Mac beta 4

Although no PC betas are known to have been leaked, there are two alternate Mac versions that have been found "in the wild". One is definitely a beta, and has been called "beta 4" since its leak. It is unknown whether there were later beta versions or if this was the last one before Oni's release. Secondly, a version known as the "Big Blue Box beta", or "beta 5", which may not be a beta at all. Regardless of its actual version, both of these Mac "betas" have shed some light on the development of Oni.

Beta 4 (leaked during beta testing)

The application's version number is 1.0, as opposed to retail Mac Oni's v1.1, and its creation date is 11/14/00, which corresponds to the period of time that Oni was in beta testing.

Also leaked during beta testing was Oni's complete list of cheats. Some fans awaiting the game were intrigued by the "Developer Mode" cheat "thedayismine", but found it did not work in their retail versions of Oni. This code does work in beta 4, however. Later on, it would be discovered that the retail Mac (and PC) Oni still had Dev Mode in them, but the cheat that enabled it would need to be unlocked by engine patching; beta 4 is the only version of Oni observed to have Dev Mode freely accessible.

Also, this beta still had all the BSL functionality of the PC version; it had previously been thought that about 40 functions and about 160 variables were stripped from Oni for the Mac (listed here), since the Mac version is generally thought to have been finalized a bit later than the PC version. Having seen that the code was once present in the Mac binary, the community set about searching for it in the retail Mac version, and found it. Through hex editing, pointers to active variables and functions that were not of much use were diverted to point to some of the hidden and more useful BSL abilities. Those efforts have brought the retail Mac release into effective near-parity with the retail PC version; the changes made are documented here.

"Beta 5" (sold in German online store)

This version is v1.1, just like retail Mac Oni, and its creation date is 3/13/01, which, if accurate, means it is unlikely to be a beta, but rather a translated retail version, which would certainly agree with the version number. It was originally called "beta 5" by the community because it contains files that come from the development stage of Oni (although these files would likely have come from Oni's pre-beta era, to be exact).

This version of Oni was available as stand alone and also as part of a package of four games called the Big Blue Box, and sold only on a German website. It may no longer be available for purchase, but the product page is here. As in the retail Mac application, access to Developer Mode and many BSL functions had been removed, but this version had two very unusual features: the level0_Tools files, and some "lost" level scripts.

The level0_Tools files (in the usual .dat/.raw/.sep formats) contains resources used during development. The application does not actually seem able to use these tools in-game (in fact, the startup log explicitly records that Oni skips "tool files" such as this one), but the function of the tools was determined from examining their resources. If you're curious, you can download level0_Tools here. OniSplit can be used to extract the data into individual resources.

level0_Tools contains:

• some furniture OFGAs (which are now baked into the environment of Oni's levels, as generic AKEV quads that are merely flagged as furniture)
• some WMDDs that were used at some point to edit OBJCs and other BINA resources (helpful in reverse-engineering the BINA formats)
• textures that were used for debugging, or for other more obscure purposes (the most notable such texture is Hapékat, a mask-less rendition of this little guy not found in-game, and now the depiction of our wiki's mascot)

Secondly, beta 5 contains a number of unique scripts in the IGMD folder, which apparently provided the logic for unreleased levels that were (mostly) used for testing during development. Since the actual level files for these scripts are not present, they are of little value beyond being an interesting read. Some of these scripts actually may have been used for levels intended for the final game, although they were far from completed. One script, for instance, is definitely for a level that would have taken place in a building owned by BGI; it contains scripting for a cutscene where Konoko sets off a bomb, and a cutscene where the late Iron Demon makes its appearance.