It's Almost Here!!!!!
In just 5 days, PogoChamp will be launching into Early Access! I'm excited to let you all finally play what I've been working on, and I hope you're going to love it. With the launch coming up, I've been doing some outreach to various press/youtubers/streamers, but I'm keeping my expectations in check. Other than outreach, I've been doing lots of bug fixes and prep to make sure people's initial impressions are good (and the game, you know.... works).
Trailer
I made a new trailer for the Early Access Launch. This is the first trailer to use actual in-game music, I hope you like it, and that it gets you excited for the game. The trailer includes sneak peaks at many levels that aren't in the demo, so I'm counting it as this week's "Level Preview". The levels shown (in order of appearance are: Frogger, Piano, Maxi Golf, Labyrinth, Bullseye, Guided Swim, Pushing Buttons, Tread Lightly, Uphill, Skee-Ball, Boldly Go, and Frogger one more time.
Ultrawide
Yesterday I finally fixed support for ultrawide (21:9) displays! Months ago I made is so the game would offer ultrawide resolutions if you are using an ultrawide monitor, but it turns out that old change didn't actually work (I don't have an ultrawide monitor to test with). I naively believed that when monitors (and games) say that they have an aspect ratio of "21:9", that means that their aspect ratio is 21 / 9 = 2.33333, the same way that a "16:9" monitor's aspect ratio is 16 / 9 = 1.77777. It turns out that is not the case. The "21:9" aspect ratio is actually a marketing term, and corresponds to the true aspect ratios 64/27, 43/18, and 12/5. (What?!?!?). With that newfound knowledge it was a relatively quick fix to modify my prior code to check against these "real" aspect ratios, and voila, ultrawide works like a charm.
Bug of the Week
I haven't done one of these in a while, but I wanted to showcase one of my favorite bugs (that's fixed now)
Changelog
- Make screen wipe animations play in realtime instead of game time (fixes issues related to pausing immediately as a level loads).
- Add default camera to levels so that "Reset Level" looks better / doesn't complain about missing cameras.
- Adjust jump charge UI to not display in some situations when it shouldn't.
- Fix bug where opening & closing the pause menu in replay mode would make the replay at normal speed (ignoring your playback settings).
- Fix many issues with physics on Frogger.
- Made editing the cars in Frogger more consistent with prefabs.
- Cars in Frogger are now recorded in replays.
- In replays, scenery now teleports instead of animating when traveling long distances.
- Replayable scenery can now destroy child objects during replays.
- Fix bugs / errors related to replays in Frogger.
- Update lighting and wall materials in Relaxing.
- Update material of breakable platforms.
- Update Text Mesh Pro version to fix missing "/" characters in some text.
- Added new level: Boldly Go.
- Added Jetpack power up.
- Prevent clipping into conveyor belts on Long Jumper.
- Change level geometry on Boldly Go to be less annoying.
- You can see replay ghosts through walls in replay mode again.
- Disable seeing through walls in replay mode when you hide the UI.
- Various changes for replayable scenery so you can see through them in replays, but they don't collide with each other.
- Redesign The One Ring to be more of a tutorial level.
- Reduce the size of the gap in Slope Progression.
- Fix gap in the corner on Labyrinth.
- Added new level: Tread Lightly.
- Fix bug where Jetpack power up's acceleration was frame rate dependent, and update speed.
- Modify Jetpack power up so that it's less likely to result in skidding against a surface and losing all your momentum.
- Fix bug where you couldn't jump the full range of angles while on a conveyor belt.
- The camera on Contolled Fall now points down automatically.
- Update Ramp It Up level geometry & starting camera position so that you don't have to move the camera while playing it.
- Update Off The Wall level geometry to be more streamlined/less confusing.
- Remove Cubby Hole.
- Remove Hurdles.
- Add new level: Pushing Buttons.
- Add more safeguards to prevent winning and crashing at the same time.
- Adjust color of the helmet for Jetpack power up.
- Make Activatable Rings record in replays.
- Lay groundwork for other activatable stuff to work in replays.
- Fixed support for ultrawide displays.