the menu and then coming back to it. Don't like the number of Mets appearing on the Intro Field? Go back one step and then load the mission select again - the battle is regenerated and the number of Mets will likely be different. Don't like the particular set of modifiers appearing for the Bonus Stage? Go back one and then reload the missions - it will be regenerated each time.

I'm sure there will be issues with this change but I think overall it will be for the better. Please let me know if you experience any problems (other than longer waits, of course) and I'll do my best to get things sorted out. Thank you for playing! :D