The truth about the Hyper Chicken

Tresset

I think, perhaps, it is time to share the truth about the enigmatic and mysterious Hyper Chicken badge. As the only currently active recipient of the badge, I think this task should fall to me. I will start with a humorous story I wrote about it earlier and then go into further detail.

Hyper Chickens are chickens which were discovered to have a peculiar mix of both ankheg blood and dinosaur blood in them. Because they look like ordinary chickens in every respect, most people go through life thinking they are nothing more than ordinary chickens; completely unaware of the truth. Only the most perceptive of individuals can tell the difference between an ordinary chicken and a Hyper Chicken. Such perceptive individuals who have found Hyper Chickens are given the badge.

@ajwz was effectively the creator of this badge. He discovered that the chickens in BG1:EE appeared to be twitchy and super fast in their animation. He created a thread in the BG:EE beta tester forums (which are not visible to the general public) entitled "Hyper-Chickens" and opened the OP of the thread with the line "Ok, don't laugh at this one." He then proceded to describe the issue as he saw it.

It was then discovered that this issue was present in both vBG1 and vBG2 as well, but it was likely that no one ever noticed it before because there was no zoom function. After fixing it, the developers found the issue so funny that they created the Hyper Chicken badge to honor ajwz.

Since then the badge was given to several other private beta testers and developers for their hard work and keen observation in discovering previously unknown legacy bugs in BG1:EE and in BG2:EE. For those who don't know, legacy bugs are bugs that existed in the vanilla versions of the games that were carried over to the Enhanced Editions. The badge was only given to people who discovered legacy bugs that were not known about by anyone or fixed in any existing fixpack.

I myself earned the badge when @Coriander noticed a comment of mine from when I was still a private beta tester of the BG:EE games where I casually mentioned that I occasionally discovered legacy bugs. She contacted me about this to ask why no one had given me the badge and informed me the significance of my discoveries. She decided to award me the badge for my work.

Unfortunately, it is no longer possible to earn the Hyper Chicken badge as the private beta testing of the BG:EE games has concluded. I would ask that no one pester the admins or developers about this badge any longer and that no one asks to receive the badge. As I understand it is only for developers and private beta testers who worked on BG1:EE and BG2:EE. I also ask that lord @ajwz and the others forgive me for revealing the details of this badge, since it was kind of an inside joke for us.

ThacoBell

Bah, you have ruined the mystery! I hunted for that info for over a year! And I got my answers before this was revealed darn it!

Balrog99

But what about the Apathetic Cow badge?

Tresset

@ThacoBell I thought about this quite a bit before revealing it. Admittedly it ruins the mystery, but there wasn't much of a mystery there to begin with. The main reason I gave the full story now is that half the story was already given in the Ask Beamdog thread, and I didn't see much point in keeping the rest of it secret anymore. Kudos to you if you really did figure all this out already; it took me quite a while to figure it out myself even with access to the private beta forums for BG:EE.

Kurona

Didn't even know this badge existed in the first place lol

deltago

I can die peacefully now.

ThacoBell

@Tresset I got 99% of the way there. A kind soul with access to the private forums gave me the last missing detail. It was all about the mystery, not the payoff for me. Though all the information to figure it out (not including this thread or ask Beamdog) needed to figure it out DOES exist without access to the private forums.