This is a quick note that we have fixed a couple issues with the last update.
Grapple Hooks are back!
The Grapple hooks are active again in the police station!
Use them as you like on frogs, vehicles, objects and other characters!
Crown mode
The crown can be picked up again to activate Crown mode!
Hands off my crown, peasants! Thanks again to every one who helped by pointing out these issues on the blog post, Discord and our social channels. For now we are working hard on the next update, this won't be too long. Happy Grappling!
Amazing Delivery Service
A new Amazing parcel has been delivered straight into the hideout!
If you look around Swindon you can see that we have been adding companies and services, this is all leading towards having a more in depth infrastructure throughout Swindonshire. Soon there will be many ways to make and spend frog pounds. ( Really been enjoying everyones suggestions on how to make money in Swindonshire! from delivering pizza, bounty hunting and even strip clubs... ) For now an upcoming online shopping service called "Amazing Delivery Service" has dropped a brand new household appliance in your hideout from their range, while they get the service ready. This appliance really sucks. (cos its a vacuum cleaner)
Make Collecting Great Again
Are you finding collecting every item too tiresome? Try out your new handy vacuum to make collecting large quantities easy breezy! Every item collected into the vacuum will be added into your inventory!
Collect zombie bits faster!
Use it for harvesting!
Use the vacuum with the inventory app to drop your collected items...
And vacuum them back into your inventory. Whaaaat?
Presidential Frog is Back
Presidential Frog is back wandering around Swindon... say hi!
For those Frogs that can't yet dress to impress for Presidency... Visit FrogOpolis ... you may find a brown toilet there...
You can even make them into a zombie um... Presidental Frog!
We have also made a few fixes and stuff!
we have lengthened the flight distance of RPG rockets... (we were trying to work out how far away we could shoot each other)
That sand issue on the giant Alligator was annoying so we fixed its and ... if you dont have a cool alligator hat... feed the giant alligator some missles.
There is a new Spawn Toilet in SwindonShire... its WAAAAAAY Up high. Let us know what you think !
So a quick note about some fixes to the Bank of Swindon Update.
We had a go at fixing the trophy system so they should be more reliable in collecting and saving.
Also tried improving the citizen transport units... they are definately faster, not sure they are more reliable...
Go get that fly pac! we fixed the colliders in flight school (sorry about that one)
We had pass on the integrety of the colliders in what we call the big C building where Fart Gyms is.
There are always on-going fixed with Amazing Frog? as we always try to keep moving forward.
So these are the top line fixes for this patch.
Thanks so much to every one who helped by pointing out these issues on the blog post, Discord and our social channels.
For now we are working hard on the next update, this won't be too long.
QMMT Part 5 is here to bring business back to Swindon.
So What's new?
- Deposit and withdraw your savings at the Bank!
- Reach saving milestones and get rewarded with loyalty gifts
- Upgrades to the weapons app
- SCP (Swindon Citizen Points) app is back!
- Emotes are back! Along with the infamous cough fart!
- Giant creatures are now "killable"
- Lorries/trucks are back along with the giant gas canister!
- New buildings/details added to Swindon (ready for future updates)
- More frogs!
- Bug Fixes
The Bank is Open!
Get down to the Bank of Swindon to start your account! If you want to take money out of your account you can simply walk into the vault and find your physical stash!
The Vault
From here you can pick up your cash and pocket it or throw it outside.
Deposit your Frog Pounds at any cash machine you find around Swindon. Don't forget to hold the action button to deposit faster.
Golden gifts
Get rewarded by the Bank of Swindon Rewards program As you save more frog pounds in you vault you will receive higher tier BoS gifts. (We will be introducing new ways to make money in later updates).
Express yourself!
Use the emote app to perform actions!
Wave to your friends!
Show the world how you feel!
Inventory app
Use the inventory app to see every item you have collected so far! You can use the app to take items out of your inventory and back into the world.
Put your collections in the environment! Just don't expect them to stay there after you reload the world!
Here you go, pal!
Check your ammo supplies!
Using the gun app, you can now also check your ammo with each weapon.
SCP app
If you aren't sure how close you are to unlocking the next SCP reward you can check this app to check your total!
Mobile Banking!
Use the Bank of Swindon App to see your finances on the go!
Illumiwhati?
A temple has been spotted near the pug! There seem to be some dangerous members inhabiting it so stay cautious!
Bug Fixes
The megalodons can now be killed again.
Use the giant gas canisters found in Frogopolis...
The hearse is more reliable and drops coffins better.
The military drone is improved.
We are always trying to improves the way frogs interact with each other. you may see frogs engaging in fights across Swindon. Or you can start fights yourself...
QMMT Content Plan
Our plan to complete the Magical Mystery Toilet and then leave Early Access remains unchanged. It has been important for us to first ensure that the underlying systems are functioning properly, as this will create a strong foundation for future toilet-related activities (and more). While this process involves revisiting and recreating legacy content, our focus is very much on refining how everything works in the games current context. In the past, when we were working on what we now call Legacy, we were always trying to move forward. Now, prioritizing key systems like adding a bank has allowed us to introduce the Frog Pound, Swindons economy, and an inventory systemfeatures we originally wanted to include in Legacy. Whats even more exciting to us is that with newer these systems in place, future tasks will be able to offer a wider range of rewards and it massively helps us take QMMT far beyond what we could have achieved if we had been able to continue updating Legacy. So, I genuinely hope we can get out of Early Access in 2024 and I will do everything i can to make that happen, especially since Nov 22nd is a key date for Amazing Frog? - As Nov 22nd marks 10 years in Steam Early Access.
It's that Spooky time of year again which means it's time for the Pumpkin King to return!
Put on the Pumpkin head which transforms Swindonshire into a nightmare!
Fight for survival against the many skeletons drawn to the Pumpkin head. Beware of every frog that comes near as they will attack anyone in their way!
Navigate through the strange environment.
The portal to Bloodworld is easier to find during this event. If you haven't been there yet be sure to jump on in!
Complete the Pumpkin challenge!
Make sure to play this terrifying event before it ends in November!
Also...
Right now, we are close to releasing the next QMMT Update. "The Bank of Swindon" part 5. We are still ironing out the details and fixing bugs, but it will be out as soon as possible!
Thank you for your support!
What's new?
- Evil Trains!
- Proper English football
- Helicopter and drone with new guns!
- Spread the Undead with the Hearse!
- Every type of zombie skin
- More options in Free Play (Party Mode)
The Trains Have Eyes
If you derail the four Steam trains in Swindonshire, you might find something horrifying has awakened... A new Steam Train has been sighted. It's said to be full of rage and ready to avenge its fallen brethren.
Football Frenzy!
You can now find some enthusiastic footballers at the new and improved football pitch with its very own scoreboard. Get down there and fight off the other players. They don't seem to shy away from foul play...
There's also a new club coach just begging to be stolen...
OOOPS Or wedged on the football pitch barrier.
Helicopter and drone: Now with guns
The helicopter in the army base has attached miniguns! Now you can spread more damage from the skies!
Create a Zombie invasion!
Get that Hearse unlocked if you haven't already! Drive up to some unsuspecting Frogs and press the horn and unleash the undead!
Take a look at my zombie
The zombies look spookier than ever with dark skin and glowing yellow eyes. Every type of frog now transforms in relation to their unique visuals! Infect any frog you want you can even make a zombie army!
I'm the captain now
Riding other frogs has been improved. Control other frogs and make them attack at your demands. If they are holding a weapon they will use it to attack!
RC Cars
RC cars are back.. should lead to some interesting mechanics in the future.
Blinkin' heck
We brought back blinking for all frogs and added Fart tummy defaltion and new eye expression... um enjoy.
More Ducks?
sure (I won't say where)
Fixes Fixes Fixes
As always we have made a whole bunch of fixes... This is in preparation to make the overall gameplay more reliable. We rebalanced some of the weapons like the crossbows are more deadly, many of the core features have had a tune up the kicking and hitting is more directive and many on going tweeks to the way creatures... er..."behave"
We made another pass at the bouncability for trampolines and boncey things, attempting to make the more consistent and fun. The Pigs should be back in Swindon too!
Check out new CHEATS!
Party mode using Free Play as been enhanced use INFINITE AMMO or BIG HEAD MODE and my personal favourite ... one shot kills.
Combine these effect with unique animal masks and jet packs can be added to a level.
Thanks so much every one for your support and patience!
We are really excited to share whats going on in Amazing Frog? Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet Part 5 and beyond... Also, We are almost there now... when we have completed that toilet magic... we can finally leave Early Access after almost 10 years of building and rebuilding on Steam!
Thanks for your patience!
Here is a very long update post ... QMMT Part 4 is packed with a bunch of new stuff and marks the begining of our last push to leave Early Access ! and enter a new beginning for Amazing Frog? - I'll share a glimpse into our "plan" at the end. but first - Amazing Frog? Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet Part 4...
... Whats new?
- Zombie Apocolyse...
- The Railway
- The Army Base
- The Farm
- Tanks ... Jeeps!
- Party mode beta (with new worlds and spawners)
- A whole bunch of Sh*t to collect
- More costumes (obviously)
- ...and more
Bring out the Dead
Strange things are happening at the church. Head of Swindonshire Parish, Father Frog, may need to call in Pope Frog for help. They have concluded the safest course of action is to not ring the church bell under any circumstances! If a zombie apocalypse does start bring in the help of a higher power! Kill zombies and collect their zombie bits to deposit at the font inside the church.
Try holding the drop button to deposit items all at once.
Seriously though, you will need weapons! and ammo. So prepare first or run.
Those zombies will kill ya!
TIP: Remember - when a Frog becomes a zombie the only sure way to take them down is with a head shot. Melee weapons in general now deal more damage and more more reliable. maybe, take a baseball bat as a backup weapon incase they knock your ballistic weapon out of your hand. or Travel in teams...
Holy Frog!
Unlock new frogs with the religious prowess required to protect the Swindonshire community.
Get Holy and bring death to Swindon in...
The Hearse**
**we will be adding another feature to the hearse very soon.
Ride the train!
Its a Steam Engine...
A brand new trainline has been added into the landscape! You'll find a train station outside both Frogopolis and Swindon. You'll find 4 steam trains on the tracks. Do not derail them!
In doing so we have also modified the road systems and the landscape to account for this and all the new loacations We also started making Videos again - this is me and Hal messing about with the train. [previewyoutube=Q0YaKU6Z6Wo;full][/previewyoutube]
Invade the Military?
An army base has been spotted in Swindonshire near the Frogopolis building site. Sources say the base is heavily guarded at all times and unauthorised frogs will be shot on site... Typical!
Lets hope the Army Frogs are too stoopid to use their machine guns and RPGs on you ...
Tanks incoming!
You'll find tanks in the army base. Any frog brave enough to steal one will be able to can control both the vehicle and gun for explosive damage.
Steal some Tanks! and blow stuff up
This is us infiltrating the army base and then forgetting what we infiltrated the army base for in the first place... To steal Tanks. [previewyoutube=fRmvpR7JuTA;full][/previewyoutube]
Jeepers!
The army has brought in their military grade jeeps. Take them for a spin. They are great all terrain vehicles.
Frog Farmers?
Fancy a more chill vibe, then see whats happening on Old MacDonalds Pig and Veg Farm...
Swindon Agriculture team have built a farm to prepare for the population of Frogopolis. Take a trip down to meet the farmers! They are friendly ...??
Tractors!
There are tractors have been allocated for use on the farm. Do not steal them under any circumstances, they are very EXPENSIVE.
Get Collecting!
As we previously discussed and as a reminder - Take Zombies out with a Headshot. It is also important to know that when any frog is eliminated, they will now drop different items that can be collected. Those items that can eb pocketed (as though you were holstering a gun) will add to that specific frog's inventory. Try killing different kinds of frogs and seeing what comes out!
If You like money some types of frogs will have more than others...
Party Mode is Growing
Its in Beta - and locked to "FREE PLAY" MODE but we are evolving it. We have added a whole ton of new environments.
You can explore many on your own.
Or Locally (with up to 4 players) as usual and also via Remote Play with your Friends.
We will add other modes to party mode as we progress.
We have been having a lot of fun using Steam Remote Play for Amazing Frog? in Party Mode and Swindonshire - just bring up Steams Menu and ask a friend to join Remotely. We will start Supporting Remote play as we progress.
Next Steps and Leaving Early Access
So That was a massive Long Blog post about QMMT Part 4, so if you are still reading this firstly "Hello" secondly, I would like to end this post by sharing a little more information about what our plan is. Its been a long road and its no secret that we have been prepping console versions of Amazing Frog? But we will not be ready for console until we leave Early Access on Steam. Leaving Early access is not the end of Amazing Frog? its another beginning for the game. This is how we will leave Early access and we are close now.
-
Cops and Robbers
An update that will not only bring cops and robbers and the prison back which would lead to bat frog, joke frog etc, but this will also bring cop frogs that will attempt to enforce Frog Law. This actually extends to all kind of behaviour that I will talk about later . -
UFO and tractor Beam
- This will be inevitable Alien Invasion. its mostly done but not quite ready for launch yet, but the UFO will have pretty cool abilities. All the Outfits
- We know how important the OG Frog outfits are to you and we will not leave early access without them unlockable in the game! ( and the new ones)-
Party Mode
- We need to do a few more passes on Party Mode, but I do not think we need to fully complete all the modes etc before we leave Early Access. -
The Magical Mystery Toilet
- Where is it ? Its important to get all the stuff in the game before I finish and release the Magical Mystery toilet mechanics. I ghave my reasons, because trust me things are going to get wierd... whats the point of a UFO if you cannot dump it in the toilet? what does that do??? etc -
That Statue on the island....
well more on that later.
Hello and welcome to a Frog Blog... its been a while since I wrote a Frog Blog for Amazing Frog? particularly for Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet.
I wanted to let you know what we had been working on and that Amazing Frog? QMMT part 4 will be available very soon.
Its going to be a pretty big Update. Hal, Georgina and I played using Steam Remote Play for a few hours and I recorded it. Then we edited it down to some "Raw Gameplay videos" which I think give a rough idea of the scope of the coming update.
This first "RAW Gameplay" is from Swindonshire
[previewyoutube=I4PpCZYJuj0;full][/previewyoutube]
In Swindonshire
So since the last update we have been flooding Swindonshire with a bunch of content and new areas. Also Hal has been making improvements throughout the world. What we are aiming for is a more complete and populated Swindonshire, so exploration is fun.
Trains - (In Next Update)
It had seemed important to have trains in Swindonshire for some time now. Thanks to Hal's ingenuity he can now integrate train tracks to the terrains. (you may notice some improvements in the roads in general)
The Farm - (In Next Update)
There be a farm out there somewhere and maybe some pigs live there.
Tractors are a lot of fun actually. Having a Farm is more than cosmetic. There are things we are working on for QMMT that need a farm... or a bank or whatever. When I am asked what the berrys or mushrooms do and whats the point of collecting them... well hopefully it will all begin to make sense.
The Army Base - (In Next Update)
We have been working on some Army stuff... I guess you can imagine how that will pan out...
I mean Tanks ... yeah they still need some tweaking and some wierd things can happen...
Also, we are all agreed here that the Army Helicopter needs a machine gun...
Frog Life
Frog Life Keeps progressing. With all these new archetypes of Frog Life(or non life) Zombies, Army, Farmer, skeleton etc...etc we have been trying to refine their characteristics, motivations and stimulae and I try and find as much time as i can to push our wierd frog AI a bit further each time. All so we can get more enjoyment out of the NPC Frogs. As part of this process we have been trying to make it easier to create and manage different archetypes. (I hope one day as a player you can make and share your types of Frog Life) So we'll see how this develops.
The Party Mode Beta? - (In Next Update)
This other 'RAW Gameplay' video is us playing 'Free Play' mode in our new revision of the Party Mode Beta. [previewyoutube=9_228khBeio;full][/previewyoutube] In the new "Party Mode Beta", Initially we'll be making the "Free Play" mode available, but we have many more modes in development that you will be able to use through 'Remote play' or even play in the same space... you know like on a sofa. Also some Modes in Party Mode, including 'Free Play', will also be open as single player as well. To give an idea, the mode names we are working with right now (and I hope they are self explanitory) are :
- Free Play (In Next Update)
- Crown Capture (SOON)
- Survival (SOON)
- Last Frog Standing (SOON)
- Deathmatch(+Team Deathmatch)(SOON)
- Balloon Burst(Working Title)
- Bomb Tag(Working Title)
There are a whole bunch of new party mode worlds coming too.
Party !
The scope for Party Mode is huge. We can experiment and develop all kinds of modes without destabalizing Swindonshire and the moon etc. Some modes could be based entirely on vehicles or odd scenarios. We're excited. Being Green can help -
Spot the Frog
Development - So things have been getting tougher more recently.
Its no secret that we bit of more than we can chew by adding in a lot of content, (especially Party Mode Beta)- but we have also been trying to leave Early Access. Its silly having Amazing Frog? and Amazing Frog?2 both in Early access.
Leaving Early Access for us means hitting Amazing Frog? with a stamp of approval saying "we think its ready".
We need to get Amazing Frog? to a more well produced and refined state . This will not mean we are done working on Amazing Frog? we have a lot more to come after we leave Early Access. But at the point we leave Early Access we are also saying that Amazing Frog? is ready for the console versions which we have been very active in working on too. Over the past year we have made signifiate progress on Switch which I think is the hardest one. Giving Amazing Frog? this "stamp of approval" adds up to a lot of different things, ranging from User Interface, such as on screen help to encourage first time players to hit the stand button when they think the game is broken as they watch the frog flop around in the hideout. To managing how content is loaded and saved in a more professional manner or run time management code running on sperate threads so we don't get code churning and what of percieved as "lag" when you go between active zones. Its difficult having to focus on all this boring stuff , when all in all I just want to add time controls or a massive blob monster and online multiplayer. A daily dilemma... Then I remember - these things can continue to happen after we leave Early Access any way.
So stand by - QMMT part 4 is almost ready and will contain a proper Beta of Party Mode, Army Frogs, Tanks, Jeeps, Zombie Apocalypse, aliens and whole bunch of stuff. Most importantly it will begin wave of rapidly successive updates for Amazing Frog? QMMT as we enter the summer and hopefully leave Early Access ...finally.
Its Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet Part 3. Finally starting to feel like we are making some good progress not just in the rebuild but also in the newer things we have been adding.
[ WORKING ON TRAILER ]
Learn to fly
Flight school has reopened its doors for new cadets! At the moment you can test your helicopter skills with four new courses. Enter the hangar, find each colour and get flying. Race against your best time. A pilot hat will be awarded to those skilled enough to complete all four courses and the second hangar will open.
Jet a load of this!
Swindonshire now has its very own aerobatics display team! Introducing the "Green Arrows". Find their jets at the runway and take them for a spin. This brand new aircraft includes an ejector seat to safety exit mid flight. Just remember to eject before any accidental collisions!
Movers and shakers
Ever wish you could transport more items around the map than you can physically carry? Try the new removal van now and pack it full with everything you could possibly need.
This is the first time in Amazing Frog? that you can transport a secure stash conveniently with some "it's bigger on the INSIDE!" technology.
Alligators sighted at the pond!
They're quite hungery too so be careful.
Take one of the new airboats found in the pond for a ride and see whats lurking in the waters.
The boats are fast but...
Try attaching some balloons with a balloon device for less resistance and more speed!
Missing the Jetpacs?
All three jetpacs are back! Two of them are easy to find the last is more tricky, maybe the flies can help.
They work from the saddle too....
Fly catching
These little guys are out in the wild again. See if you can find all three, they might be keeping hold of something useful.
To clear some things up...
Save files have been an issue. Even we lost track of what was unlocked in Legacy and converted. All the jet packs and fly heads were not officially unlockable in QMMT (until now) but there are still transfered legacy saves that are not available yet to unlock in QMMT 'officially'- like Joke Frog. These will become obselete as they will be unlocked in QMMT, but the unlock process may be different. SO we made them available in a new 'legacy" tab in the wardrobe.
Also XMAS stuff is back in- The Holiday Part of the update has been resolved to be a more perminant feature in December. I will set up an Event on Steam about the Xmas stuff. Also I am aiming to introduce some more content before Xmas - its kind of a tradition for me to put a last minute build out on the big day before i relax into some choco and mince pies
Heres to you
Finally we wanted to shout out everyone who voted for us for Labour of Love for the Steam Game awards. We appreciate all of your continued support. And for those who were expecting part 3 to be a zombie apocalypse it's coming real soon, we need a bit more time for contamination control
Don't make me beg...
Ok too late.
Vote now.
Vote PLEASE...
Vote for Amazing Frog?
If you have followed us since we first put Amazing Frog? though Greenlight and then launched on Steam 9 years ago, then you will know how much we love making this game.
It's all we do.
Now that we have Amazing Frog? and Amazing Frog? 2 we are super excited about what's coming up. Not just towards the end of this year, but into 2024 and of course beyond.
100s more updates, forever Amazing, forever Frog?
Become the Pump King in Swindon today.
Why settle for 5 nights when you can get 6 nights in Amazing Frog? Pick up the pumpkin and unleash Hell in Swindon Today.
Happy Halloween. Heres a spooky take on Coronation Mode for Halloween. A bit of spooky fun before part three of the Quest For the Magical Mystery Toilet is ready. On that note.. watch out for poltergeists and ghost objects. Literally you may be able to walk right through some things... ok ok we'll fix that.
[previewyoutube=bZw6kB3OSC0;full][/previewyoutube] This update also includes some major improvements to the "frog life" systems. No I am not saying you will never see a "T poser" again, but I have spent a bunch of time stabilizing that aspect of the game.
Some Game Dev stuff (If you like that kind of thing)
Basically one of the big enhancements of QMMT since Legacy is our ability to have frogs everywhere. We have been working on this for a while with the goal of helping the gameplay scale across the whole world. When I talk about the frogs customization system or placement and organization of dynamic objects I have my system acronyms like W.R.A.P.S. and F.A.P.S. I don't really have an acronym for this system other than AAARRGH maybe.
I tentatively call it Scheduling and Priming. So Wildlife/population or as I call them in code 'Avatars' are "primed" everywhere thanks to Hals ingenious placement systems that he has been creating in Houdini on the landscape for trees, flowers grass (not just for Avatars) Then with a kind of bespoke LOD thing we built I bring them in and out. This is why there will be sharks at every beach ( although this can be tricked by having two or more players on different beaches ) Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of this system, aside from the mental torture it inflicted on my brain, was that if it doesn't clear up properly we get T posers which were frogs that were supposed to be deactivated but had refused to do so. Its an evolving system. You may notice it in Amazing Frog? 2 (V3) when that update drops soon.
Things that are not ready
So... Jet Pac can be unlocked by killing giant moon worm. Although currently, its very difficult. The giant moon worm can be ridden straight into the green lazer beam, but it would take some kind of a genius to work out how to do that.
Balloon pac and Fly pac officially are not unlockable yet. Currently they are only accessible if they were unlocked during Legacy and then a version prior to Last year of Remastered was opened. (Sounds like a Monty Python Sketch) I am genuinely sorry for those that expect to have the back pacs because they had them in Legacy. There are so many right and wrong ways to simultaneously remaster and recreate a game I only know this way and I am 99% sure I am doing it the right way. Of course, I could just make the back pacs all available in the dispenser round the back of the hideout for every one, temporarily, but at this point it won't be long. Making them all available feels like a 'game breaking' thing to do. The Magic for the Toilet is coming, its mostly built. Unfortunately there is nothing I can 'bring' over from Legacy and to be honest I wouldn't want to. The magic for the toilet will give you access to all the toys you could drop in before, saddles for all creatures (although I think a saddle gun may be a good idea.), poop heads, mini pigs, pimped up vehicle and the shark blimp its all coming, but with more.
Wardrobe
This is typical really, but let let me tell you a story.
Did you know a major bug of the last update ( QMMT part 2 "Beaches Be Crazy" ) was the wardrobe exit not working and thats this bug was actually caused by fixing a bug you may not have even noticed. The bug I fixed the night before I released QMMT part 2 was that if player one entered a spawnPoint toilet and then player two entered a spawnPoint toilet before player one has left then they fused into each other and it was game over... It took a while to fix, you'd think it would be simple, these things never are and then I uploaded and I did not think to go and change my clothes in the wardrobe after fixing. So I missed it. Its fixed now sorry, Game development has its ups and downs.
The balloon Jet pack, Fixed?
This is tricky. I knew it wasnt quite right for some time, but for some reason I forgot that you used to be able to unlock the balloon pack via Legacy. I used to invisibly import your Legacy save file and convert it. In retrospect this was a silly thing to have done. Its difficult to keep track of progress when progress is coming from two different places and the reality is I really wanted the game to offer the unlock to the balloon jet pack and balloon gun differently than just throwing stuff in the toilet. To put it bluntly fixing an issue with the balloon jet pack wasnt a major priority for me since it wasnt officially 'unlockable' in QMMT yet. ironically, the fly pack (only unlockable from Legacy currently) works so much better in QMMT than it ever could have with Legacy Physics. Long story short - I fixed balloons but I still want to spend some more time with them over the coming weeks.
This image by the wind farm is a classic representation of this issue of Legacy | QMMT confusion - balloon jet pack and shark hat unlocked in Legacy and a blood world Tshirt that is only available in the QMMT bloodworld, in the coffee shop (...To be completely honest, I don't know as I am writing this, if that T shirt award is currently working now the physics has been changed.)
Either way, QMMT does a few other types of things will balloons
Grapple hooks missing?
On or off right ? how can we make such and unforgivable mistake?
This was an issue with the load process similar to the trophys not working (which i have also attempted to fix). I cannot guarentee its completely fixed as nothing in life is certain, but it should be more stable. The saving in QMMT is very robust, but the reading and implemetation of the saved data still needs work - this is one of the main reasons for the delay of the "Magic" in the Magical mystery Toilet. There will be a lot of 'unlocks' from MMToilet activity and a need to represent those unlocks.
Either way it was a lot fo fun double checking the balloon pack and grapple hook are still in good working order. I am trying to get in the habbit of making a video each update since our intention is to make these upcoming regular updates more content based. Either way, it was fun to mess around with what had been fixed. [ ... YouTube video here when finished ... ]
T Posing Frogs
Let me be clear - I have NOT fixed this yet... its is kind of freaky. However, it is a symptom of something good and something evolving. Before we made the changes to prepare for the Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet, having lots of Frogs and physics objects in the world was not possible in Amazing Frog? On the one hand, we could have drawn influence from great games like Human Fall Flat and made lots of smaller seperate environments with less physics objects in each, but we don't really roll like that. I think in our heads we are still trying to make our own Zelda/GTA/Tony Hawks Hybrid. (Skateboards coming soon) So to explain the T posing ( or frozen, non simulating , non animating) frogs are actually continuing to work, but in their lowest LOD level. A LOD level they should not be in when so close to the player.
(Community Screen shot click to see) Another symptom of this problem is shown by taking a sniper rifile and shooting something very far away, where currently the bullet might phase through the targeted object (I need to address this by activating objects via the scope). To enable more frogs and objects and vehicles etc, etc... Amazing Frog? now adds and removes objects from simulation, this was the only way we could bring content to the new world. (also it happens to be the bedrock of our evolving Online systems) So when I see them I know how far we have come ... but I guess without knowing what we have been building in the background it looks like we are just moving backwards... We are not. So if you see T posing frogs and Objects not in simulation - walk away quite far then come back and they will be working like the Tyre was.
Also happy to hear of any non simulating objects - like the Fan by the Magical Mystery toilet... which I just noticed i did not manage to fix in this update.
Legacy
It took me a while but Legacy is now available on a beta Branch called Legacy Branch. I know you guys never really read these posts ...( I mean. if I am being honest I wouldn't if I was playing a game I would just get on with it too...) but despite what people were saying in the forums last week, Hal and I never intended to take Legacy away from any one. I simply needed it on a new branch and these things take time. There are so many reasons to put it on a new branch. Its the kind of thing I could waffle about while making a you tube video comparing the two version, but here are two simple reasons
- I intend to be updating QMMT like crazy until we have UFO, aliens, sandwiches, money, an inventory, a big f*ckin' blob monster and a whole host of othert crazy sh*t we have been developing and uploading an non-updatable version of Legacy with it each time is a pain.
- Lets say I do decide to suddenly open up my old single core PC and get an urge to update Legacy because I love punishing myself... It would not really be possible to do so if I had to upload it with QMMT - the main Version of Amazing Frog?
A Note about Amazing Frog? QMMT , Amazing Frog? 2 and Amazing Frog? Legacy.
We have been working on Amazing Frog? since 2012, Launched on OUYA 2013, on Steam the end of 2014 (where most of dev has taken place) iOS 2019 and Android 2022 (Android could not support Legacy tech). Origionally, what we now refer to as Legacy was built for single core machines, this is why Legacy does not run great on more modern multi-core machines (its embarrasing) , but it may appear to perform well on older single/dual core machines. Also it is near impossible to edit or develop Legacy on newer multicore machines. We didnt start QMMT (formally known as remastered) until just over two years ago and we did so alongside Amazing Frog?2. QMMT is built with the evolving system that we have built from the ground up since 2020 to drive Amazing Frog? 2 . Visually it uses remastered assets from Legacy and new assets that we have been integrating and building. Since we started QMMT we even had to completely rebuild the landscape and change to a new rendering system. I believe whole heartedly that this process is worth it. So that Amazing Frog? can Leave Early Access on Steam with a more well rounded and complete game - Amazing Frog? Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet, can go to Console. All while we continue to evolve Amazing Frog? 2 to have more sandbox style, online gameplay much of which we can bring back to extensions to Amazing Frog? QMMT here on Steam in the future. Feel free to dissagree with the way we develop, that bigger companies "do it better" -I know we do it different, but it makes sense to us. So... It may seem that we have been away for a while, but we have been busy as f*ck. Hopefully over the next few weeks this will become apparant. Also still no decision on the second part of the name for Amazing Frog?2 - but also a gentle reminder - Amazing Frog? 2 while it is currently included in a purchase of Amazing Frog? soon it will be sold seperately to new players, this will not change the for those that own it already.
So I guess it would make sense to launch a Halloween update right now, but these beaches... well they needed their buggies.
[previewyoutube=Fin3-XCQMnM;full][/previewyoutube]
They are a pretty robust all terrain vehicle. They climb hills better that the other vehicles.
Helping you see the sights.
But more importantly as we develop more of the Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet additions like these beach buggys help you reach other places with ease
But also they are a lot of fun to drive and we made some crazy ramps on the beach.
You may notice a few extra capes too. We are happy to finally find ourselves in a position where we can update the games easily. Now we can push forward and complete the Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet.
Welcome to Amazing Frog? Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet ( part one )
Part One is major mile stone for Amazing Frog? Introducing the Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet means that the "remastering" process, that began just over a couple of years ago is now over and we are focused on bringing new content to Amazing Frog? again. [previewyoutube=3eVuUo7E1WI;full][/previewyoutube]
Mostly a whole new world ... mostly
Since the coronation update in May, which saw a whole new swindonshire, we have been refining the world closer to its definitive form (minus a few more architechtural features still yet to come) and also fine turning and beautifying.
In this more developed world you should be able to discover flowers among the grass and items to forage for. Collecting things is currently a W.I.P that we have been wanting to introduce for some time. So if you collect 100s of berries or mushrooms , poop or whatever the numbers will carry to future updates so feel free to stock up. (some items will be more useful than others depending on your aspirations)
One of our main issues in previous updates and versions (including Amazing Frog ? 2) has been physics limitations over the large scale environment. For example, sharks would not appear everywhere in the sea once they had first appeared and we were limited with roaming NPC frogs. So this is one of the main features of this update allowing more life, vehicles, objects, interactions ...more physics everywhere basically. Its comes at a cost in that the system is new, and baby systems can bring more bugs. Nonetheless, having more frogs has also given us the opportunity to enhance their motivations.
Beaches be crazy
More Frogs have taken trips to the beach! The new landscape encourages it with all the new beach spots.
With plenty of places to sit on a towel and soak up the sun.
Since we have been lookling at how the frogs of Swindonshire behave there are more frogs out and about... more astronauts ( or worm food ) on the moon and SSP (Swindon space program ) frogs in the lab. Watch out! not all frogs that you will meet will be friendly.
We conside this update to be the tip of the iceberg and we are going to aim to get you Part Two before the end of October.
Considering the content of part two, its important that we get it out before the end of October.
Where's Legacy?
In short I removed it... We felt like it was time to move on. But give us some time and I will set it up on a beta branch called 'Legacy'. I appeciate that some players like to look back and play the older versions we have just been very busy moving forward recently.
It has been a while since we published a Frog Blog. Generally in favour of posting updates rather than Frog Blogs. We are reaching a pretty crucial milestone so now seems like a good time to start the Frog blogs again. If you were worried that we may have abandoned Amazing Frog? We have not. Amazing Frog? has always been in ongoing development. Thanks so much for your patience.
More recently, a lot has changed even since The Coronation Update and in all our time developing Amazing Frog? these past few months have been the most groundbreaking and definitive, not just for V2 but also V3. On that subject, I would like to start by saying -
We really need to change the terms V2 and V3
When I talk about the two versions of Amazing Frog? as V2 and V3 it feels awkward as these terms have become outdated. Technically V1 is the OUYA version, but thought the process of bringing AF? to Steam it became V2 .V2 is Legacy and since Remastered, but soon it will become the first complete version of Amazing Frog? Logically this would mean V3 would become the second complete version of Amazing Frog? - Amazing Frog? 2 Both versions are set in the world of Swindon, Swindonshire which is mostly inhabited by the same wildlife ...mostly. However, V2 is now is reaching its 1.0 status and V3 is only just getting started. On the surface, the idea of a small indie team working on two evolving versions of a game may seem ludicrous. Often, when I am discussing Amazing Frog? and talking about these 2 versions I feel like I am projecting and air of insanity. Hal and I know there are deeper reasons as to why we are working simultaniously on two unfinished, evolving versions. Its our process. One to complete and one to evolve our game technology.
The renaming of V2 and V3.
Amazing Frog? : The Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet (QMMT for short) This will be the new title for what is currently Amazing Frog? V2 Remastered and this title will go across all platforms As V3 now enters into a more experimental phase of its existence as it is no longer tethered to the V2 Remastering process it will likely bear a temporary Working Title of "Next Gen" Amazing Frog? Next Gen ( working title formerly V3 ) We are completely undecided on the title at this stage, more development need to take place. To give you some idea here are a fraction of the titles we are toying with.
- Amazing Frog? Second Wind
- Amazing Frog? Follow Through
- Amazing Frog? Fallen Heroes
- Amazing Frog? World of Farts
- Amazing Frog? Kingdom of Farts
- Amazing Frog? After Flush
- Amazing Frog? Second Flush
- Amazing Frog? Hell come To Frog Town
- Amazing Frog? Toadal Recall
- Amazing Frog? Aftermath
- Amazing Frog? Chronic Wind
- Amazing Frog? Froggy Mc Frogface
- Amazing Frog? Farter Starter
- Amazing Frog? Twisted Farter Starter
- Amazing Frog? The isles of Guff
- Amazing Frog? Spawn
- Amazing Frog? Quest for a Hero
- Amazing Frog? Invasion of the Penis Snatchers
So Development.
What has been taking so Long, Gaz? Nothing has stopped us developing, we work on Amazing Frog? continuously and still love it.
A Finished Version
Our main goal has been to create a finished version of Amazing Frog? in which we can realize some of the core narrative elements we have been working towards. When I say narrative I dont mean presenting a literal story mode, moreso presenting a structured and continuous sense of purpose thoughout Swindonshire, but without compromising the free roaming aspect of the Amazing Frog? gameplay.
Technical Challenges
To give us the freedom to expand on the gameplay and make way for more content (especially physics content ) we needed to push through some major technical barriers. Barriers that had existed since Legacy. While we have made good progress breaking these barriers over the years, it is only recently we have managed to smash through them.
For example, one of these barriers has been a limitation on the number of physics objects in Swindonshire. We came up with a solution allowing us to introduce more physics based content like frogs, creatures, vehicles, things to pick up sit on etc.. into what was a sporadically empty Swindonshire. This solution also ensures Amazing Frog? can run on lower spec devices without loosing all the physics fun. In fact even with all this new content it will run even better on lower spec devices than the last update across all platforms. These improvements will be for all existing platform versions of QMMT, the upcoming console releases and they will also benefit Next Gen.
Beware The Chaos
Rewards do not come without cost. The development time to implement these changes puts a lot of pressure on us while we are trying to also move content forward. In the short terms I expect to suffer from some serious bug anxiety Whilst these series of optimisations do yield huge physics performance increases, these new optimizations may lead to some unexpected wierdness. (Yay new bugs and edge cases ). With this in mind we are taking an embrace the chaos approach to the devolopment and we bring QMMT to its final form. So despite the chaos, Its exciting that these enhancements have given us more creative and development freedom to populate Swindonshire with a more reckless abandon and allow us to evolve many of the features as we had originally intended. Frogs as Far as the eye can see.
Updates Are coming...
And things are going to get weird.
Also as we ramp up to 1.0 and leave Easy Access there will be a series of Updates and eventually including the "The Hero's Journey" to unlock the power of Amazing Frog? in The Quest For the Magical Mystery Toilet
[previewyoutube=odJg2_0GC0o;full][/previewyoutube]
THE CROWN
Its time to take on the Crown... The frogs of Swindonshire cannot resist the desire rule.
Let it be known that whom so ever wears the crown on their head, indeed has a crown on their head.
Who is the rightful ruler of these lands ?
Or indeed of other lands... Like the moon.
THE MOON
Incidentally, the moon is open again.
THE REMASTERING PROCESS
Swindonshire has now been remastered with more detail and something we have been working on for some time. While there are still improvements to come, the remastering process for Amazing Frog? is near completion. Amazing Frog? now runs in what is called Universal Render Pipeline and throughout this month we are preparing Amazing Frog? to leave Early Access with a flurry of Updates. Everything still outstanding from Legacy such as the Toilet, a not so Secret invasion and more.
LEGACY WILL MOVE
It is worth mentioning that within a week or so Legacy will be moved to a beta branch, so that this new version can stand on its own without confusion.
V3 and V2 will grow seperately
Also, we will be separating Amazing Frog? and Amazing Frog? V3 this month too. Currently, if you purchase either App you get access to both, so If you have already bought Amazing Frog? or Amazing frog ?V3 this information will not effect you. At some point soon "Amazing Frog?" and "Amazing Frog? V3" will need to exist as separate purchases. This is because "Amazing Frog? V3" will remain in Early Access after Amazing Frog? has left Early Access. Hope that makes sense.
This is the way ...right?
[previewyoutube=W1U_yXDPaNA;full][/previewyoutube]
Happy Holidays, as we take our first step into melee combat in Amazing Frog? that you can now play around with in this festive Kickin' Update.
As you may know, Remastered is the process where we have been rebuilding the entirety of Amazing Frog? in a more updatable format to allow us to continue development and continue adding more content.
Some things may feel different, like the way we count snowmen and SCP. Saving and notifications have to be upgraded from Legacy. Ultimately, we cannot carry all your legacy data to Remastered. We try where possible, but it can be restrictive adhering to saved data that derived from a different process. For example the fly pac, jet pac and balloon pack from legacy are still (temporarily) available from your legacy save file, but eventually they will need to be unlockable via a Remastered process since that aspect of the game will be completely rebuilt anyway.
( I am very excited about the new toilet ... aka object transformation system with an even stronger flush... er... which will be coming in a future update )
Fish...
Yes, we have added fish, not to the sea, to the vending machine... thinking about it we should probably put them in the sea... I better double check its on our list.
So... we have extended the number of objects that you can hit things with. In our minds we have made melee weapons work much better, give them a go, but please wait till New year to inform us if you don't like it, feeling sensitive... might be able to turn off the blood...
I should point out we consider this to be Melee Part 1. The tip of the Amazing Frog? combat system iceberg.
Hal and I have been chatting about Combat for years, looking at other games... fighting in the office etc etc But Combat is a gateway to deeper frog mechanics and smarter npcs. Under the hood there were a lot of changes to make this happen and so while it may not look like there is much "content" - this is huge for us.
- Try kicking the wheels one by one on a vrog, for some lowrider action.
With character systems in mind, I want to shine a spot light on the zombies...
We have upgraded their movement and attack systems.. Again its not something you may notice unless looking for it. but in doing so we also looked at how all NPC frogs will respond to being attacked, by a player or each other.
So watch out, they hit back!
And they can hold a grudge so watch where you are swinging your foot around.
Now Kneel before the new Diorama on the title screen !
Also please throw any suggestions of what we could have in that diorama to help new players or returning old players see what's possible in the world of Amazing Frog? (V2 Remastered) Kick Boxing also included...
Just in time for Halloween, Blood world has returned to Amazing Frog? 'Remastered'. So you can get your smashin' pumpkins on.
Fire !!!
Watch out for those flamethrowers! Playing with fire can be very explosive.
We are glad to be getting more of the core legacy features available in 'Remastered'.
New Collection System
Swindon Citizen Points ( S.C.P. ) and other collectables are now functioning in a newly remastered system. ( Basically saving and collecting things )
This brings back the cats, trophies, post (mail) boxes, Vending Machines that dispense Ammo ( goodbye infinite ammo ) and whole load of collectable rubbish.
The systems behind saving data like S.C.P. needed rebuilding for Remastered (...and my sanity ) As part of this process we reintroduced many achievements along with some new ones. We quite like the t-shirts in remastered and there are quite a few of these added, with more to come. The key to the city has also been remastered. Frog Milk Coffee Co. is still in development. All in all pretty happy with how the new system works and it should be straight forward adding more 'saveables' as we continue the remastering process of V2. Note: as far as S.C.P. goes... sorry I could not bring the S.C.P. from your legacy save file like did for the costumes and accessories, but at least now we can add more S.C.P. goals.
SPAWN POINT APP
Check out the Spawn Point App, It allows you to fast travel to lots of locations including separate worlds that you have visited. Either enter a Spawn point Toilet to unlock a Spawn Point entry or visit a new world For example after you visit blood world you can then access blood world from the spawn point app. Its also handy in the sewer for completing the microscope tasks ;)
Revisited the the Sewer and Lab
We made another pass on the Sewer and The Lab. If you did complete the microscopes on the last update, well done... we certainly couldn't! it should be fixed and tweaked now so you can grab the launch codes.
Also we put a ladder in the sewer to help with key card retrieval. So getting those launch codes and then fuelling the Space rocket should now be achievable.. You should also be able to visit the Moon. But its in development! and while you can't go outside yet, you can still have fun with the new lasers !
PEW PEW PEW
Party Mode
I never formally introduced Party Mode, this is because in the last update in June I didn't find the time to write words to go with the update. Party Mode is currently running as a split screen death match. We had been wanting to add this mode for some time to V2. It will evolve as we develop the rest of remastered. For now I will just remark that it is there, and that when we add some larger features and play modes I will make more of a big deal about it :)
Fix it! Fix it! Fix it!
Should be a lot of fixes.. Honestly we have lost track, we don't tend to list each fix we make we just move on to the next one and keep going often finding ourselves back at the problem we fixed a month ago. progress. Also, Remastered has a lot of new features that legacy didn't. Like choosing your frog. While playing in single or 4 player at any point you can choose your frog and start playing as one of the other avatars. There are also many types of objects that just don't exist in legacy like BMXs, mopeds, biplanes (with guns) or temporary balloon cannisters and flaming hot grills on the bbq. NOTE: (if you don't know the difference between 'Legacy' and 'Remastered' - in short Legacy was build over several years with older architecture and to continue developing Legacy we have to rebuild from the ground up. This rebuilt version is called 'Remastered' and is being actively developed to supersede Legacy.)
There are many improvements/fixes, some of these revolve around the NPCS , population density should work now and the frogs will no longer get caught in the gym. Modifications to cameras (eg on vehicles) while we still want to expand on the melee system we have also fixed some of the issues to do with using them. I know there are many more fixes, I just don't know what they all are, some of them you may not have even known were issues. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Worth noting that since we have been building remastered for other platforms too
(Android Releases Nov 1st 2022)
There have been general optimizations throughout all systems. wink. Also we have been testing on Steam Deck and we found it runs well in proton if you force compatibility. Steam have listed us as 'Playable' so that's progress, but we will endeavour to make it 'Verified' soon. (Because Steam Decks Rock) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...In Other news and following up
I realised while writing this post that I didn't post any words in June when we last updated Remastered. I am very sorry about this. In June we added the sewers, introduced the spawn app gave first access to party mode [beta] At the time made this newer trailer, the current official trailer for 'Remastered' which summarizes the previous update pretty well. [previewyoutube=22dbqpq7lz4;full][/previewyoutube] However, now I realise I will need to make a new trailer as this update has so many new features and fixes, but I will wait till the next major update.
Version Information
So Where is Amazing Frog? V3 ...?
So, you will have noticed that Amazing Frog? V3 has Moved to a new App. Please give us some time to get this settled. For now all purchases of Amazing Frog? also reward Amazing Frog? V3 and visa versa. This is because we didn't want to force anyone who had been playing over the years into buying Amazing Frog? again. Initially V3 was created to replace V2... in the natural order of updates. The two versions are now too different. Uploading them separately makes life soooo much easier. Thank you Steam! Regrettably, it does leave the situation quite complicated, but we are working on resolving this and making it clearer. I really need to post a blog on the new app's page. We are actively working on V3 and really excited about where its leading and our plans. We know it needs optimization, but please stick with us we will get there. So stand by for news about V3 very soon...
(And V2 Remastered ) Boom...
Mopeds, Jetskis and Drones is a V3 update.
[previewyoutube=qjYFB1rX7lY;full][/previewyoutube]
Enjoy Mopeds, Jetskis and Drones Amazing Frog? V3 Update here and soon it will be possible to download V3 separately (pending approval). This will make updates much easier to manage for both V3 and V2 remastered. And don't worry! you won't lose your save files from the V3 Beta (I figured out how). It will just mean that V3 will be a separate app with its own steam page, but it is added to the Amazing Frog? package so if you have Amazing Frog? you will automatically have access to the new app.
Mopeds
JetSkis
Drones
Oh.. and Drones can be deadly ...
Enjoy the update and stand by for some summer activity
Some quick Fixes to The Smashing Egg Update.
- Fixed a bug where respawn didn't work correctly after death and selecting same frog.
- Fixed a bug where the Melee Objects like baseball bat, egg, wrench, keyboard etc were hitting you..while very AF?... it was still a bug
- Added new keys to exit devices and pamphlets - C and middle Mouse to exit examine an object
also don't forget to check out the new trailer for The Smashing Egg Event. [previewyoutube=eLKq6UYZwiw;full][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube=eLKq6UYZwiw;full][/previewyoutube]
Smashing Egg Update is a V3 Beta update.
The Egg hunt and the ability to get the Bunny outfit will be available only till the end of April.
Find all the 9 Eggs scattered around Swindonshire, to get the bunny gear.
Use the new Maps to find them.
But its also an update to V3 with more content, fixes and probably more issues.
One main new feature is a new building that we have been meaning to add for some time. Explore the New Tourist Information centre to learn more about SwindonShire.
Also Easter is not just about Breakable chocolate eggs. There are also other smashable items available.
We have made improvement to many things, but there may also be some new issues. I will try and run some hot fixes asap and will keep my eyes on the forums.
This is an update for Beta (V3) you need to be on the beta to get this update.
Spread a little love this February, with the lovely crossbow.
A limited time to improve your wardrobe
Have some fun, Play some games
Some old friends returned, they needed some attention since the Holiday season as they were not knocking other frogs over...They are a work in progress.
These are some Steam Remote Play screen shots. Steam Remote Play has been a great help to us over the past few years when we were often not able to share the same space. We will be using Steam Remote Play a lot especially with the upcoming Remastered (V2) update. Also, we made some fixes and controls updates and Hal put up a whiteboard with some info on how to pilot the biplane. I wanted to say thanks, because in the last update we forgot to test the plane on mouse and keyboard which was majorly stupid. It happens. So thanks so much for pointing that we missed that. We are always grateful for all the feedback.
Note: This is a Beta (V3) update. You need to be on the beta to play. We came up with this style of banner to help demonstrate which version each announcement post relates to. I know I haven't really taken the time to explain what we have been doing with development as much as perhaps I used to over the years. Now is probably not the time to do so and it might serve better to write a separate development blog. Right now, we are in a stronger position to say what's coming up more so than we have been for years. The next update will be a major update to Remastered(V2) where we hope to push more of the original legacy content and new content after which another big update will come to Beta(V3).
This is an Update for V3 Beta - you need to be on the beta branch "V3 Beta (2022)"
Collect the 88 stickers
Get the 88 stickers dotted around, that have been put up in the buildings around Swindon to unlock tiger clothes.
We needed some new clothes for Lunar New Year.
These will only be available for a limited time !
It also has general V3 type progress... Things like crossbows, a new vehicle and a bunch of fixes (and probably some new issues) It may even save where you last were.
This Update is only for V3 Beta, but expect more very soon for both Beta and Remastered.
We had to run a few bug fixes for the Xmas Update for both remastered and beta.
The snowflake challenge in remastered should work... but you only have till the 6th of Jan to get the Tshirt.
The same applies to the onesies in the V3 beta... I forgot to hang them up in the hideout.
The Michael Bay bug where you could blow up everything by putting an NPC on an Xmas tree should has been fixed... sorry.
Thanks for all the feedback, and helping us catch these bugs. Enjoy the pigs, We'll be back very soon with some more updates.
A bit of a tradition for Amazing Frog? to drop an update on Xmas. ( Although, every year, we plan to put the Xmas update out at the beginning of December and it always comes on on 24th or 25th... ) But the dev surge generally helps push Amazing Frog? further.
It generally leaves us with few words to say. So I'll be brief.
I'll just show some images...
We really needed to restructure, so you it would be easier to know what build you are playing is less confusing.
These images above are from Remastered(V2).
V3 is now on the the beta branch only. This is because its 20GB and more demanding.
But we still added a Holiday update for V3, naturally and put the lights back in.
Also careful by the Sea, there is some experimental stuff going on there.
I am sorry I don't have much to say, I will come back after a bit of Xmassin' and do patches and fixes into the new year and will probably find more words to say then...
Happy Holidays !
We have a much better pipeline now with V3, so moving forward it should be easier to submit fixes.
Thanks for catching this one and letting me know, balloons should now spawn from the Helium cannisters in V3. Unlike the balloon Jetpack they are limited by how many balloons they can inflate. Also, you can try sitting on some objects and spawning balloons too.
Thanks for your patience, the Updates start now, with something dark to take us into the winter months. Well, it might seem a little bit violent at points, but it was intended for a halloween special, we just got delayed and perhaps this was also how we responded to being officially rejected by Frog Con this year.
Having said that its been a lot of fun for us playing Amazing Frog? again. This is the first update to Amazing Frog? since the beginning of the year. It may seem like we had disappeared this could not be further from the truth. We have been committed to building Amazing Frog? A better and more expandable Amazing Frog? This new version comes and will continue its development in two parts - The V3 Beta and V2 remastered.
To be clear - There are no Sharks in this update. V2 or V3...
This is not a misdirection. I know we have been guilty of misdirection in the past but in this beta there are NO Sharks in V2 or V3they are just not ready yet. Aquatic life will make its way back into Amazing Frog in due corse. This is one of the main reasons this update is currently only available on the public beta. If you came for sharks come back in a week or so. If you like Frogs, balloons, guns, knives, baseball bats and dynamite and methane then you are good to go :)
The V3 Update
Pop Pop, There are a bunch of new items available in this V3 update. We have begun to categorise them too, toys, weapons, sport equipment etc this helps when we are organising F.A.P.S
F.A.P.S. has seen some significant improvements, you can now remove stuff as well as add stuff. Although in typical Fayju" Style we forgot to put the instructions in for this But when the Gizmo is red you can hit reload and it will remove items in the range of the gizmo that you have placed.
Among some of my favourite improvements in this update is the driving. The cars have been improved. Different cars drive differently. Also they are more stable. For journeys to Swindon On Sea or The Stone Clock the cars are much more reliable. I can actually stay on the roads and Im not a particularly great driver. I dont think there were mobility scooters in the last V3 update ? but they have also been improved and BMXs are back pack compatible.
As well as developing the vehicles, toys and instruments of death, we have also been continuing the refinement of Swindonshire. We began construction of a Dam in order to separate the fresh and salted water. More on this soon because as I said earlier there are no sharks yet! But if you feel like sight seeing its a nice place to visit.
We hadnt really tried much remote play in Amazing Frog? until recently and we were really pleased at how well it ran split screen over a network, so thanks Steam! This doesnt mean we are not still working on online multiplayer, but remote play certainly helped Hal and I test the game remotely. Even if most of the time even if we set out to build something it always ends up with Hal sneaking up on me unaware with some weapon.
But then I can be a bit of a back seat driver when we are testing stuff out.
V2 Remastered
So what is V2 Remastered? - Good question, Gaz thanks! We have been working on V2 built from V3 and we call it "V2 Remastered". In a nutshell we are effectively rebuilding V2 in the V3 code base. As I mentioned before, to build V3 we had to literally start from scratch. In many ways we should have just started building Amazing Frog? 2, but since we never really finished V2 we never really thought that was fair on you guys and Originally our plan was to just update Amazing Frog? We never expected a divide to emerge between V3 and V2.
This remastered version of V2 does not have as many locations as the existing V2. We have put up information in the town planning centre, please check it out. We have seen some significant performance improvements. Since V2 remastered is build from the V3 code basethat means what we add to v3 can also work in V2 remastered and as we recreate all the content from the original V2 this content can manifest in v3 Make sense? Its OK if it doesnt. I started writing a Dev blogs multiple times this year trying to explain this but always figured it would be best if it could just be played.
You will see many core features of V2 have been "taped off while they are in development. As we begin to remove this tape we will put V2 Remastered and V3 onto the default branch instead of beta.
It is worth noting that not all things will return in the same way. Obviously, some things are a given, The Giant Toilet, The moon, grapple hooks, Sharks Ants etc But everything is being rebuilt always with improvement in mind.
This Update is a huge milestone for us. Genuinely. And I cant tell you enough about how excited we are about the next steps. Thanks for keeping up with us this far. On the 22nd of November it will be 7 years we have been on Steam. We should probably take Amazing Frog? Out of early access.
Happy new year! Long time since I wrote one of these... Here is the short version:
On Xmas Day we put a new Amazing Frog? "V3" update out. This was a MASSIVE milestone for us and one that we wish we could have reached sooner. Also, just now, we put another update out with some more UI options better train and car impacts and a bunch of bug fixes.
Now the longer version..
It's taken much more time that we had hoped to get comfortable with "V3" - Or as I now like to call it "Amazing Frog?" We had worked with V2 ( "Legacy" ) for many years and as some of you may know it was build in a very old version of Unity. We tried for many years to bring the Amazing Frog? Legacy version into newer technologies, alas we never felt we could recapture the essence of the Amazing Frog? gameplay. We came close last year with the "halloween V3 beta" but while preparing the next update for last New Year we just felt there were too many holes and neither Hal or I was comfortable with how it played. So throughout 2020 we started again. (When I say started again Its never really from scratch, but we rebuild and restructure)
We wanted to get the core systems more reliable and scalable and maybe I will talk about that in a future blog like the why of F.A.P.S. Our goal has always been for Amazing Frog? To be an online multiplayer game, but for this to happen the underlying structures of the game needed to support this. It will not be too evident yet how the new underlying systems work in this new version of Amazing Frog? , but it is going to help us massively in further development. The bottom line is that you will now begin to see much more frequent updates as we begin 2021. With more updates I expect I will find more time to write more Blogs (unlike now when it is about to strike midnight at the end of 2020 and I am putting this blog together on my Mac in the kitchen )
So rather than go into too much detail about the how and what of Amazing Frog? I'll just try and answer some of the questions that have come our way.
What about V2 content and save files?
We really had to think of them as separate, the beta last year shared save data with V2 and it just caused too many headaches and issues. These were mainly development problems, but ultimately the biggest reason why they will remain separate is because the saved data historically has been one of the most difficult obstacles to over come when adding new content or more specifically new systems. The way the "skins" work in V2 is not how frog customisation works in the new version where we have items of physical clothing. Also by retaining and supporting legacy saved data from 6 years ago it can impact progressive gameplay in a way that is extremely restrictive to how we can develop new gameplay systems in the future. This is one of the main reasons why they are separate.
What will be the frequency of Updates?
They should be more frequent now. If you have played the xmas update this year then you will know that although the world is newer many Amazing Frog? "Usuals" are not present yes, there are only the VROG cars no sharks or alligators, no guns. Basically many of the features we need to redesign, rebuild etc. I would say though, just because there are no sharks today doesn't mean they won't be there very soon. So watch out! We really wanted to put something out at Xmas and many things we held back as they require just a bit more work or need more consideration on how we integrate them to gameplay. I will try and announce updates better this year as now we have this first version we can be more organised about it. Sometimes we may just put a small update out, but there will be big updates like flight school or the sewers which I will try and make a song and dance about and other which will be just about items and expansions.
Are you still going to update V2?
Most likely, yes. We had a bunch of stuff we started for V2 last year and I would like to finish it off.We even had some new costumes but had not completely decided on how you could unlock them, But from this point forward V2 (or Legacy) will not be as high priority as the new version.
Whats the news of other platforms?
I am sorry that I have not made the Mac version yet. I will make one tomorrow and see if it's stable and upload it as soon as possible. After I do this blog hopefully I will be reacquainted with how the Steam Dev portal system works and find a way to post smaller announcements about updates. I haven't had the time yet. Its been annoying how Legacy has not been working on the new OSX software, but Steam Mac version is high on my list. IOS and Android. We get a lot of requests for Android and I did have a version from Legacy back in April, but I could only get it to run in 32bit which made if inferior to the iOS version. I am pretty certain I can pull a mobile device version from what we are working on now, but I need more time as my focus right now is to flood the Steam version with more content and updates. Consoles and whatever - yeah one day but it's a bit out of our reach at the moment as we are still actively developing.
Will There be multiplayer?
Yes Ok? Yes... but not before it's ready and its taking me a me quite some time. We also have lots of other things to implement. It's worth noting, that one of the main reasons for the complete code rewrite this past year was to facilitate Multiplayer at the core. I hate how long its taking me but there you go.
Where is the Day night cycle?
Honestly surprised no one found that.. was doubting we should put it in the game because the zombies were not ready yet. Happy new year all. Thanks for being a part of Amazing Frog?
Hello again,
I must apologise that I have not released any information for a while. As I have said before - I know how important developer blogs are to let you know what we are up to. In this case, I started writing this a few weeks back and then I end up showered in errors( of my own making) :( Mostly I just like to get on with stuff :) Beyond that, I have said it before I find writing frustrating at best :P
So, after The Flight School update at Xmas with the Giant Alligator, we kind of threw things up in the air, purposefully of course! I know many of you were expecting a V3 beta update, it didn't happen ( YET! ) and I shall try to explain why in this post, also I hope to explain what we are working on so you can get an idea of what's happening next in the immediate future and what will follow.
I'll start with what we were going to do. We had intended to follow up the V2 Flight School update with a quick update primarily to help you physically move things around and new toilet overflow system for making unlocked activities like "Giant saddle on Alligator" or "Shark Blimp or flying "Megladon" much easier to reactivate and then we were going to release another V3 beta in the new year. Well, it didn't go as planned and in typical Gaz and Hal style, we changed our minds and decided to smash both those updates into one action I shall explain why but first:
A Few Definitions - V2 and V3
If you are reading this blog with no idea what V2 and V3 are Welcome! To be honest I am not sure I know any more. They are terms we use to describe developments, but things have changed so much. So as I write this - this is how we think of V2 and V3 or to be more specific the version of Amazing Frog? that we are actively working on. V2 describes for us the active version of Amazing Frog? this is defined by being on Steam and also the pocket mode available on IOS this version is built in Unity 4.7.2 and has the downside of being built in older tech but the benefit of having years of content added. V3 describes the newer version of Amazing Frog? that we have been working on in the latest version of Unity it has a much higher resolution environment a day-night cycle is built on much better architecture and we are actively building online multiplayer for it (but have not released that yet) the downside is it does not have as much content as V2 V is effectively short for version. Version 1 was the version on OUYA back when we started, Version 2 we released on Steam and Version 3 is the "future". But just to confuse things I may well change all that. As V2 is changing. The work we are doing on V2 should allow us to distribute it on more platforms meaning there will be multiple versions of V2 more so than just Steam and pocket mode. But I will talk about that in a bit first why has there not been a V3 Beta Holiday Update?
The V3 Beta Update that didnt happen
So why didn't the V3 beta update happen in the new year? A lot of it comes down prioritising out time in line with an overall plan of action. Ultimately, we want to make Amazing Frog? available for more platforms and be able to keep updating it. Last year we made some big steps in this direction, but our methods were slightly flawed and needed change. Basically, in October our intension was for V3 to replace V2 so we would carry on just working on one project - V3. For some time we have felt that V2 was dying, left behind by progressing technology. Our solution to this dilemma was always V3 a new version and also a chance to erase our mistakes and build something cleaner and more professional. Perhaps blinded by pride and ambition we felt the best course of action was for V3 to replace V2. We converted what we felt we needed from V2 to augment what we had created for V3 and throughout 2019 were of the mindset that V3 would replace V2 and during this ongoing process, we spawned the V3 beta of Halloween 2019. Unfortunately, we started to see the error of our ways in that we had approached this process with the wrong mentality. We found ourselves saying things like - We dont need X or Y feature from V2 as we can simply recreatefeature X or Y as we continue V3 development. This process was going to force us to spend more of our time building and not leave us in a position to release much. One example of this is that I didn't take any of the weapons or pick up mechanics from V2 as I reprogrammed holding items to work with a new character system in V3 (honestly its much better in V3) V3 started to feel like it should be a sequel and not a successor. In thinking of V3 as the successor to V2 it paled in comparison. It was like going back to the barrenAmazing Frog? versions of 2015 before we had added sharks even, but with better models, nicer mechanics and real-time lighting. It was beginning to feel like we were taking leaps backwards for the sake of some more contemporary technology. Obviously, we are not going to stop Developing V3, we want a day-night cycle, we want frog fingers! we want online multiplayer and we want to make F.A.P.S". a thing but we are not ready to lose everything else that we have built up over the past few years in V2 and the dilemma is we couldnt integrate what we have in V2 without rebuilding it all so we changed our philosophy.
Messing about with a Giant Alligator Opened my mind
I was not happy with how I was rushing V3 to replace V2 - As December 2019 approached, we wanted to deliver a fun V3 Beta Update. I found I was just taking things from V2 to make V3 better and started to feel uncomfortable with this approach. V3 needed more time and careful consideration to be as fun as V2. From a development point of view, for me as the programmer at least- there is a certain clarity and purity about V3. This is because it allows me to build more complex core systems, like Multiplayer, and integrate them from the ground up. Rushing content in was breaking the integrity of the project and not what V3 was supposed to be. Xmas is always a panic month for us, I no longer remember Xmas without an Amazing Frog? Update and honestly, I love it. Throughout 2019 we had planned to replace V2 with V3, but by the time November hit I realised how this was not a possibility in the short term. I distracted myself by making a Xmas V2 mobile version. I didn't think it was possible any more as Unity 4 was so out of date. Nonetheless, for a distraction, I thought I would give it a go and with some weird workarounds I found a way and put the Xmas content onto Apple and I found myself in V2 project again with Xmas knocking at the door for a Steam update... So I made a giant Alligator, OK? Initially, I was just experimenting, but after chatting with Hal we decided to go all out on the Flight school Update for a bit. We had kind of shelved Flight School in April or May after the Drone Update in favour of concentrating all our energy and resource on V3. Simply put - I couldnt bear not having a Holiday updateSo we reactivated it, crunched and launched that at Xmas
...Meanwhile
We had been prepping a V3 Beta update Among other things, Hal made onesies for every outfit from v2 into an actual onesie in the V3 Beta that you can change into (if unlocked in V2) We were pretty excited. We made the cars better and more of them, added a film studio, replaced the landscape with a higher detailed Landscape, fixed a bunch of the silly door bugs like when you enter the Hal made a Xmas light generator and we hung a few pictures in the Gallery.
Actually we did a bunch of stuff we are always making progress, but for now, we put a pin in V3.
You will get a V3 beta Update, but first, we wanted to try a different road
A Fresh Perspective.
In JanuaryHal and I had a careful think about where we were with development. Subsequently, we took the difficult decision to convert EVERYTHING from the V2flight school update to Unity 2019.3 (the software we build V3 in). Once we had come to terms with the inevitable fact that V3 was not ready to replace V2 there was only one road we could walk down and we havegoneall out on that route. A complete conversion of V2 with nocontent left behind opens many new doors too. It's a big change in direction, but one we are both pretty happy with. Some times you have toanalyse your actions very critically and break a few things to make progress. Maybe not in a Thanos wayDisclaimer - We are not advocates of Thanos' philosophies, but more in and eggs and omelette kind of way.
There are still a few outstanding issues from me in the systems conversion, but this has given Hal plenty of time to go nuts on the V2 landscape. So much is now possible in V2 now the project is in 2019.3, trees, rocks, water landscape features would now be available in V2. Making the world feel much more as we originally intended but could not originally achieve. In some tests, it has run better on my older laptop than Flight school. Finally, V2 is taking advantage of newer processors and graphics cards. More detail does make it easier to get lost in SwindonShire.
Its been a really productive few months and I think we are on the cusp of our best update ever. The oddest thing is its V2 update.. only it doesnt feel like V2 any more.
I cannot lie converting the ENTIRE project from unity 4.7.2 to Unity 2019.3 has not been without its issues, but...
Grass
I cant tell you how long we wanted grass.and lawn.
trees...
and rocks...
rocks and trees...
did I mention trees?
cos we have trees now
and metal trees obviously
And better water (with wildlife in it)
I hope the images explain what we are doing. I always feel there is so much more to say. I was going to talk about the pitfalls and problems we had with game design if you can call it that. Like how the balloon Jet pack, for example, has been a hindrance as much as an advantage in designing what features we add next to the game. Or how we feel about just being 2 developers and should we expand? Or that GDC got postponed, or like how we will make it easier to move big objects around and not take a day to get a saddle on a giant alligator or the Hat app or more practical things like building a Fayju account system so you can save data across platforms and not lose it, or that we will output Flight school to iOS and Android with split-screen, very soon.. Or what platforms we want to take Amazing Frog? to this year...There is so much to talk about and honestly, I never know where to begin or end with these posts...
but I will say this - Thanks for playing Amazing Frog? I cant say it enough - we love working on it and are so grateful that we can.
It just doesnt feel like Xmas unless I am rushing an update out for Amazing Frog? - And So Flight School is now available in SwindonShire.
The doors to flight school can now be opened. Learn to be a pilot also if you are really committed to the fly, you may be able to earn your wings
Had a lot of fun making this one and to be honest some of the new stuff is a little experimental and honestly, I am not sure what's going to happen to a lot of if. Riding the Alligators is now more as we wanted, I should have fixed that ages ago. The trouble with Xmas updates, in fact, most updates for Amazing Frog? is there is always something else that can be added or fixed!
Ultimately We are going to need a bigger boat.
We put the grotto back in the town centre if you feel like thrashing around in the snowAlso, it gives us a reason to do another update to move the grotto back to the mountain. Dont forget to check the changelog
(PS V3 Winter update is also close, Ill write more about it all when I have had some sleep)
Welcome to The First V3 Beta. You can access it by selecting " v3_public_betas" You can access Betas by right-clicking the game name and going to properties. There should be a tab to Betas. Select the 'V3_public_betas' option. If you cannot see the beta in the list try restarting Steam.
It's in beta so we expect things to be a bit unstable, please let us know of any problems. Currently, we have only built support for Windows 64 bit. This is only the beginning, there is a long way to go, but there will certainly be a lot more regular updates from here on.
I dont really have the words to explain just how excited Hal and I are about this milestone. We have been trying to get V3 into your hands for ages, this is just the beginning though and I expect it won't work for everyone, but we are going to resolve that.
Although I will probably start on the from tomorrow ...
First off sorry for the silence. We have been busy with Amazing Frog? development and I never really know when is a good time to share. I want to tell you about what we have been up to since April It's basically all been about getting a V3 update out there. We are pretty close now and the release of our first V3 update feels like a big milestone for us. Before I talk about what's coming up in the next update I feel like its worth a look back at the time Amazing Frog? has spent in Early Access. Since we are really hoping to come out of Early Access very soon. So we scribbled down some thoughts of our Early Access Journey into a cheap sketchy timeline.
Of course this timeline you can pretty much see in the ChangeLog. This is not an app we intend to abandon in the upcoming Updates (some we will lose). As we move into V3 The Change Logs will persist as will (hopefully) most of the save data. I am looking forward to writing the f0.3.1 entry ( I may skip the letters at the end of the versions moving forward but)
So What happened to Flight School?
Well the natural progression for us after the Drone update was to continue with Helicopters and airplanes, it just didnt work out like that. What it eventually came down to was the real purpose of adding helicopters. They are needed to pick up large objects and move them around, swing giant wrecking balls etcWe wanted players to be able to move things around more easily. It got to the point where we couldnt see it happening using the "old school physics of Unity 4, I mean the more recent V2 blimps could have been much better. Basically, we had taken V2 as far as we could. We toyed with the idea of making a definitive V2 Gold Master version that we could distribute on other platforms, but, ultimately the natural progression is only forward and on with V3, to secure Amazing Frog? s ongoing development.So Flight School had to be postponed
Only one way forward.
As you can see from the timeline entries of V3 attempts, the scary problem was that we had not actually been able to produce the same level of fun with the newer versions of Unity. Every route that we had tried to build Amazing Frog? into newer versions of Unity had always resulted in rigid, realistic, but ultimately, unstable physics. It was great how things look and some of the newer features and capabilities of the more recent versions of Unity are super helpful and have led to so many possibilities for loading and managing content and just simply put all the boring stuff that makes games happen that we dont often talk about but is insanely important. Yet with every encounter of the newer versions of Unity, It was almost like the physics was forcing us to be too real world.
...Need a new strategy...
So In March I decided to Start again line by line, system by system and rebuild. Im not going to lie, it took a while and I often had this nervous feeling that I was taking us down a path that may end up leading nowhere. When we got to summer things started to look much brighter. The project was intact, I could make builds, and most importantly the frog was behaving like Amazing Frog? and not generic rag doll biped individual. Now we have a more stable Amazing Frog? with a more sustainable future proof environment to continue the development of the Universe. After all, to continue the development of what we think is the most important thing we have ever made is all we really wanted.
Making the cut for V3...
I wish there was a magic brush where I could convert every aspect of V2 into V3, but it doesnt really work like that. Fortunately, much of the stuff since Grapple hooks has been programmed to exist in more recent versions of Unity and is less difficult to keep, but some of the older stuff is difficult to retain. But the benefits of much of the rebuild are now becoming more apparent. For example the water physics, You will have to wait to see( or play) that to see how different it is, but it just feels worth it. On the downside, it also means everything in the sea needed reprogramming or restructuring. Or the lighting V2 was dependant on static lightmaps baked into the environment, V3 we have a day-night system but that means many objects like cars or lamposts and all sorts of other things need daytime aware programming. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
Having said that, we are trying not to lose stuff. Even though you will encounter many changes to an already established environment, we are also taking steps to keep older features active. Take for example the new frog. Just like the sharks and alligators, the water physics-ness had to be rebuilt for the frog, but also the look. The situation with the frogs new clothes demonstrates some of the wider issues we have been facing in this upgrade process. The new frog has interchangeable clothes with physical rendering, puffa jackets, T-shirts hoodies, etc.. but most of the characterization of V2 worked through a more old school skins process. It's going to take a long time to recreate all of those outfits with physical (modeled) clothing. ( we will we will, but not all at once) In the meantime, we came up with a way for the new frog to wear the old frog if that makes sense. But since the old outfits that you may have unlocked would not be able to work moving forward in the new Frog wardrobe system we came up with a way to physically archive them and still have access to them.
Expect Changes...
There are many established activities in Amazing Frog? Getting to The Moon, Unlocking the Magical Mystery Toilet, killing the Megladon, discovering the balloon jetpack, many of which we will have to divert or close off for the first few updates. We have even been debating if the Moon can work or if we even want to keep the Moon at all and if we do in what format. So we may need to lock some things off ...even if just temporarily. There are many things we just dont know what the deal is yet. Take for example the Magical Mystery Toilet We have put a few things through in our testing but we cant be 100% sure what will happen with everything anymore (as if we ever knew)
October...
I dont really like making promises for an update date as I hate disappointing people if I fail. But October seems as good a month as any to get an update out. Last year I think we launched a Halloween update on the 1st of November which is pretty typical for us and it was a bit broken :) But I want to get something "playable" for you all within a couple of weeks. I cant promise what shape that will take. I may close off a lot of the world or features, but if I close off too much I will launch a beta rather than a replacement update... I DON'T KNOW, but it's only in the past few weeks that I have felt capable to commit to saying something like this and so write a "Frog Blog" Also, for those who read this post on AmazingFrog.com I am trying to be a little more organized with posts. I always end up posting something at 3 am on a Friday night when it's just finished. As we move forward will try and post to Steam at better times :) If you want to get ahead of the game follow me on twitter or instagram. @fayju or get on the discord, If I post a premature beta it will appear there then I will get the assets together afterwards to make a "post"
Firstly, welcome to the new Drones Update for Amazing Frog?. We have wanted to include drones in the game for some time now. Not just because we wanted to use them to generate fancy cinematic camera angles to make a decent trailer ( still pending ), but also because you get to fly around like a maniac and explore Swindon Shire in a whole new way. You can explore areas you might want to be able to go. Part of Amazing Frog? has always been that as a new player it's difficult to escape Swindon. We used to enjoy that there would be an element of surprise when you eventually scaled the wall and realized you were in a larger world.
There are two types of Drones, one is more like a traditional camera drone with stabilization and has simpler controls, the other is more of a freestyle drone with twin stick controls. The freestyle one can be a bit tricky to master, but we have been finding it a lot of fun especially threading the multi story car park.
Obviously, it's an Amazing Frog? update so there are some other things in there to discover. The pigs have not returned yet, we are working on something that will bring them back to SwindonShire and that will be available soon In the meantime, if you need to get somewhere snappy, you might be able to find something else you can hitch a ride on.
The other main purpose of this update is that it contains some fixes and stabilization, I dont think the last version was working particularly well. Had I not been so wrapped up in V3 and all the multiplayer code, I might have noticed sooner. Thank you to everyone who reaches out to me from the community to tell me about issues with the game, like leaving out the FrogMilk Coffee Co App Activation Doh! Also, genuinely, Im really sorry I left Santas Grotto in the car park until March. (again) I think subconsciously, I just want to prolong Xmas because it's my favorite time of year. Realistically, I just got distracted with development and was spending my time in a completely different environment where frogs actually have fingers.
V3 Multiplayer, Pocket and Early Access...
So what have we been up to? Well, we launched the pocket version of Amazing Frog? on iOS at the beginning of January and then we began working exclusively on the multiplayer side of V3. We have been tryingto push to a place when we can release the first alpha of V3 with online multiplayer. I wont bore you with screenshots of that activity, becauseit would be mostly of code and a bit of me crying... The cost of V3 dev is that it can be very absorbing and almost grinds V2 progress to a standstill. This might not be a problem if we were done with V2, but we are not. You will be seeing some more updates in the next few weeks/months. Ultimately, our goal is to take V2 out of Early Access soon.I guess we could have done that already. Looking forward, I dont anticipate leaving Early Access will change the way we develop and we are still creating and planning new content for V2..oink. It's just that Early Access is not a label we are totally comfortable with anymore. Mostly, because we have been in Early Access since 2014 and other peoples reactions to the phrase Early Access is weird. There were always certain things we wanted to do in Amazing Frog? before we left Early Access, or at least what our definition of Early Access is/was. We need to implement structures in the game design that make the world feel more complete. On the one hand, this is about facilitating the growth of the world, but on the other, it's about reinforcing the underlying narratives that already exist in it. Also, we want to give a clearer picture of how we feel the world fits together, the companies, the activities etc. I touched on this in some previous dev blogs.
We are also trying to tidying some/many of the "rough edges" and refine the overall product of Amazing Frog? You may have noticed that we changed the capsule Artwork on the Store page. This is the first time we have done this since launch ...mainly because any time we had, we would spend on adding weird stuff to the actual game. I will also need to rewrite the description so it's more up to date. Next week we head to San Francisco with the rest of the Game Dev world for GDC. GDC is a big event in the Game dev calendar where devs learn, meet and I dunno be a massive group of Game Developers, So hopefully we can find some stuff that helps Amazing Frog? overall. Thanks again you guys for Playing, also thanks to everyone for the tweet and insta nudges to make a devblog or fix stuff or just sharing what you are playing. Awesome :)
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Phase two Update for Santas Swindon Snow Storm Update is available now
I love making Xmas Updates. Its a good chance to play around with some stuff. Also its a great way to say thanks to every one for playing Amazing Frog?
So go grab the presents and unlock a preview of something we are working on. Hopefully its a nice surprise :)
I always seem to be leaving things to the last minute, I think its mainly because we always seem to be able to think of "just one more thing ***to add in. ***Columbo
yeay...
I hope you all have an awesome xmas! We will come back soon an write a more formal devblog about what the plans for 2019 are, where V3 and multiplayer is. Its all happening still and we very excited about what's coming up
Im gonna go eat some chocolate.
Its time for the Holiday Update and this time its a real Swindon Snow Storm! Fart propelled sledging is always lovely this time of year
Obviously the Holiday period isnt for every one, but we tried to make accommodations for them.
driving can be hazardous in these conditions, please be careful not to hit snowy pedestrians.
Grow big Snow Balls!
This is phase 1 of the xmas update, the next bit should be swinging around real soon.
Seasons Greetings !
Ok, so maybe it was a bit harsh banning jetpacks and balloon packs from the blood covered streets of Swindon
I mean you can actually have a lot of fun with a jetpack when the streets are filled with blood and you guys worked so hard to get thebackpacks you may as well get some fun out of it. We were just a bit too worried that having them would make it too easy to unlock Satun.
SO here is a Hot fixes Update to the Mystery Halloween Box. Among other things, we added a few more pumpkins to make a niceround number of 300. And added a few more things to the blood world.
We've been enjoying it so it's likely we will add more to it in the future. Please check the in-game changelog. For now Happy Halloween!
Heres a bloody Update. Perhaps I should have called it that, Another Bloody Update
And there I go mentioning the blood and ruining the mystery, I feel like such a muppet
Currently my favorite outfit well perhaps with exception of the fireproof one you can unlock in the mystery box.
To be Honest, I dont really know what to say about this update, it's pretty late here and I've spent too much time playing around in it that I havent found the time to write much, so this time I think I will just let the update speak for itself.
well be back pretty soon with more updates and then Ill write something more Game Devilish stuff.
You know what ? it feels really good to be putting updates out again. I mean over the past few months weve been dealing with some pretty complex stuff with V3 and V2 and iOS getting our ducks in a row, as it were. But, today looking through recent screenshots for the new stuff makes me super happy. Also just messing around with content again is so much more fun that underlying systems and junk. I mean you cant Instagram a feckin serialization process or a new design pattern that I created by accident while dreaming. I love my work, truly I do.
There is an element if chaos to how we go about developing things, but we are heading somewhere so don't worry. That somewhere is V3.
So, what was I saying? ... Im really sorry about the mouse not locking and hiding thing, please let me know if you are still having problems after this update. This is the second of our October updates for V2. The Other Blimps". Was going to call it A Blimp with more bite not sure why :) .
So be sure to check the in-game changelog (I think I updated that ) there's some more stuff to find do and play with.
Ill keep this post short, I did want to say thanks to everyone for pointing any issues in the last build. There are some which I Have not got around to resolving like the horizontal split screen I will get that one in the next update. So any outstanding issues please fire them at us.
Finally! we are in a position to start rolling out some updates, sorry it's been blimpin’ ages.
The first of a series of V2 updates is now available and this first one is called the "Leftfield Edition”
Let's be clear- this is a V2 update, We have reprogrammed the camera systems and UI, using techniques and code that we have been developing in V3 and implemented more stable graphics with less flickering etc and generally made it more stable, better looking and improved the underlying architecture to enable us to try out a month of rapid content expansion updates. :)
So what's a “Leftfield Edition”? What an attractive looking question, Gaz. Thanks for asking… Basically, its called that because its pretty much the version we showed at EGX on the Sega sponsored Leftfield indie game booth thing. In terms of content, there is not a great deal of new stuff, this was mainly about presenting the fixed version of V2. In fact, you may find that some things are missing or even completely replaced. Don’t worry about this as we will be updating V2 multiple times in October and we have some interesting surprises lined up. Having said that Pocket mode is pretty new, accessible from the main menu and might worth another look...
For some time had been PONDering the possibility of Amazing Frog? V2 leaving Early Access, it's a weird situation, because we are also building V3 and you guys haven’t got your hands on that yet. We are not sure we even know what Early Access means anymore. We are going to be adding updates to both versions of Amazing Frog? for some time. You could say Amazing Frog? will always be in development, with that in mind we are not sure if “Early Access” applies to us anymore. What do you guys think? We don’t anticipate that V3 will replace V2. We expect them to exist side by side for a while. For us, we are starting to think of it more like a sequel even though it won’t be presented as such. Ultimately it's just me and Hal, we don’t have anyone advising us, no publisher skimming the cream or twisting our arm to break our integrity, we just try and do what we think is right for Amazing Frog? and it's players.
On a side note - Online multiplayer for V3 has been going really well and we are indeed closer to dropping the V3 Online Beta, Hal and I have been doing to distance network testing and the results are pretty encouraging. but I am sorry to say that we are just not ready to share it yet.
Sorry if it looks like we have been away for a while…. we haven’t. I’ve still not started Mario Oddessy, Hal is still yet to face Ganon. Also, someone mentioned there was a cowboy game coming out soon, but it was only available on consoles so I won’t be playing that any time soon so get ready for some updates! We’re really excited to be able to have output again :)
It's been a while since Amazing Frog? devblog 025. There is a lot going on in development and it gets difficult to explain. I am sorry and I should update you all more frequently. Amidst all the tasks we have been working on, it really doesn’t feel to us that much time has passed since the last devblog. Every day is Amazing Frog? for us.
My brain feels a little fried from working on 3 versions of the Amazing Frog? simultaneously, the sheer variety of types of tasks can leave you feeling all muddled up. It's important to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find your way back to what it was you were trying to solve a day, a week, a month ago. Sometimes you just want to open your laptop and make weird stuff happen in-game and have a laugh, but in-between all that fun is a lot of technical problems that demand resolution. It's so important to think into the future when developing Amazing Frog?, especially V3. Our plans are big and I know I said it before but without the right infrastructure, we won't be able to realize those plans. In the past we have often sidelined some of the core system issues to fast-track new content. Often, when things were not quite right in V2 we would say, "well that will get fixed in V3". But as I mentioned before V3 broke everything and we started fresh. ............ somewhat as V3 being fully network-based and having completely new graphics has brought its own problems, so for many V2 issues we now thing resolve it in V2 so when it goes into V3 the transition will be smoother.
So whats been going on? Well, there are 3 major channels of development for Amazing Frog? and from week to week we switch back and forth between which one of these we concentrate on, or indeed sometimes Hal focuses on one and me on another.
These Development Channels are:
- V3 : The completely rebuilt and online version
- V2 : The Definitive Version (an updated, enhanced and extended V2)
- V2 Pocket: our first attempt to package up Amazing Frog? and put it out somewhere else.
V2 Pocket Mode
I think I’ll start with Pocket mode (The working title for the iOS version). If I was in your position, in our beloved Steam Community, I’d probably be thinking, "why are those two dum-asses working on an iOS version when they need to get us the V3 Multiplayer version out which has dragged on long enough already?" It's a question that comes up virtually every day between us, should we drop it and move on? or keep moving forward slowly? We have a very clear purpose. A long-term purpose. A Plan. I may not always be able to explain what the plan is, but it always seems to make sense to me. I’ll try and explain why I feel we HAVE to do pocket mode and indeed more V2. First off, Striking back and protecting our game. It drives me nuts seeing all the fake versions of Amazing Frog? on iOS and Android. It also bothers seeing all the fake versions of a lot of cool Steam Early Access games. I know people do worse things in the world, but it just grinds my gears when I think of people getting ripped off thinking they are getting Amazing Frog? when they're just paying for a fake app that shows you an add and crashes :( The two ways to solve this would be to chase each app legally or just release the real Amazing Frog? to this environment. We chose the latter.
Next, The Tech Clock is ticking. Tech is changing every day, the big changes in Unity really threw us last year invalidating most of AF? development. Being so deep into V3 with all this crazy new tech (I’ll touch on in a bit), the temptation was to abandon V2 altogether and just move on, which is what happened to V1 (the OUYA version)… we abandoned V1 so we could progress in Steam Early Access. we want V2 to reach its potential, after all, we will be working on V3 for some time and the more success we can generate from V2 the more it will help the development of V3. This would also be helped by a more definitive and polished version of the V2 system.
For Pocket Mode we created a new landscape, simpler but more refined. Naturally, this will be available on Steam as Pocket Mode (and most likely on Steam first). Having a smaller less demanding island for Pocket Mode in V2 not only helps it run better on mobile devices and less capable computers but also allows us to create a slightly alternative experience, ie giving you more things to do in V2.
V2 The Definitive Version
V2 Definitive and Pocket Mode are linked in development. Since Pocket Mode is generated from V2, but quite separate tasks. Overall with the V2 system, there were so many fundamental issues and things we needed to resolve. As I said earlier anything we skipped in favour of more content. The Z Fighting on posters the way the sea looks crappy from distances among other things required deep fundamental changes in how we do everything. Our first thought was: let's stick the V3 blimp in and fix those bugs once and for all. In the end that kind of felt like a good plan for pocket mode, but for V2 on Steam, we wanted something a little more special in this next version before V3 takes over. We just felt that apart from fixing it and making it look better V2 needed some fresh secrets, more experimental features and the ability to unlock some of the things you may have already seen but not yet been able to use. It's a big Update, with a lot of enhancements.
‘scuse the balloons, they really are the best way to get around when you need to take screenshots :)
We can talk about V2 when its ready….
V3 The Newer Version
Oh boy, I wish we could develop this faster. The more complex or detailed a thing the more time it takes I guess. It's funny, thinking back to the games Hal and I used to knock out in a matter of weeks to where we are now. I love it, I love building something that that is ours, that has so much scope. As a developer working for someone else you don’t always get the chance to feel that sense of joy from your efforts. Having said that, the newer versions of Unity have been really inconsistent environments over the past year, which has made things difficult and disheartening at times. We have often been finding ourselves progressing in one area to then find that another area has become invalidated. Thankfully everything seems more stable now. I guess Unity had to figure some things out.
There are so many topics on V3. SwindonShire alone is one of the biggest tasks we have ever committed ourselves too. Building a sustainable, detailed and exciting world. We put a lot of thought into the SwindonShire. I’ve touched on various plans for the world over the course of these devblogs, and our plans can be fluid, but ultimately they hang around a core set of ideas. This image should give you a bit of an insight, it’s a map of SwindonShire that we use to discuss development in areas for V3 (a “redacted” version, don’t want to give too much away)
Although the landscape is essentially the same, Hal has been refining his process for the terrain. Now with a much higher resolution, it makes it much easier for Hal to sculpt detail, we’re so excited about it. I took these shots from a build I generated today. Currently, we have the terrain covered in a grid to help us understand things like scale not just in terms of size, but also in terms of movement so we can limit the physics etc. My version will probably be a grid for a bit, while Hal works on implementing all the details he has been working with. Like most of the development of the game, it's important to get a solid foundation that can support future iterations.
It took quite a long time for us to gain some control over the lighting. We almost abandoned a Day/night cycle altogether. Weird inconsistencies with multiple scenes, global GI not doing what we expected, I could go on. For V3 Day and Night was something that was really important to us. A lot of our plans for gameplay revolve around it. We needed to make sure that we were in control and we were not just getting "cool effects" that look great on one building but don’t translate to the area next to it.
Also, playability at nighttime is important, you have to be able to see what you're are doing...
Time like just about everything else in V3 needs to be defined and controlled by the host. Unlike V2, V3 is completely networked as a game. We have explored and implemented so many ways of doing networking over the past year. If I am honest with you, I couldn’t say that I am sure that the route we chose is the best one. It's probably more difficult, but It is most certainly the route we are the most comfortable with now. We tried third-party network solutions, we tried Unity's solution and they were all great, but we wanted more control over what was sent and to who. Things are a bit barren this week in V3 screenshots because I am implementing the host signing the objects to the scene. Everything dynamic or controllable needs to be allocated by the host. eg there is a box on the floor because the host says there is. It moves and the host has to be aware of that.
The great thing about that is that the host is always taking snapshots of data of the world, which makes it really easy to save data - just about everything in the game. ie it would be possible to play one day and come back to the same stuff the next day rather than a full reset like in V2.
I hope that's a good explanation of whats going on with development. Here’s a rundown of what my next few sets of immediate tasks are after posting this. in V3 Implement a moonlight (it's too dark at night), elbows ..there is something wrong with how I redraw the elbow and knee positions over the network looks kinda funky, touch controls sticking on IOS fix and test in another build. So I'm going to jump to it.
Thanks for reading, updates coming real soon.
Hi, It’s been just over a month since I last updated you all on whats going on with development for Amazing Frog?. To be honest I don’t even know where to begin this devblog as we have been doing so many different things. Our core mission is the same and V3 as a whole is still moving forward. The V3 online Test world draws closer and a big definitive V2 update will come alongside it, After that, an iOS version and a run of V3 test updates will follow, all the while in the backdrop the main V3 Amazing Frog? continues to grow. So to follow on from the last devblog (024)- I still have not started Mario Odyssey and Hal is no closer to facing Ganon, but we have done a load of Amazing Frog? development. :)
V3 Testworlds
The multiplayer code for V3 is coming along pretty nicely. Don’t get me wrong, it has been super complicated and I do have a tendency to over-complicate things for myself. Now I feel it coming together. I have restructured the whole process several times, as it has to form the underlying architecture of pretty much all aspects of V3 Swindon. There are many challenges involved, but one existing challenge is the logistics of testing.. there is only so much I can test on my own set of machines, so we are going to need some help with that very soon. There are still a few crazy things happening that I need to resolve first, but my confidence in the integrity of the system is growing. *farts..
SwindonShire
Often when I look over at Hal’s screen I see crazy substance setups for all sorts of different surfaces and plant things. I Just think they look interesting so I got him to screen grab a couple for the blog.
We never really got to make the “SwindonShire” that we wanted to make before. We had always been too busy with other aspects of gameplay or world creation. But we are making "The world" a priority in V3. Hal has got a serious new machine for some intense world building and development shenanigans. We are very serious about it… but it is going to take time to create the "new world” in v3, but we think it will be worth it.
V3 Anatomy
We first put a skeleton in a game in Goldilocks and the 3000 bears and laughed our heads off about it for ages. Goldilocks was a kind of ragdoll shooting game that we made a demo of a few years back before Ouya, and hope to return to one day. As V3 is so much more detailed it needed an update to frog anatomy. Heres an example of the new skeleton… but Hal didn't stop at just bones….There are going to be some squidgy surprises too.
So A Definitive V2 Update ?
I guess in general the right game dev advice would be to move on from V2 completely and just go into V3. V2 its old tech, Unity don’t really support it anymore, but still we haven’t moved on from V2 and you may be wondering why. It's not just about fixing problems in V2 like the Z-fighting on the sea and posters, or the lack of atmosphere and depth, there is actually a lot we are doing in V2 that we can move straight to V3. Also because V3 is moving so far ahead of V2 we just couldn’t leave it behind without tidying some things up. It's good that I got a new laptop at the beginning of 2018. I can comfortably have both V3 and V2 open simultaneously. Unity used to fatal when I was working on them both and I used to think that I was running out of memory. Turns out that it was just Unity crashing…. Thankfully things seem a lot more stable on that front recently. I did yet again have to completely rebuild the v3 project base from the ground up but things have been working well. Basically, there are so many game systems that I can prototype and build in V2 for V3. Beyond that, we really wanted to make a definitive version of Amazing Frog? V2 One that could stand on it own as V3 continues to grow. Many graphical glitches have been solved, but at the expense of a bit of a restructure, especially to do with player assignment and cameras. This work has allowed us to implement v3 camera and player assignment systems and design a more stable structure on how to do that. Successfully prototyping the way forward in V3 gameplay.
I'm pretty sure I haven't covered everything today. Like the way the frog can hold a pose in ragdoll form in V3 when you jump and hold jump, I had been meaning to make some screenshots to show that. Or that after a chat with Zeron last week I decided to push day-night cycles into the test worlds. Or that we tested a few good builds on iOS and its looking good, but it needs more work and the next Steam update will certainly come before that. Or that the new blimp controls are much more stable, but I still have a bit of work to do to ensure objects can be transported inside. I guess more next time. Thanks for playing Amazing Frog?
Yup, we spent most of our time in front of our computers developing and we haven’t been anywhere game related since 2016 (Steam Dev Days), in March we went out and met people, we even took business cards. That didn't change the problem that the development of Amazing Frog? V3 over the past few months has been particularly challenging. So this one is going to be a word heavy devblog…
We recently went to GDC 2018 (Game Developer Conference in San Francisco), we met a lot of companies and learned a whole bunch of Game Development Stuff. One of the main reasons we went to GDC (other than to feel like real Game Developers) was to discover and explore new technology to support the ongoing development of V3. In particular the two most important aspect of V3, the multiplayer networking side of things and being able to automate and grow a complex landscape, rich with vegetation and er… “stuff”. We need as much help as we can get. We went to lots of talks at GDC, mainly the "how to make AAA games" talks rather than the" isn’t it great to be an indie” talks (as we got the gist of them in 2016). It was definitely good to get an insight into how some of these massive games are put together, even if we struggled sitting through a one hour talk about how a guy designed a brick wall in Mordor. That one was hard work, not sleeping through that while feeling jet lagged. We got through it and I think I may even have learned something. Most of the speakers we saw all came from big teams, in fact, we met a lot of big teams at GDC and it was interesting to see how they approach things. For us, it's about how we understand what they are doing and refit it to how we work when it's just us two.
As an ode to the guy who gave the talk about a brick wall surface for an hour, here is a snapshot of what Hal has been up to today. He has been working on procedural materials. Today it was pebbles. The first pass on his procedural materials for pebbles happened when we started V3 in Unity 5. Technology seems to move on faster than us, so here's what his new version looks like in comparison to the version we never even released.
For a reference of the V2 version of pebbles just imagine a greyish smudge. Basically, when it comes to SwindonShire, Hal has been dealing with an impressively large task. His main focus for V3 is now bringing the world of SwindonShire together. To help this process he has also been looking at introducing Hoodini to our pipeline - a very powerful tool for making game development tools, and we can use it with our core toolset of Unity, Maya, and Substance.
I have been playing with a few multiplayer solutions. Most of them I feel are only really needed after the first beta push since the betas will be small test worlds, but when we integrate to Swindonshire as a whole, we are going to need some bigger scale solutions. It was good to meet the people involved so we can move forward a bit and then reconnect when its time to scale up that side of things.
Overall we came away from GDC feeling positive and recharged, but I have to say of all the companies we met, the most disappointing was Unity3d…One of their guys laughed at the fact we were using Unity 4 for V2 Amazing Frog? I explained how we had had to re-develop the entire game over the past couple of years as they had changed so much. A game that had taken us over 3 years to get the feel of the physics "right". I don’t really know what I was expecting talking them, there really is no point talking to “evangelists” most of them don't seem to have development experience and I have always found it hard to connect with Salespeople. It felt very much like Unity was more interested in getting new users to subscribe rather than helping existing developers. It was just difficult to deal with since V3 development recently has been very challenging.
gulp....
I know… I KNOW, that there is an element of us making things difficult for ourselves by being overly ambitious and honestly I am OK with problems we make for ourselves, that's all part of the journey. We have always been big supporters of Unity (and still are) and what it stood for, flexible scalable development, but I just find it odd that the most stable version of the Unity Editor that I work with is still Unity 4. I can’t even begin to process how their editing environment has become less stable with each increment. I mean seriously, I have been through multiple hardware setups and platforms and it gets less stable. I think what Unity can empower you to do is truly amazing, but it seems that all that glorious awesomeness comes at a price. Ultimately, they expect you to be in bigger teams. I think you need at least one developer to flag Unity bugs and converse with them on a regular basis on how they are going to fix it. Unity 2018.1 ( the new version coming ) looks very promising and much more futureproof than what we have been dealing with up till now. Thankfully, all the physics that we had to rebuild for V3 do work in the new beta, so all seems OK on that front. It has even fixed some things which broke in version 2017.3 like my UI for handling online connections. But the beta editing environment is still far from stable … it likes to crash a lot. Anyway...
I shouldn’t really rant about Unity too much, (if you want me to, I can and for hours) we still love it (the software) and V3 is still moving forward and when it works it just feels so exciting. We’ll just have to find a way of expressing our anger in a mature and responsible fashion …like maybe hiding a Unity shaped turd in the upcoming V2 update. That's how we deal with our issues... yeah…and maybe when you put it in the toilet it crashes the game :P
V2 News
We have no intention of stopping V2, aside from the new blimp and the camera improvements that we mentioned in the last devblog (023) we’ve actually got quite a lot of interesting things going on with it. I was actually hoping that I could be writing this devblog alongside a V2 update, but it's not quite there and we don’t have a title for it (sorry).
Pocket Mode
One of the things we had been improving in V2 was pocket mode. I wanted to establish it more separately. I often get emails from players who have accidentally turned on pocket mode and found the floor outside the wall is missing. We set out to make it so it was on a smaller island with less physics stuff and I am setting it up as a completely separate mode rather than a toggle in settings. While we were in the Hotel in San Francisco we thought, what the hell, let's see if we can get the pocket mode island to run on our iPhones, it did, just fine as well. Even the main game ran just fine. We had thought about making an iOS version loads of times before, but we had never sat down and made it happen. So then we thought, what the hell lets make some buttons.
After a very depressing chat with Unity, it seems putting V2 on either Switch or Xbox or Ps4 seems like a real longshot. They certainly won't help us to do that, So I think we may just go ahead and make an IOS version of V2 pocket mode. This is something we can control. I mean our hopes are for Amazing Frog? to make it to other platforms eventually, like Switch (I love my Switch) But I think that we will have to wait until V3 is more developed on Early Access. (Thank you Steam for being the awesome-est platform in existence) It just makes sense at this stage to put at least a part of V2 somewhere else, while we can. We get many requests for it on iOS and Android and in theory, it could help support future development of V3, especially if we need to employ someone to locate and identify Unity bugs related to Amazing Frog? :)
Update Are Coming!
I know it's been about 3 months since I last updated you all on whats going on. In development time 3 months is not that long, we struggle to find the time to do everything we want to do, but I do understand that it is a long time when you are waiting on an update, (If it helps, I still haven’t started playing my copy of Mario Oddessy and am still trying to avoid spoilers ) Here is the rundown of whats coming soon (in no particular order) V3 Online beta test worlds (not to replace V2 but be downloaded supplemental) V3 insight into the new Swindon Shire (we can't release this too soon we need to get the landscape right) V2 Pocket mode on IOS. V2 Update with some cool new physics features and a big blimp that won’t suck (I mean seriously, you should be able to fly this one and potentially drive a car into it and drive it ... well I haven't fully tested that bit yet but seriously better blimps all round ). We have a lot on. I know this, as it feels like crunch time,... It's time to get our Frog on.
Yup, we spent most of our time in front of our computers developing and we havent been anywhere game related since 2016 (Steam Dev Days), in March we went out and met people, we even took business cards. That didn't change the problem that the development of Amazing Frog? V3 over the past few months has been particularly challenging. So this one is going to be a word heavy devblog
We recently went to GDC 2018 (Game Developer Conference in San Francisco), we met a lot of companies and learned a whole bunch of Game Development Stuff.One of the main reasons we went to GDC (other than to feel like real Game Developers) was to discover and explore new technology to support the ongoing development of V3. In particular the two most important aspect of V3, the multiplayer networking side of things and being able to automate and grow a complex landscape, rich with vegetation and er stuff. We need as much help as we can get.We went to lots of talks at GDC, mainly the "how to make AAA games" talks rather than the" isnt it great to be an indie talks (as we got the gist of them in 2016). It was definitely good to get an insight into how some of these massive games are put together, even if we struggled sitting through a one hour talk about how a guy designed a brick wall in Mordor. That one was hard work, not sleeping through that while feeling jet lagged. We got through it and I think I may even have learned something. Most of the speakers we saw all came from big teams, in fact, we met a lot of big teams at GDC and it was interesting to see how they approach things. For us, it's about how we understand what they are doing and refit it to how we work when it's just us two.
As an ode to the guy who gave the talk about a brick wall surface for an hour, here is a snapshot of what Hal has been up to today. He has been working on procedural materials. Today it was pebbles. The first pass on his procedural materials for pebbles happened when we started V3 in Unity 5. Technology seems to move on faster than us, so here's what his new version looks like in comparison to the version we never even released.
For a reference of the V2 version of pebbles just imagine a greyish smudge. Basically, when it comes to SwindonShire, Hal has been dealing with an impressively large task. His main focus for V3 is now bringing the world of SwindonShire together. To help this process he has also been looking at introducing Hoodini to our pipeline - a very powerful tool for making game development tools, and we can use it with our core toolset of Unity, Maya, and Substance.
I have been playing with a few multiplayer solutions. Most of them I feel are only really needed after the first beta push since the betas will be small test worlds, but when we integrate to Swindonshire as a whole, we are going to need some bigger scale solutions. It was good to meet the people involved so we can move forward a bit and then reconnect when its time to scale up that side of things.
Overall we came away from GDC feeling positive and recharged, but I have to say of all the companies we met, the most disappointing was Unity3dOne of their guys laughed at the fact we were using Unity 4 for V2 Amazing Frog? I explained how we had had to re-develop the entire game over the past couple of years as they had changed so much. A game that had taken us over 3 years to get the feel of the physics "right". I dont really know what I was expecting talking them, there really is no point talking to evangelists most of them don't seem to have development experience and I have always found it hard to connect with Salespeople. It felt very much like Unity was more interested in getting new users to subscribe rather than helping existing developers. It was just difficult to deal with since V3 development recently has been very challenging.
gulp....
I know I KNOW, that there is an element of us making things difficult for ourselves by being overly ambitious and honestly I am OK with problems we make for ourselves, that's all part of the journey. We have always been big supporters of Unity (and still are) and what it stood for, flexible scalable development, but I just find it odd that the most stable version of the Unity Editor that I work with is still Unity 4. I cant even begin to process how their editing environment has become less stable with each increment. I mean seriously, I have been through multiple hardware setups and platforms and it gets less stable. I think what Unity can empower you to do is truly amazing, but it seems that all that glorious awesomeness comes at a price. Ultimately, they expect you to be in bigger teams. I think you need at least one developer to flag Unity bugs and converse with them on a regular basis on how they are going to fix it. Unity 2018.1 ( the new version coming ) looks very promising and much more futureproof than what we have been dealing with up till now. Thankfully, all the physics that we had to rebuild for V3 do work in the new beta, so all seems OK on that front. It has even fixed some things which broke in version 2017.3 like my UI for handling online connections. But the beta editing environment is still far from stable it likes to crash a lot. Anyway...
I shouldnt really rant about Unity too much, (if you want me to, I can and for hours) we still love it (the software) and V3 is still moving forward and when it works it just feels so exciting. Well just have to find a way of expressing our anger in a mature and responsible fashion like maybe hiding a Unity shaped turd in the upcoming V2 update. That's how we deal with our issues... yeahand maybe when you put it in the toilet it crashes the game :P
V2 News
We have no intention of stopping V2, aside from the new blimp and the camera improvements that we mentioned in the last devblog (023) weve actually got quite a lot of interesting things going on with it. I was actually hoping that I could be writing this devblog alongside a V2 update, but it's not quite there and we dont have a title for it (sorry).
Pocket Mode
One of the things we had been improving in V2 was pocket mode. I wanted to establish it more separately. I often get emails from players who have accidentally turned on pocket mode and found the floor outside the wall is missing. We set out to make it so it was on a smaller island with less physics stuff and I am setting it up as a completely separate mode rather than a toggle in settings. While we were in the Hotel in San Francisco we thought, what the hell, let's see if we can get the pocket mode island to run on our iPhones, it did, just fine as well. Even the main game ran just fine. We had thought about making an iOS version loads of times before, but we had never sat down and made it happen.So then we thought, what the hell lets make some buttons.
After a very depressing chat with Unity, it seems putting V2 on either Switch or Xbox or Ps4 seems like a real longshot. They certainly won't help us to do that, So I think we may just go ahead and make an IOS version of V2pocket mode. This is something we can control. I mean our hopes are for Amazing Frog? to make it to other platforms eventually, like Switch (I love my Switch) But I think that we will have to wait until V3 is more developed on Early Access. (Thank you Steam for being the awesome-est platform in existence) It just makes sense at this stage to put at least a part of V2 somewhere else, while we can. We get many requests for it on iOS and Android and in theory, it could help support future development of V3, especially if we need to employ someone to locate and identify Unity bugs related to Amazing Frog? :)
Update Are Coming!
I know it's been about 3 months since I last updated you all on whats going on. In development time 3 months is not that long, we struggle to find the time to do everything we want to do, but I do understand that it is a long time when you are waiting on an update, (If it helps, I still havent started playing my copy of Mario Oddessy and am still trying to avoid spoilers ) Here is the rundown of whats coming soon (in no particular order) V3 Online beta test worlds (not to replace V2 but be downloaded supplemental) V3 insight into the new Swindon Shire (we can't release this too soon we need to get the landscape right) V2 Pocket mode on IOS. V2 Update with some cool new physics features and a big blimp that wont suck (I mean seriously, you should be able to fly this one and potentially drive a car into it and drive it ... well I haven't fully tested that bit yet but seriously better blimps all round ). We have a lot on. I know this, as it feels like crunch time,... It's time to get our Frog on.
Firstly, OMG I can’t believe people found the Fly Hats. Furthermore, I am getting reports that the space fly hat didn’t appear in peoples wardrobes. How very Fayju :S Fear not, if you have the message that you found the space fly hat in your notifications on the fPhone, I should be able to get it unlocked in a fix in the upcoming V2 update. (We really were not expecting people to go looking for them.)
It has been a bit of a January fix fest for both V2 and V3, now we are in Feb we are starting to see things more clearly.
After putting out a really exciting update just before Xmas we were looking forward to continuing at that pace into January. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out like that. One of the big disadvantages of being just the two of us really hit home in the first two weeks of the year. After Unity make some updates, it invalidated a lot of the progress we had made in V3 and we spent the first half of the month trying to isolate what went wrong and haven’t resolved all of the problems yet. Spending so much time searching for problems, isolating and fixing them, is something we are used to in game development, but for small teams, this has a massive impact on progress.
In comparison to V2, the V3 set up is now incredibly complex. Swindon has fully dynamic lighting to cater for the Day/Night system, high resolution texturing, where details are streamed in dependant on whats in view, PBR materials that react correctly to lighting, occlusion culling, a whole range of post-processing effects, kick-ass water, LOD setups, Network integration and a whole bunch of other components some that we made, some that we bought, some that are just complex bits of Unity that we need and had to learn to use. So when some or any of these complex components stop working for any reason .. (...often because we updated Unity… ) development takes a real kick in the Charlie's Angels. Spending all our time fixing rather than making is the downside of us being just two. Don’t misunderstand me though, we love the challenge and we are so excited about V3 more than I can say, even if it sometimes feels like its getting the better of us.
On the other hand, The Magical Mystery Toilet update reminded us of the advantages of being a small team. Because V2 has a more stable base and set of unchanging components ( also no more Unity updates for V2), it allowed us to rapidly put together a whole load of new content. If we weren’t spending most of our time building up a reliable base for V3 we would have been putting out updates much more frequently with V2 in 2017. That's why getting to a stable base in V3 is now so very important and our main priority.
We still recognize the value of V2. Having spent more time on it recently we were reminded that there are lots of issues in V2, most of which we had abandoned because we figured, "meh, that won’t be an issue in V3". Things like physics optimization, the flickering of decals and the stripyness of the sea at altitude (Z fighting) and sea not being great, the lack of distance fog and post-processing effects and that the blimps are not great to fly and could be much better if they tipped less and carried stuff. All these issues we just figured would be resolved in the development of V3. Things are different now since V2 and V3 are very separate projects. They both have their own lives. So in the spirit of The V3 January Fix Fest, we figured, let's spend some time investigating the possibility of fixing some of these outstanding V2 issues. And we found a few ways we could make it better.
It makes sense that V2 could have a few things added and fixed and tweaked, it could help it stand on its own and not just on Steam. We often have requests to put AF? on other platforms not to mention all the scammers charging people for fake versions of Amazing Frog? on mobile platforms. We had considered this before and even made mobile versions of Amazing Frog? at different stages of development. But we always abandoned it because we didn't want anything getting in the way of V3. In fact one time back in 2014 pre Steam, we showed V1(from OUYA) to Nintendo, but at the time they didn't think it was right for their platform.
After the balloons and the lunar lander were added and we found ourselves flying around more slowly and it was more difficult to ignore the terrible Z-fighting and even though its V2 we had to do something about it.
There are still a few things left to do on V2 before its next release, with updates camera and rendering system also you may be able to spot some of the of the newer systems from V3 creeping into V2…. But that should drop pretty soon.
But Hey Gaz,.. V3...What about V3? Remember V3…?
Feeling a little skeptical about V3?…. don’t be. We still work on V2, but we are all about V3. That's the mission. It's been difficult trying to do everything at once in V3 and constantly spinning all the plates that keep SwindonShire whole has frequently got in the way of us reaching what we would think is a distributable standard on builds. Too much to resolve at once. Imagine Hal is “Slartibartfast-ing” SwindonShire, Messing with the sun to grow vegetation, but now he has to stop gardening because I need his help changing the lightbulbs in the Fayju building, because I can’t see what I am doing with the doors. It's a crude example… but there is a massive chain of interconnected dependencies in a large world and often major shared components either break or demand to be changed if they don’t fit with the latest addition. Simply put, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. So we had to come up with a better strategy. After feeling really let down by the collapse of the project after the post-Xmas Unity update process, we decided it was imperative to form smaller environments to enable focus on independent chunks of the game. To protect ourselves from these kinds of issues in the future. I guess we had skipped this step before, as we know where everything needed to go in Swindon. We figure that if we begin releasing builds using test worlds, rapidly built for the purpose of bouncing about and shooting each other, it would help give Hal the freedom he needs to break and mold “SwindonShire” and me the space to focus on bouncy shooty multiplayer stuff. Also in our new test worlds, we can both focus on each of the new asset systems with more clarity, like the guns, clothes, cars...
A New Blimp System?
The asset side of V3 has been growing steadily. The all new blimp system in one of our next major undertakings in that area.
The Blimps have always been a major feature in Amazing Frog? We are building on this in V3
You may have spotted it in the new V2 pics too, while in V2 it won’t look as detailed, the blimps in V2 needed an upgrade so we thought what the hell. So, that's about it for now. I’m sorry this devblog took so long it's been tricky. I actually wrote most of its last week, but when we got around to taking screenshots both versions were not compiling properly since I had completely changed the cameras in V2 and was sharing the code from V3. I didn't manage to fix either till Monday. Well, we took the screenshots today and it shouldn't be too long before we have something else to share.
Firstly, OMG I cant believe people found the Fly Hats. Furthermore, I am getting reports that the space fly hat didnt appear in peoples wardrobes. How very Fayju :S Fear not, if you have the message that you found the space fly hat in your notifications on the fPhone, I should be able to get it unlocked in a fix in the upcoming V2 update. (We really were not expecting people to go looking for them.)
It has been a bit of a January fix fest for both V2 and V3, now we are in Feb we are starting to see things more clearly.
After putting out a really exciting update just before Xmas we were looking forward to continuing at that pace into January. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out like that. One of the big disadvantages of being just the two of us really hit home in the first two weeks of the year. After Unity make some updates, it invalidated a lot of the progress we had made in V3 and we spent the first half of the month trying to isolate what went wrong and havent resolved all of the problems yet. Spending so much time searching for problems, isolating and fixing them, is something we are used to in game development, but for small teams, this has a massive impact on progress.
In comparison to V2, the V3 set up is now incredibly complex. Swindon has fully dynamic lighting to cater for the Day/Night system, high resolution texturing, where details are streamed in dependant on whats in view, PBR materials that react correctly to lighting, occlusion culling, a whole range of post-processing effects, kick-ass water, LOD setups, Network integration and a whole bunch of other components some that we made, some that we bought, some that are just complex bits of Unity that we need and had to learn to use. So when some or any of these complex components stop working for any reason .. (...often because we updated Unity ) development takes a real kick in the Charlie's Angels. Spending all our time fixing rather than making is the downside of us being just two.Dont misunderstand me though, we love the challenge and we are so excited about V3 more than I can say, even if it sometimes feels like its getting the better of us.
On the other hand, The Magical Mystery Toilet update reminded us of the advantages of being a small team. Because V2 has a more stable base and set of unchanging components ( also no more Unity updates for V2), it allowed us to rapidly put together a whole load of new content. If we werent spending most of our time building up a reliable base for V3 we would have been putting out updates much more frequently with V2 in 2017. That's why getting to a stable base in V3 is now so very important and our main priority.
We still recognize the value of V2. Having spent more time on it recently we were reminded that there are lots of issues in V2, most of which we had abandoned because we figured, "meh, that wont be an issue in V3". Things like physics optimization, the flickering of decals and the stripyness of the sea at altitude (Z fighting)and sea not being great, the lack of distance fog and post-processing effects and that the blimps are not great to fly and could be much better if they tipped less and carried stuff. All these issues we just figured would be resolved in the development of V3. Things are different now since V2 and V3 are very separate projects. They both have their own lives. So in the spirit of The V3 January Fix Fest, we figured, let's spend some time investigating the possibility of fixing some of these outstanding V2 issues. And we found a few ways we could make it better.
It makes sense that V2 could have a few things added and fixed and tweaked, it could help it stand on its own and not just on Steam. We often have requests to put AF? on other platforms not to mention all the scammers charging people for fake versions of Amazing Frog? on mobile platforms. We had considered this before and even made mobile versions of Amazing Frog? at different stages of development. But we always abandoned it because we didn't want anything getting in the way of V3. In fact one time back in 2014 pre Steam, we showed V1(from OUYA) to Nintendo, but at the time they didn't think it was right for their platform.
After the balloons and the lunar lander were added and we found ourselves flying around more slowly and it was more difficult to ignore the terrible Z-fighting and even though its V2 we had to do something about it.
There are still a few things left to do on V2 before its next release, with updates camera and rendering system also you may be able to spot some of the of the newer systems from V3 creeping into V2. But that should drop pretty soon.
But Hey Gaz,.. V3...What about V3? Remember V3?
Feeling a little skeptical about V3?. dont be. We still work on V2, but we are all about V3. That's the mission. It's been difficult trying to do everything at once in V3 and constantly spinning all the plates that keep SwindonShire whole has frequently got in the way of us reaching what we would think is a distributable standard on builds. Too much to resolve at once. Imagine Hal is Slartibartfast-ing SwindonShire, Messing with the sun to grow vegetation, but now he has to stop gardening because I need his help changing the lightbulbs in the Fayju building, because I cant see what I am doing with the doors. It's a crude example but there is a massive chain of interconnected dependencies in a large world and often major shared components either break or demand to be changed if they dont fit with the latest addition. Simply put, you cant make an omelet without breaking some eggs. So we had to come up with a better strategy. After feeling really let down by the collapse of the project after the post-Xmas Unity update process, we decided it was imperative to form smaller environments to enable focus on independent chunks of the game. To protect ourselves from these kinds of issues in the future. I guess we had skipped this step before, as we know where everything needed to go in Swindon. We figure that if we begin releasing builds using test worlds, rapidly built for the purpose of bouncing about and shooting each other, it would help give Hal the freedom he needs to break and mold SwindonShire and me the space to focus on bouncy shooty multiplayer stuff. Also in our new test worlds, we can both focus on each of the new asset systems with more clarity, like the guns, clothes, cars...
A New Blimp System?
The asset side of V3 has been growing steadily. The all new blimp system in one of our next major undertakings in that area.
The Blimps have always been a major feature in Amazing Frog? We are building on this in V3
You may have spotted it in the new V2 pics too, while in V2 it wont look as detailed, the blimps in V2 needed an upgrade so we thought what the hell. So, that's about it for now. Im sorry this devblog took so long it's been tricky. I actually wrote most of its last week, but when we got around to taking screenshots both versions were not compiling properly since I had completely changed the cameras in V2 and was sharing the code from V3. I didn't manage to fix either till Monday. Well, we took the screenshots today and it shouldn't be too long before we have something else to share.
Firstly I hope you are enjoying Amazing Frog? : The Magical Mystery Toilet. The second set of hotfixes has now been uploaded. We addressed some problems we saw in some videos and of course the community has been really helpful in spotting stuff which has gone wrong.
Some of the things the new hotfixes resolved were cars exploding as they get flushed, jumping through withheld objects going a bit weird, no reward on red Megladon…various rewards not triggering. sorry.
We really do try and test like crazy, but its difficult testing a magical toilet that you can put almost anything in, also we added way more stuff than we had time to control…I mean seriously, we had "shark cannon" on the list…. Either way, we had an awesome time making The Magical Mystery Toilet Update and it just wouldn’t be Xmas for us without a last minute Xmas update.
It's been such a long time since we updated the store page too. not even sure what game I am looking at, we really need to update the store page artwork and trailer… heh and the Splash screen. There are so many great screenshots in the community I think we are just going to have to use some of these on the store page. That is if we can organize ourselves enough to do it... A couple of days ago I went through the screenshots of the f0.2.9a and I ended up downloading over 70 …There were loads more that I liked too! So that's why all the screenshots in this devblog are yours. The ones I downloaded from the steam community.
There are so many that are great for all sorts of different reasons. Some show achievement and dedication, some show off the game well, some alert us to bugs and some just make us laugh like crazy.
Also, its a great place to see the weird and wonderful things you guys have been getting up to in Amazing Frog? Often there is a lot of activity we hadn’t even thought of.
(this feels like it almost simulates soft bodies)
(This is one of my favorites, not just as a cool screenshot, but as I was shocked to see you can pick zombies up by their legs… I mean I must have programmed it to do that, but I had just forgotten. I may have to make it so you can pick up the other NPCs by there feet too.)
(…)
We’ve been making hotfixes, and billboards etc, but we still slowed down a little over the Holidays and these past few days gave us a chance to reflect on the past years development. It was fun being back in V2, in fact, we had a lot more fun than we had anticipated. We had been so wrapped up in the newer looking graphics and more capable physics of V3 that we had almost lost sight of fast-paced nonsense. Developing V3 is a much more careful process, demanding more time and precision, but working in V2 reminded us not to lose our fluidity. For example, if I want balloons I should just get on and build it and not worry so much about if I am going to break everything (I mean it did break a quite a few things, but not everything). V3 is our main focus and will continue to be so as we enter 2018, but there are some items on our V2 Update list that didn't make it to The Mystery Toilet update and hotfixes and I don’t think we are going to be able to resist the temptation to make them a reality in another V2 update very soon. Even if we just spend a bit of time here and there on V2. Also, since we have built better controls and input in V3 it's really been bugging me that you can’t click on the menu or phone with a mouse in V2. So I may need to do something about that in the near future as well.
This Next Year
For the most part of 2017, we have been intently focused on the development of V3. We did not venture out of the studio at all in 2017. In 2018 we are planning to get out a bit more, although before we can do that, we have some development targets we need to hit. The most important first target is to get the V3 online beta playable. We want to have both V2 and V3 playable. So V3 will not replace V2 it will be downloaded with it. Every day we progress V3 feels more and more like a separate game. (A separate game that Steam Early Access players will always get.) As we move forward its likely that the first V3 beta releases will be test modes and we will shut off the main game until we feel its ready. Much of the progression in V2 was built retrospectively and it's not very clear that there is a purpose (i use that term loosely) or direction ( another word I use loosely ) Essentially, we felt that we made mistakes as we made in V1 and then subsequently more mistakes in V2 and we want to make sure V3 benefits from our recognition of those mistakes. Its been a great year, though. We are really excited about what we have made, and what we are working on, but without the release of Amazing Frog? in 2017 as an Online Multiplayer game, it feels like something is missing...
Its close, real close, but it's not today. We wish everyone a happy new year, Stay tuned for some more updates in Early 2018.
Amazing Frog? f0.2.9a The Magical Mystery Toilet this is a V2 update for Xmas.
So we made a toilet and tried to flush everything down it. Seemed like a really good idea at the time, then after we were half way through we were like… what the hell are we doing? You can put anything in there... But we persevered and saw it through..mostly. Its probably one of the strangest and most experimental updates we have made. Since it was a V2 update it made sense for us to lean towards the more experimental. If I am being honest we have not tried all the possibilities with the Magical Mystery Toilet (there are so many) so we expect to make some amends additions and changes.
I haven’t had time to fill out the change Log, sorry so it might be difficult to know what to look form but thats all part of the mystery, but at least there is a new “Need Help” fApp on your fPhone :) That should guide hopefully guide you a bit
We’ve fixed a lot of stuff from f0.2.8e The Swindon Space Program. We’re very sorry about these things. For example the grapple hook having an undo button really helps get more use out of it as a tool. It was bad that we left them like that for so long, its just that since the last update we have just been so wrapped up in V3 which is a completely different environment. (Wondering what V2 and V3 means? please check out the previous Devblog 021)
I won’t write too much now
Just some images…I’ll write a proper devblog after I have done the hot fixes.
Without going into too much detail, since most of this update is focused on experimentation and secrets. We will most certainly expand on this, we really had a lot of fun making it. Its been healthy for us to have a month where we have focused exclusively on messing about because when building V3 we had to be very strict with ourselves not to get carried away and its imperative to get the foundations right..
Happy Holidays All, I hope you enjoy.
Getting Fingered
Since we last spoke we’ve been picking up a lot of stuff. I mentioned last time that we were having some issues with how to hold certain items. We had dealt with this in previous versions with the “holster” button. This was more of a workaround rather than an actual solution, mainly due to the "pick up" button and "get in" button being the same. Now getting in or out is prioritized above picking up. This means you can get in and out of cars while holding objects or take an item to other spaces, like fart gyms or the sewer. Also, smaller held objects are more like an extension of the ragdoll so this will result in less craziness**.
**(absolute removal of craziness not guaranteed)
Portable items not just about guns, of course. There is a multitude of new items we are building to use, but what we also discovered is they all need to get fingered. It really came as a shock recently that when you add a level of detail like fingers ... things get complicated real fast. It's great having extra detail and, with hindsight, we should have seen this, but the extra work that comes with that extra detail can become overwhelming. Every portable item on pickup will sit in the hand differently… try it, try picking stuff up in your office, your kitchen, your garden, your toilet... we do. Everything needs to get fingered and standard hand pose stuff doesn't really cut it for our 3 fingered friend. So a system was needed. Its not all bad. We tend to rely on IK ( inverse kinematics) for how we carry most objects and have done for some time. I mean we wouldn't be able to make an animation for how you carry each of the items in the game. It's not feasible for a small team to make individual carry animations for each object…we'll leave that to AAA farms. So we use IK to map hand positions to targets or map targets to hand positions. Having hand pose data for fingers enhances this and inevitably opens us up to a new level of froggy expression. There are quite a few new objects we have been preparing for the new Amazing Frog? some you will not have seen before, but one of my favorites from the new batch has to be the torch.
Physics Stability
We can certainly see the benefits of the more stable physics system that unity has brought to the software, but for a game like Amazing Frog? fundamental improvements can cause headaches. Capturing the essence of the previous Amazing Frog? without losing the “floppiness” or "floopyness" has been one of the hardest challenges I have had to face in programming this new version and is an ongoing concern.
Previously, I would concede that some of the essence of the "character" of Amazing Frog? was derived from the inherent flaws in the underlying physics system. For us, it's important that movement feels fluid, but also floppy(sorry I can’t think of any other words to describe it at the moment, but I know what mean) Each day we spend a bit more time just fiddling with the ragdoll system. However, as much as the new stability has created headaches it has also brought other exciting opportunities. We have been experimenting with the idea of holding your pose in flight, tightening your ragdoll for more control while falling its new for the system so we are not sure how to present it yet, but its looking promising. Certainly one obvious benefit of a more stable underlying physics system is actually being able to "ride" the dumpsters, dumpsters with closable lids in a more determined and predictable, yet chaotic manner.
Accidents do still happen of course.
Does everyone call them dumpsters? we sometimes call them wheelie bins… but you get my point.
Wildlife
When we added pigeons to The Swindon Space Program Update earlier this year, it was something we had been meaning to add to Amazing Frog? for a long time. Hal's original super low poly pigeon was in fact made for the OUYA version back in 2014, but we couldn’t get a bunch of pigeons flying about on that tiny little cube… in the end, we put a pigeon on a skateboard for a laugh. Either way, wildlife, vermin or rodents were always systems we wanted in and around SwindonShire. As much as the FrogLife, the rubbish or post system, it is another ecosystem to interact with, collect from or just use for target practice. For this new version, we thought we had better get the new bird assets in sooner rather than later.
Aside from the new pigeon models Hal also made some seagulls which we have added to vermin life. Of course, we’ll need more.
Swindon Sign
So whats been going on outside of Swindon? The Swindon sign is a major feature in the SwindonShire Landscape (not sure why I visited it naked in this screenshot I tend to take these screenshots in the middle of the night and I guess I just forgot to get dressed). We had always wanted The Sign to feature more as part of the gameplay, but it never really had a level of detail high enough that we wanted to build on... until now. Like the golden pug, building up these architectural assets as more than just points of interest in the landscape is our intention.
3 Years on Steam, Looking Back...
This last week saw our Steam Early Access anniversary. Thanks to everyone who nudged me about that. We released Amazing Frog? on Steam Early Access Nov 2014. We’re so grateful every day to be doing this. We really love this game I get a kind of emotional fart brewing when I think about ithow far we have come … With that in mind, now might be a good time to have a quick look back over the development of Amazing Frog? which hopefully should explain whats coming next... The way I see it, is that Amazing Frog? development to this date has had 3 major versions. Describing them as versions should also help when I am writing these blogs Version 1: The OUYA version (and the never released iPhone and Android versions) Version 2: Steam Early Access version PC, MAC, Linux (in Unity 4) up to f0.2.9e The Swindon Space Program. Version 3: The full rebuild with integrated online multiplayer (f0.3.0). Version 3 actually began development in the middle of last year and is without a doubt our primary concern and what we spend pretty much all of our time doing. Last year, however, there were problems with our approach, we make mistakes and try to learn from them. Originally, we thought we could “port” from version 2 to version 3, but I don’t think even unity was ready for that process. So we decided to make version 2 more complete by adding features we were working on for version 3 such as fire, tethers and the moon and a bunch of other stuff. Following that, since May this year, we have been developing Version 3 exclusively and purging anything that was still left over from version 1. Version 1 graveyard includes things like the multi-story carpark, hideous low res textures, old buildings one poly thick walls. We have been creating completely new assets for just about everything, like the new car system, new weapons, new vehicles, new buildings, new creatures, new landscape and most importantly a new Frog (and frog system) All of which designed visually to work towards better graphics and systematically to work at core with the online multiplayer system. So, yeah, version 3 is like a rebuild (kind of) or I guess you could call it a full Strip down clean, enhance or replace followed by a reconstruction…rebuild is easier to say. We have no intention of losing anything from Version 2. Version 2, or -"f0.2.9e The Swindon Space Program”, let's just say we like the game as is, but to progress, we had to bring break a few eggs. So where am I going with this? Our intention and indeed goal is to get the first Online Beta available before the end of this year. I need to be realistic about what this means. This would be a stripped down unoptimized build of version 3 with online capability for testing, that players can start messing about with. And into that beta, we will drip feed the new assets. As we move forward we will be spending most of our time housekeeping and fixing version 3 and certainly be spending much more times watching the forums and not in a development crunching cocoon. Let's face it to properly test multiplayer we need players in the system and considering Fayju is just me and Hal, well lets just say we don’t have enough people in the office. We‘re working really hard to achieve this. but also… since it almost Xmas….
Version 2 still very much exists. Version 2 and 3 will coexist in your Steam library and maybe at some point next year Version 2 could even exist on other platforms, provided nothing gets in the way of version 3! So in the short term, considering that we are a bit crazy, we figured what the hell? Let's also do an update to version 2 and call it f0.2.9f - The Magical Mystery Toilet. Which should be available in December before Xmas. Is it an opportunity for us to loosen up a bit after some rather intense and challenging periods of development and add some more strange shit to Amazing Frog? Thanks again for following this. I hope we are getting better at explaining whats going on… but for now, back to development and will post again before Xmas.
Things are really starting to come together for f0.3.0. Its been a long road, but the decision to do a full rebuild is certainly starting to show that it was worth it. It gets to a point when you have been reprogramming game from the ground up that it all starts falling into place rather quickly. There are many things that we have done in previous iterations, that in redoing, we benefit from our previous experience. All the mistakes we made in the original are also influential and helpful on the path forward, but thats a whole other conversation about development in general. The bottom line is we do want to do everything to be so much better than it was and be futureproof. Not only that, but f0.3.0 will be the first multiplayer version of Amazing Frog? and that is at the core of the rebuild. Its likely that the first few versions we make public will not have all the features of the previous versions as it will take time to convert them in. But each feature will have loads more depth.
Weapons
Customizability has been another incredibly important theme in the rebuild such as with the new clothing systems and the car modifications and in the spirit of creating more customisable assets we have moved on to the AKs. I mean lets face it you are going to want to shoot stuff and each other. Hal has been playing around with gun skins on the new gun models. I guess he better get on a build a gun shop pretty quick.
I've still got a few issues with the holding certain objects, like what to do with them while driving. (Obviously we want you to take them with you, but not while they are poking through the windscreen)
SwindonShire
I went up the Golden pug because its a nice view from up there with a bit of morning mist, perhaps I should have gone at sunset as its quite pretty then.
SwindonShire in general, its starting to feel much more stable visually. We are having some issues with nighttime water rendering that we will need to find a workaround for because the Day night thing is pretty important, as will come clear pretty soon. The landscape, in general, does feel much more expansive and you get a much better sense of scale and distance. It is still a work in progress, but improving all the time.
I saw a question come up on the last devblog about if the images we show are renders or screenshots. We take all these images while the game is running. I tend to take them all at once and then start writing. Basically, we run the game on my laptop, its an ASUS ROG with a gtx 960m graphics card. its some years old, but still pretty good. I run the game as it is at that point and try and look at the new stuff that we have put in recently and then hit printscreen at the right moment. Every now and then there are some images like the one of the guns, that Hal has set up with newly created assets in Unity and screen grabs it from there, but most of the time its screenshots taken from one quick session. It means that we take all the images pretty much on the Friday I start writing the devblog… Lol which is why I am typing this stuff at er… well its gone 2 am.
The Bank of Swindon
There would be little point making all these “customisable” features, the clothes, the cars, guns.. etc without the facility for currency and this comes curtosy of the Bank of Swindon. We always said that we couldn’t introduce money until we had a branch of the Bank of Swindon to facilitate it. The Bank branch is now added to the high street, next to another curious building in blue .. but we talk about that one next time. I suppose you could argue that we could have introduced currency before building a local branch for the Bank. We could have had a number at the top of the screen displaying your money or even used online banking on the fPhone, but thats just not how our minds work. That's not to say that the Bank of Swindon won't have an fApp, but you'll have to go set up your account first.
Now that we have quite a few functioning locations of multiple purposes, the town is going to come alive very soon especially with the new FrogLife™ system. Beyond that, we take a lot of pride in some of the little things. I mean check out some of this pretty impressive furniture Hal has been making and after I have written this devblog I intend to spend a bit of time making these new seats functional.
And obviously we have been adding the odd secret here and there.
Thanks for following this, we really appreciate it. I can’t say it enough, but we do really love working on Amazing Frog? each day we are getting closer now and to think that at the end of Nov we will have been on Steam Early Access for 3 years.
First off, did I mention last time that I was working on User interfaces…? I don’t really like working on interfaces, because it reminds me of building websites and boring advertising stuff that I used to have to do every day before I was able to focus purely on making games. Nonetheless, I am thankful for my history of building “boring” applications as it is incredibly helpful in getting the new user interface set up for f0.3.0. So I had to start with fOS 2.0
fOS 2.0
As I have said before getting the foundations of this version right are incredibly important. A flexible user interface is at the heart of delivering all the new capabilities which are coming to f0.3.0. In the previous version the fPhone was responsible for most “UI” stuff, like navigating, controlling and modifying the game. It was not our intention for the fPhone to become this. It was supposed to be just one of many interactive gadgets rather than the core navigating and interacting device. Unfortunately, the way it was originally built, specifically the UI behind it was quite limiting and we just didn't have the time to make it more flexible and to deliver more complex user interaction outside of the fPhone. Also lets not forget that in the versions before f0.3.0 the user interface only worked on the Dpad (and IJKL), no mouse click! This is no longer the case and I’m quite proud of the new system. Not just how can use all control devices (including a mouse finally!), but its not limited to the phone screen like before. And its more flexible.
I don’t really know how to explain how or why it was so important to create a new interface system or why i rebuilt fOS 2.0 for the fPhone, other than to mention what we are about to do with it. Because until the UI could become flexible enough for our demands it was like a developmental bottle neck restricting our creativity. The new system is enabling things like the more advanced apps needed for multiplayer connectivity (e.g. f inder and frogBook working titles), fMaps 2.0 with more detailed realtime info viewable not just on the fPhone, interactive cashpoints and other electronic devices, outfit and car customisation, in car menu, the coming inventory, phone driven remote control er..stuff... , playable fApps… I could go on we have a massive list of stuff and i needed to ensure the UI would work reliably and efficently for all of them. But for now, lets look at some world stuff.
Dick Lovett
Dick Lovett is a working title for the Car Showroom. We may not call it that (google it), that is the name of the local car dealer in Swindon , yes thats right there is car show room called Dick Lovett in Swindon and across the West Country of England. So we probably shouldn’t use it. (We’ll probably end up calling it Swindon Discount Motors or Swindon Bargain Basement Autos, We’re still thinking it through. (Suggestions welcome)
So why do we now have a car showroom? As I have touched on before coming soon is the Bank of Swindon. Frog Milk coffee co was our way of testing out currency as a mechanic pre f0.3.0. Its always been important for us to get money in the game. What better way to spend your hard earned 'frogbux' than to buy a car and mod it. The exact workings, how much car cost, what parts upgrades you can buy etc, is still being considered.
The Mod Shop
So did I mention car parts?
You are also going to need somewhere to customise the cars too. The first beta may not feature the full extend of this as car customisation is a big undertaking and what with all the new costume, Ai, finance and multiplayer stuff I can’t say exactly how much will fit in f0.3.0. But f0.3.0 is just a beginning. As we mentioned before, back when Hal spent a few weeks building parts for the vRog - cars have a lot of parts and add ons and we want this to effect the drive too and that gets complex. So here is a glimpse of the interior of the new Mod shop. (Its on the other side of Swindon to Dick Lovett)
The new buildings are really starting to come together. Now that we have established a pipeline with how the lights and volumes and LODs work in the game the architecture is coming together nicely. I think thats it for this devblog. As i said earlier I am feeling pretty positive at the moment. I think the news is going to get more exciting more quickly from here. Sorry for the wait to this point, thanks for keeping with us on this. Oh yeah we got the Pants I promised to show you last time… well they are in a lot of the images here today. But heres an image around there back of the car show room.
I wrote most of this devblog a couple of Fridays ago and then i selfishly went on holiday without posting it. This past week I have been wrapped up in programming, but today I thought i should make some additions to it and post already!
Looking back we have noticed how writing devblogs has started to be really helpful to us. We spend so much time spent focused intently on small corners of the game, that stopping to write a devblog forces us to step back and gaze at the bigger picture. With a wider view of everything its a good opportunity to check in on the overall presentability of the game, but also to help us to refocus on the main task of creating this world. One task always leads to another, for the past few weeks i had definitely lost sight of where i was heading. Fortunately, i tend to trust my instincts and while sending myself off on a series of tasks I can always find my way back to where I was heading by completing them. Each smaller task being a breadcrumb in a trail that brings me back around to a larger more important task which i had forgotten about. When i get back on track its almost like… oh yeah I remember why I started doing that seeming unrelated thing now and I understand why my previous self sent me off in that direction.
So one of my biggest distractions recently is a new User Interface system(UI) I have been building. Basically, we want more customisation throughout, from clothes, to cars, to weapons, to modes, to servers, to quality settings and so on and so on. We need a unified UI to make this happen. Its important that we have something that can scale with the game as it grows, by working as a prototyping UI and also a finished UI. I needed to make a system that we can use productively in development to perform all these different types of operations, but will also work for players in game. Also, we need a UI that will work for all input devices and in a much more coherent way that the UI was in previous versions. Think fPhone 2.0, or something like that. Feeling really positive about it and what its going to mean for the possibilities for the future of Amazing Frog?'s continuing evolution. Although as I said to Hal yesterday, "I just spend all day programming away like Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote and all I have to show for it is a button that disappeared when I pressed it". Sounds bad… but actually it was a good day as it proved to me that the new system works… Next I can use it to displaying interactive connection data or rapidly build a clothing moderator or settings manager … well I will decide tomorrow.
Level Of Detail (LOD)
As you can see from screen shots we have posted over the past few months, The level of detail in the new Amazing Frog? is much higher than before. Its not just about the models and textures, but also the surfaces and lighting. Hal has been improving how we see the buildings from distance, by manufacturing more accurate lower Level Of Detail(LOD) instances of everything. This is all very much about optimisation. Rather than having all the buildings in view in high detail with loads of polygons and materials being rendered, we make simpler versions that you see when you are further away and then how the low detailed object is displayed is based on view location and quality settings. We have also been doing this kind of optimisation on the shadow casters and reflection probes. We have so many active lights in Swindon now, all capable of shadow casting, that it was imperative to cull that activity.
Concrete
As I mentioned in a previous post, we were doing away with all the old style models and assets some of which dated as far back as the OUYA and some were even originally made to run as background assets on an iPhone 4. That included most of the architecture, but their physical presence in the space is quite important. Instead of removing them completely we have "concreted" them. This is to allow them to still function … you know as big blocks of mass and to help you navigate er… vertically. We felt this would be a better way to represent the missing architecture of the old style temporarily, while Hal is working his way through them. Although currently he has been focused on covering the frogs lower regions.
Clothing
Really excited about where the clothing is going. Hal has been making it much more physical and the library of items of clothing to be worn in combination is growing steadily. No trousers (aka pants) in the screenshots, but we've got them too (will show you next time) There is a puffa jacket and some hoodies now. A larger selection of clothing is what we always wanted for Amazing Frog? especially as we become an online game. We wanted enough variation to create your own unique frogs. This extends to how we have been recreating other features too, as you have seen with the cars. We know there is a big wave of customisation coming to Amazing Frog? This is why I mentioned earlier about the necessity for the new UI system and why it has been important to create a solid foundation for it.
I just like this image with the sun rays… I’m really excited to show you what we can do with the day, night and weather systems… but I think static screen shots don’t really capture it that well. Don't worry about all these image effects too, the intention is to make many of them optional in quality settings.
So I guess we should get back to it. Sorry for the wait on Devblog 018 , Thanks for all the positive comments it means a lot to us, while development can sometimes feel a little overwhelming, we kind of live for this and don’t want to be doing anything other than making Amazing Frog?
100 more years Amazing Frog Development … .dot com.
I’m afraid much of what i have been doing over the past few weeks I would find hard to glamourise. Really, I’m not sure how to make it sound interesting. Fear not, because Hal’s progress with The Fayju Building yields prettier pictures which follow, but I’ll start with the boring stuff, so hang in there...
World Compilation
This takes place before the frog is even instantiated. I call it 'world compilation' and its the foundation of gameplay, but completely invisible. “World compilation” is chiefly responsible for loading the game environment and now it is also taking networking into consideration. You know things like if the game is hosted or are you joining a game. In previous versions of Amazing Frog? we had “world” scenes which were giant files that contained everything for each of the locations like Swindon, Moon, Sewer etc. This approach made it very difficult to change the content around each time you visit or during gameplay. Since we are now working with day times, networks and the new FrogLife™ system there is so much dynamic data a game needs a little more thought in setup before gameplay begins. So I have been occupied with building the worlds up out of lots of separate and dynamic components and how to make it easier for us to arrange and change that content. This has been important for us for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Hal and I have been working very hard of establishing a development pipeline … what we used to have was more of a 'development funnel' where we would cram everything in and hope it didn’t explode, like endlessly piping icing onto a cake. (I like cake) Now we have a much more refined setup. It took a while to get there and we are still coming to terms with it. Since everything we are doing is now a lot more complex we had to enhance the way we build and share. A simple example would be that Hal can happily work on the Fayju Building in isolation, change the lighting setup and those changes can be quickly and simply incorporated into the game without issue. The other, perhaps more important reason why world compilation is so important is for orchestrating all the dynamic objects like cars , barrels, weapons, frogs etc etc. We have been moving towards enabling different modes loaded into the same world and this is the key to developing flexibility for this in the future.
The Fayju building
As you can see we haven’t furnished the our office yet, but its looking and feeling much more like the genuine article. Here are some shots I took today, walking around the new building. Some of the doors are still a bit …unpredictable, but its starting to come under control. There is a lot more detail I can't wait to freak out running around it in VR its kind of freaky to be walking around the corridors and staircases that we use every day.
Lighting
Now that we are using texture streaming there is a lot more detail in all the surfaces, but we also have made some difficult decisions about lighting. Switching to deferred rendering is giving us a lot more flexibility with lighting and allowing Hal to really go to town lighting the new architecture. We have been back and forth over the use of deferred rendering for some time over fears that it would become difficult to optimise, but we are pretty sure we have a solution to this and so we made the decision to go with it. Now we can see where we are going with lighting.
Time
We have mentioned before how a day and night cycle is to play a part in Amazing Frog? and now we have resolved our approach to environment lights we can move forward with more confidence into how the passage of time works in SwindonShire and the changing of the world lights. Torches and headlights were our biggest concern, but that looks like its going to be ok, so will show some of that soon. I can’t say with any certainty exactly how the passage of day and night will work in Amazing Frog? and exactly how “dark” night will be, we are still tweaking it to see what feels right, but until more of the game is functioning as usual its will be hard to judge. Passage of time or game time may be something we expose for user control, since it will be possible to host a game and we may look at how a player can have control over this and an environment parameter, e.g. night time racing, early morning pigeon shooting.
More on the New Frog
The Frog is always being upgraded, but perhaps one of the most exciting things we have going on at the moment is the facial expressions (Thats why we made this as the title image) They crack me up. We are developing some “goto" expressions for particular emotions or reactions or default states for particular NPCs, but the facial expression system is essentially dynamic. We have always believed in little things, like how the frog looks at the camera as it passes or checking out nearby objects as you walk by. Stupid little details are really important to us. Now, aside from head tracking, we also have eye tracking and pupil dilation that can be commanded by code. As with all the FrogLife™ systems we also want the NPCs to have access to facial expression so it has been fairly complex deciding and implementing what makes the face react… we are getting there. Also on another note, you may notice that all the images we have shown so far of the new frog are only wearing t-Shirts. This is because that is all we have so far. The old frog was reliant on layers of textures to represent costumes (and we still have all of those), but from here on all clothing will have physicality to it, customisable of course, but with physicality… we just haven’t given the frog any pants yet.
Business As Usual
Thanks to every one who nudged me about writing a devblog. If I am honest by the time i get to a Friday and start writing one of these, it takes a while to remember all the things that we have both been doing since the last one. There are so many things going on. Only this morning I was talking to Hal saying I am worried we were spinning too many plates between us, it can be fairly confusing jumping back and forth between physics code, network code, Ai code, environment code, optimisation and more especially when i want them all to work together. Likewise, while Hal bounces between making buildings, clothing, crazy substance systems, landscapes and vehicles… I’m pretty sure he was working on a moped at one point this week which kind of freaked me out. We’re so excited about how its all coming together, sorry its taking so long.
LATE - Apologies for not getting the devblog out last Friday I did say i would try and do one very two weeks. It can get really distracting, there is always just one more thing to program. This week i got distracted with what i would describe as the underlying architecture for my "interactive object system". That sounds really conventional I guess and ... I dunno... maybe it is. Its about three ‘forces' being able to control everything cars, cannons, sharks, NPCs, guns etc... Those three ‘forces’ being a player ,the network and AI. Its something I have wanted to get my teeth into for a long while. I remember on the OUYA we had lorries (Trucks) cruising up and down the main street in Swindon, and cars supposedly driven by NPCs. They were on rails and I hated that. I liked what they did in the game, you know standing in the road and then suddenly a lorry takes you out… but I hated how they felt so incomplete they disappeared to nothing (this is all pre the great wall of Swindon). I said to Hal back then when we started on Steam that I would not put cars back in on rails… The only time you would see another frog driving a vehicle other than a player would be via network or AI. Any way thats the point I am trying to make…? The devblog is later because I got distracted this week with laying the foundations that would enable NPC frogs to ‘decide’ to drive from A to B.
A New Game?
So Development. Often, especially when things get tricky and begin to weigh down on the mind, it can feel like we are making a completely new game. This feeling come from all the completely new models and from rebuilding all the systems from the ground up in order to be configured to work over a network for online multiplayer and work with the newer physics. We are not building a new game,of course. It just feels like that sometimes. The process is more like transcribing rather than rebuilding and we have been transcribing to Unity 5 for a long while now. While sometimes i look at what is infront of me and I think... oh U4 had this and that and that etc... as some point soon it will all drop into place. But I have to get the basics sorted first.
FrogLife™
The 'Frog Object' is coming along nicely. This time around the NPCs will be using the exact same system as the main frog. This was our original intention when we added NPC frogs with the first Steam Versions. We wanted them all to have the ability to be controlled just like your frog… but it didn’t work out like that and in the end to bump the numbers of NPCs I had to build a different frog object for them. It was a sacrifice we made in the Unity 4 version, knowing we would revisit in Unity 5. Now that we are in the process of rebuilding the frog system I have put better optimisation routines to allow for the same object to be used as an NPC frog and player frog. Aside from having more reliable control over the player frog and network support, it is leading to better AI implementation and allowing the NPC frogs to have all of your abilities. Hal and I have always wanted the NPC frogs to each have a place in the world, its complicated to organise, but before any of that can take place we have to get the underlying frog object right. For example lets say the frog that works in Frog Milk Coffee Co had to be at work at 8am to open the shop but if killed on the way to work maybe the coffee shop will be late opening. If you kill a frog it would be nice if it re appeared at the hospital. Incidentally they have just build a new NHS centre in the game zone in real life… How nice of the real Swindon Council was that! It fits with the game's development plans.
Recalibrating the Frog Physics
Hal made the new cannon, the Fan and barrels etc.. a while back. In fact the newer models were introduced into the Unity 4 version with a separate set of “lesser” materials. But this week He also made a new set of trampolines. One of the first objects ever created for Amazing Frog? One of the main things we are working on now is how new frog physics works with each of these objects. Its not an exact science - more bounciness.. less stickyness… floppier…spinnier... For now, I have a collection of instances of these objects in the main carpark and repeatedly slam the frog’s faces into them to see how things are working. When we feel they are working more of less how we want them to, we will implement the new placement system. This is one of the great things out Unity 5, it's scene organisation. Its not like it wasn’t possible in Unity 4, but it was not as simple to implement as now. We can set up multiple set ups of placements of fixed objects, like trampolines, fans, cannons barrels etc with ease. What determines the different set ups we have yet to decide -time, mission, user etc. But first things first … calibration then i want to do a test where i get a load of NPC frogs to chase me onto the bouncey castle.
Architecture.
The new building is coming along really well and being one of the key areas in Amazing Frog? as when you come out of the hideout its your first point of contact with Swindon, we really want to make it right. Its not just about how it looks, its important that frogs can throw themselves around the interior with wreckless abandon. It just feels very authentic now and a massive improvement on the simple model that had been there since the beginning. Also these screen shots that we put in these devblogs are development screenshots. The lighting on them is not finalised. As you know lighting is a tricky issue for us since we are going for a day night cycle., but we will be aiming to maintain the "feel" of Amazing Frog? but just with more detail.
So In theory i need to put devblog 17 out next Friday, since I was late. I’ll try but for now, we’ll get back to development. I am hoping to come back real soon and update you on this NPC stuff, I’m very excited about how thats going. Also it might be good to explain how we plan to deliver the first beta. In theory I would like it to be a separate build to the U4 version so you can keep both on your machine without having to redownload. I'd be interested to hear peoples thoughts on that.
In the spirit of trying to maintain more regular development blogs, here is a new entry of what we have been doing with Amazing Frog? over the past couple of weeks.
General Development
Game development involves a lot of different processes and disciplines and it seems as we progress with Amazing Frog? that the number of different processes and techniques that we need to employ to achieve what we want increases daily…. Thanks technology ! The project itself is vast and while working in unity 4 we had found it increasingly difficult to provide progressive updates. It had become too much like manoeuvring a single giant ship, rather than commanding a fleet of autonomous self aware boats to achieve the same goals. If there is something wrong on one boat it can be fixed and the fleet moves on or if you add a new boat it can become part of the fleet rather than getting the Massive ship to move around slowly picking up all the new…. er … ideas. Hopefully you get my silly analogy. My point is that aside from changing how we build, program, design the game we have also been working on our development process. By setting up a pretty slick version control system its means in future it will be much simpler to integrate changes from Hal and changes from me and incorporate them into the latest ‘safe’ build that we’ll have allowing updates to flow quicker… BUT we still need to get to that first Beta update from the U5 version first.
Swindon Shire
SwindonShire has been coming along nicely, its always good to spend some time running around as a frog to take closer look It helps check out the variety of detail and what may work or not work. The environment as a whole is evolving and we both spend a bit of time on 'environment stuff' each week. By 'environment stuff' I mean the landscape, the sky , the atmosphere, the sea, the wind, the weather, daylight and whole bunch O stuff. Sometimes the vastness can be a bit distracting at times when it might be preferable to focus on other development necessities, like walking, running, driving, shooting... I guess it is normal as an indie game developer to find yourself bouncing between all sorts of stuff at once. We want to get the look of SwindonShire right, but we also want to have flexibility allowing for lots of weather conditions and day times. As much as I can show them in screenshots I still need to orchestrate how is all fits together in gameplay.
Architecture
Hal’s progress in the Fayju building (Wyvern Theatre) has been really exciting. Its pretty much the most complex building in Swindon so far and the interior is coming on really well and its a big interior. This week I have been using the new building and its interior to test out frog movement and surface interaction which has been a joy compared to the test environment I was using last week.
In the old version you could only get to our office through the window. In this version of the Fayju building more offices can be explored, you can work you way up and down the stairs to the foyer ( which I am sure will have a Frog Milk Coffee Co. area) The Art gallery has been massively expanded in line with our plans for that space. The Swindon fArt Council has always been important to us. If you are wondering why the building is blueish… There are no textures on it yet, I'll show you more images of it when thats done.
New Frog
As you can see the screenshots in this devblog are all containing the new frog. I’m happy with how the new frog is working, but there is still some way to go with it. I guess now that we have introduced eyes, expressions and fingers we should have expected more complexity. Last year, I had made a lot of progress integrating the old frog and rag doll system into Unity 5 and Multiplayer. Our intention was to upgrade the frog at a later date. Although, as I mentioned in a previous post, the behaviour of the physics was becoming a big issue since it behaved so differently in Unity 5. It has not been a total loss, much of that work remains valid, but i feel very much like I have had to go back to basics to get this new frog up and running, jumping... and er falling over again. What seems to be emerging is a much more robust and flexible system. I'll try and out put some more videos as I go along.
We didn't really feel in the position to write devblog this week, but I am conscious that you may want to know what we have been up to in the weeks that have passed since f0.2.8e The Swindon Space Program. Development never really stops on Amazing Frog? These past few weeks we have been crunching on the Unity 5 version and there has been, and there will be, a lot to be getting on with. I’ll have a go at trying to explain whats involved in some of these processes.
If you have been following the devblogs then you will know that we started working on the Unity 5 build last year. Our initial approach back then was to bring all the Amazing Frog? content into Unity 5 and begin a process of fixing and updating. This was relentless and left us with a complex and near broken project. It was a bit like cramming all your toys into a toy box and then climbing in to fix them. Eventually we had decided that this was the wrong way to go about it. After 4 years of development and having added loads of content to the Amazing Frog world, many files, objects,systems were in desperate need of refactoring and re-organisation. Since Unity 5 was so different not just in how you make worlds, but how the physics works within them, we decided to strip out everything and only integrate working new assets one at a time, i.e. transfer the toys from one box to another one at a time. This has left the world feeling very tidy and looking much better, but the process is a bit slower. So lets have a think about 3 of such toys being transferred.Basically 3 Core components of the game - Swindon Shire, Swindon's Architecture and The Frog and what you might expect to see from them in The next version.
Swindon Shire
For us, one of the most important features of Amazing Frog? was being able to catapult your self comically over great distances, but one of the biggest disappointments in unity 4 was not having as much control over the variety of terrain in the Landscape as we would have liked. This is partly why its so massive and unvaried. We have known that we would be able to greatly improve on this in Unity 5 and so for the past few weeks Hal has been getting his Slartibartfast on and pushing the geological features of SwindonShire.
The next-gen SwindonShire has loads more surface detail, dynamic wetness and most importantly it brings the ability to add so much more variety. In the past we had started work on areas like 'The Swamp' or 'The Swindon Landfill' but they didn't make the cut in any of the Unity 4 versions. We simply couldn’t achieve what we wanted. With our current tool set in U5 we can now carry on with this. No more flying for miles across endless green. We did always want a bunch of trees to get in the way any way. We have to be careful though. Amazing Frog? is a physics heavy game and its taking a while to optimise the new terrain to work with the game. Creating variety and character in the Isle of Swindon Shire is also not just about the surface but also the vegetation and the wildlife. Part of the reason why we integrated the pigeons in to f0.2.8e was to prepare for the wildlife that would inhabit greater SwindonShire.
Swindon's Architecture
As you can see in The Swindon Town Planning Office there is a table top Map Model of inside the Wall. On that map there are some models of buildings and the rest is flat. Each new or refurbished building in Swindon is represented by a model on this table top map. Going back to the toy box analogy We decided to remove every building from Swindon that is not on that map model and flatten it. Giving each building more purpose. We are basically filtering out some of the older and simpler architectural features in favour of the newer functional buildings with interiors like Frog Court, Fart Gyms, The Swindon Town Planning Office and the Hideout and The Frog Milk coffee Co. building and (not featured in U4) we also have our first highstreet branch of The Bank of Swindon. To get back into the swing of Swindon Architectural modeling, Hal is currently renovating one of the most important buildings in Swindon - The Fayju Building (The Wyvern Theatre in reality).
Featuring more indoor spaces, an underground carpark and an expanded and newly curated fArt Gallery. The Fayju Building was one of the first buildings Hal created of Swindon when we began this quest to build Amazing Frog? so we are so excited to see this one coming together. Also because its the one we work in. Also its fun watching Hal walk around the foyer downstairs taking reference photos while people wonder what the hell he is up to.
The Frog
After I had finished with f0.2.8e I got my hands on the new Frog. A moment I had been waiting for with great anticipation since watching it evolve on Hal’s Monitor a few months back. We had realised earlier in this process that the physics was so different in U5 that much work had to be done with the ragdoll. We had figured that now was a good time to upgrade the frog. This is where most of my time has been spent recently. While there is a lot to develop around the environment on many core systems in AF? like the fPhone, to the new customisable vehicles or the new camera and visual effects system or the weapons, fire system, I have found myself back on The Frog. A new Frog with eyes that look around a mouth that smiles… fingers?? OMG. A frog that wears clothes rather than having them painted on. A multiplayer frog. I would say though -Some of the things I am seeing on my screen currently I do not wish to share… hideous mistakes that seem to catapult this beautiful creation into infinity. But I am excited where its going. So much more expression, so many more possibilities. I'll try and post more about the new frog soon.
I want to try and keep up regular Devblogs, so do feel free to tweet me @fayju or nudge me on Steam to ask me where the next devblog is. Some times both Hal and I get so wrapped up in development its something that we forget.
32 Bit version
Oh - Also I almost forgot. Sorry to all the people who wanted a 32 bit version. I have updated the current build. It now has both a 64bit Windows version and a 32Bit Windows version and I have set it so it should download the relevant one for your system. We do not have a 32bit machine to test this on but it should work , please let us know if it is now working on your 32 bit machines.
A new Update available for Amazing Frog?. We are very proud (and relieved) to announce that f0.2.8e The Swindon Space Program Update is now available. After some pretty tricky bugs that popped up last minute… I wonder did we make it in time for Easter? Well we did try. Just so you know the bunny ears expire by the end of April.We added a lot of things to f0.2.8e that we have been meaning to add to Amazing Frog? for a long time. Some of these things you will have to earn or discover like the flamethrower of that contraption on the frogs back, I won’t spoil it. There are also more fundemental things like in-air controls for all vehicles. Cars also have a hop button where the handbrake was and handbrake is on right bumper.
Aside from being the “fire” update which was a pretty big system to implement, the moon is now more explorable which opens up a whole bunch of other things to do including gemsmash and moon buggy time trial among other things. Make sure you start your tour of Swindon with a visit to The Swindon Town Planning Office for further information of whats going on around town and take a peek at the change log.
Aside from all the fun stuff added in the is Update, we also added some more systematic stuff. The Steam detection (big red lazer walls in Hideout) has been rewritten and is now more explanatory on whats happening. We also added some super basic analytics, so we can start to gather what machines people are running Amazing Frog? on. This information can really help us moving forward.We will be ready to make any hot fixes this week so keep letting us know if you run in to issues. I am pretty sure a lot of things from previous version have been fixed like the cathead and tvhead. I think it would be best to give it a few days to see if there are any crazy problems and then i will make a 32bit version of this update for those that require it.Our next goal is to update the store page. We haven’t really updated it since we first put Amazing Frog? on Steam Early Access so it doesn’t really represent the game very well. Also it’s been ages since Hal and I made any videos. After we have done that I will come back and write a devblog about what happening with the u5 stuff, the new frog, online etc. For now… Happy Chocolate egg Weekend and enjoy f0.2.8e - The Swindon Space Program Update.
Hello Again.
Sorry that its has been a while since the last devblog. Lots has been happening and its been getting really complex to explain what and why we are doing. I’ll do my best.
First off we have a rather fiery update, f0.2.8e, that is almost ready. You had the grapple hook, bombs and rc cars in f0.2.8d and we are introducing fire in various forms and a bunch of other things into f0.2.8e. Its a pretty big Unity 4 update again. Mainly it is new mechanics and systems. Its an exciting update. One of the main core new mechanics is Flammable trails….
For example take a can O fuel to your local Art gallery… leave a trail on the floor….
shoot the trail with your gun.
To be honest we haven’t explored all the possibilities of this yes. But we have been making sure the flames have an effect on most things that move.
Also there were some rumours about the Swindon Space Program actually going to the moon, not sure i can say what that is all about. I think some frogs daydreamed about going to the moon while riding a crazy buggy up on a hill.
So Gaz, on a more serious note... the online version and unity 5… Where is it?
Oh its happening. What you need to know is that The Online Unity 5 version of Amazing Frog? (f0.3.0) is coming. Not even Trump can stop that.
To talk about progress on f0.3.0, I should explain why in the last 6 Months of 2016 there was no UPDATE !!
It was depressing to have so long without releasing an update. Seriously, Hal and I love playing Amazing Frog? and a new update is literally a good time to sit down and play it for hours, maybe make some videos, but also to remember why we became game developers in the first place. But after the Big Switch which I mentioned in Devblog 008 we had our work cut out for us.
Its not that progress isn’t happening, its just taking a long time. Longer than we expected. This is beyond being tripped up by our usual blind optimism. This was not realising that pretty much EVERYTHING would need converting and rebuilding. Code and Assets. We never expected to have to change SO much just to get it to work, but we also,never expected to feel so empowered by Unity 5… The possibilities.
There is so much going on in the Unity 5 update that is so awesome, literally so many moments when Hal and I have been staring at the screen thinking shit… thats so awesome, did we really make that ? As arduous as the task is, Unity 5 forces you to step up and be a better developer. The current problem with the Amazing Frog? Unity 5 branch is it doesn’t all come together yet with the same kind of synergy as the f0.2.8 versions have. Its like lots of isolated clusters of a big beautiful puzzle. The unity 4 puzzle may be more complete but it will never be as nice to look at.
So In November after realising that we would find it too difficult to replace the standing unity 4 version on one go, we came up with a different plan. A plan that enabled more output.
Hal has been constructing objects and buildings for the Unity 5 version since before the Frog Milk Coffee Co Update, I think I spoke about this before. By focusing on the likes of new weapons or mechanics like the Grapple hook and active trails, it gave us the opportunity to start building new content that was Unity 5 safe, but would also work in Unity 4 again. These things are more related to smaller code driven objects rather than the new architectural features which define the Frogthropology™, like the Bank of Swindon. Each of the businesses and institutions in our Swindon are important to the ongoing development of Swindonshire. Objects and buildings are important, but its the social and Frogeconomics that will drive infrastructure of the FrogLife™ecosystem. If that makes sense to you, then great you now have an insight into our ambitions.
So the unity 5 development continues. Yes through December and January The Unity 5 development process slowed to give way to f0.2.8d and f0.2.8e but it did not stop. We have had to bend little with Unity 5. The physics is very different. Better basically. However, to get it too feel as fluid as Amazing Frog? we are having to make some changes. On the plus side… melee should be part of the basic frog actions, like we always dreamed, more on this after f0.2.8e
Also, On the grapple hook screenshots…. wow.
Its time. I’ll keep this short but we just made f0.2.8d available.
Yes thats right, we have done an update... Its not the unity 5 beta .. no not yet. And its not the online version. This is a gift from us to the community to say thank you for all your patience and also for making Amazing Frog? possible.
I won’t say too much about the Update other than there are more secrets as usual and you can unlock 12 holiday gifts. However, I will say this , the challenge will expire on the 12th day of Xmas as the decorations are taken down.
I’ll leave you to explore the update yourselves. Happy Holidays and Thanks.
So If you are still reading down to this bit, heres some more information about whats going on.
Lets call it the Devblog-y Bit of the post
Firstly, Why have we done another Unity 4 update?
The short answer is because the Unity 5 version is not ready and we couldn’t allow Xmas to pass without putting a festive update out… its just not how we roll.
The longer answer is along the lines of what I mentioned in the last devblog, although progress on the Unity 5 build is exciting, the feeling of the gameplay is not quite right yet and it has become increasingly necessary to reprogram a whole bunch of fundamental froggy stuff (F.F.S). Once I had got past my initial instinctive fears of change, it became very clear to me that this process is having an increasingly positive effect on the overall development. This is mainly because it is allowing us to reorganise some of our key fundamental systems. Key Systems like driving and access to cars, weapons and where to get them, currencies and where to spend it, apps and how to get more out of them, citizens and what they are doing, police robbers etc. We are not looking to lose the “open” nature of play in Amazing Frog? but after spending a couple of years developing and adding its been good to refine and organise.
How did we do it?
We have been working exclusively in Unity 5 for the past few months, so to make this update possible we again brought some aspects of the newer game into unity 4. This is why you may find that gift number 12 is fairly experimental.
Expect spelling mistakes. I know that the new xmas drink in the FrogMilk Coffee Co has the incorrect price on it its says 88 Frog Milk Tokens when it it actually 8. Also feel free to play spot Gaz’s rushed typos.
We never hold content back that is ready, we always want to get it straight into your hands. Since its is just the two of us we have nothing to gain really from holding back content that is ready to play. because once something is ready to play we are working on the next bit, we don’t have any level marketing strategies or anything like the bigger games companies. We embrace that this is Early Access and keep progressing the Amazing Frog? world.
Again Thanks,
First things First… Where is the Unity 5 Update?
I want to make one thing clear - The Unity 5 update will NOT be ready before Xmas… :(
We just don’t feel that its ready to be played. We have been doing some really cool stuff that I desperately want to share with every one, but its not ready as a whole. Hal has been busy fleshing out the high street, for the new businesses that will occupy the new buildings and we have made a lot of progress with multiplayer and the overall environment , but the physics is just not “Amazing Frog?y” enough. And to be blunt its going to take more time. On the positive side this means that when we do make the first Unity 5.0 beta available there will be a lot more new content than originally planned. Thank you for bearing with us.
Secret Santa’s 12 Secret Presents
We just felt that it would be lunarcy not to put out an update for you guys to play over the holiday period. We wanted to give you something special. We pulled up the Unity 4 version and started prototyping some of the unseen goodies we had been working on for Unity 5 and felt we had just cause to let you win access to them through SSSP (Secret Santa’s Secret Presents) Last year we dropped the Xmas update on Xmas Eve…So for 2016, we are going to try and get this one out a bit sooner :)
The next devblog will have a much more in-depth look at the upcoming beta. It has been a chaotic past month, working in both Unity 4 and 5, simultaneously again, and it can be difficult to find the time to put what we have been doing into words. As i mentioned before, sometimes the Unity 5 version feels like we are making an entirely new game, "Amazing Frog? 2" if you like and grappling with the conversion issues demands a very serious approach to development. Having some time to focus purely on making fun content has been incredibly refreshing for us. Helping us to remember why we are building this game that we love so much. I don’t want to spoil the surprises by saying what is in f0.2.8d, but we put some hidden stuff in there that we think is out of this world.
Also - I'm sorry I have been quiet in the discussions, but I want to express how grateful we are to everyone in the community for helping each other and making it such a cool place. Especially Zeron and Pootispaghetti who have also been super helpful bring things to my attention and sometimes I think they know more about Amazing Frog? than I do.
I will post here again when Secret Santa’s 12 Secret Presents is ready to play.
Status
Firstly Amazing Frog? Unity 5 conversion Status update - Well its all feeling a lot more like Amazing Frog? finally. Everything is finally coming together again. Many things we have been forced to work on is isolation, like the new Models the completely rebuilt car system, upgrading the buildings inside and out or the huge task of having everything in one optimised world so you can carry objects between the gym and swindon … I mean who doesn’t want to shoot all the lovely folks at the gym? Basically, Its a lot of work and even though there is still some way to go, finally we are starting to see the light.
So look, I am sorry I have not written a devblog for a while. I don’t update you all as often as I should. When I write these devblogs it takes me quite a bit of time, partly because I am rubbish at writing, but mainly because there always seems to be one more thing i can program or one more thing i can fix.
I always grab screen shots of exactly how the game is at the time i write the devblogs. Before we went to Steam Dev Days most things were not working due to some underlying changes I was making. This time all these screenshots were grabbed through friday night. It can be tricky deciding what to show or talk about as there are so many things. Also somethings we don’t want to expose just yet or perhaps we are not even sure if they will make it into the game. For example - the clouds from some screen shots in previous devblogs… On the way back from Seattle as I was gazing out of the airplane window at the blanket of cottonwool clouds beneath and I could almost see Amazing Frog? being thrown up through them, impacting with the wing of the plane, farting, sliding back off and then falling beneath the clouds again… as you do. I said to Hal, we can’t have clouds unless you can jump over them, what would be the point? Some of the visuals we were working on looked good, but were being counter productive to gameplay, also destructive to our process. So with that in mind, I thought I would talk a little about what have been some of our major challenges over the past few weeks.
Recent Challenges.
A month ago, we were so excited about all the effects, and rendering techniques that were now available to us in Unity 5. We got seduced by them. New Cloud rendering, Water rendering, Day night Rendering - the possibilities !! But the more we got excited about these new possibilities the less pragmatic we were becoming about how they were effecting the gameplay and our development process. It turns out with the water and clouds we were using, there was no way we could get split screen to work and they were draining too much cpu. We had to abandon ship. After we returned from Steam Dev Days we took the drastic decision to start again with the water and completely rethink the sky. We needed to focus on things that work directly with game play and were not counter productive to aspects of the game that need to remain intact, like Split screen local multiplayer. We simplified everything it is much more stable and are now much happier with it. In short, we had to make sure everything new could work with everything you are already playing in f0.2.8c and more. So we are now being more brutal in how we edit what we put in. If it doesn’t work with multiple camera locations (split screen) and it cannot work with dynamic lighting (day night cycle) Then its not going in. As I write this…I am not sure if I can keep the rainbow yet :( but I really want to, but will update you on that next time.
The Day Night Cycle.
When cutting down on some of the new things we did keep the day night cycle as it was important to our overall plan for Amazing Frog? moving forward. We have not yet finalised how it works yet, but we definitely feel like time will be as important for the game as currency.
Using a Day night cycle has been a pretty steep learning curve for us. Until now we had only felt with scenes that had fixed lighting. Even on the OUYA night time version we had a fixed scene for that. Having a whole 20km world that has constantly changing light involves getting into a new way of thinking. Like how do we get time to feel natural? Thankfully Unity 5s lighting system with a bit of experience is frikkin' amazing. As i mentioned, until recently, we haven’t been able to bring all the “moving parts” of the game together, so getting a full picture of how light works with that has been difficult and full with problems. Its likely we will still spend some more time tweaking this over the coming weeks, but this is what it looks like at the moment. Here are some screen shots of swindon at dawn, dusk and in the moon light. Check out the paint on the road marking in the moonlit one.
Lets not forget the road markings!
I often write these blog posts from my perspective, but I should mention the road markings. While its a detail that may seem fairly insignificant, it has been a pretty huge problem with a lot of history, especially for Hal. Originally (back in 2012), Hal build the first model for Swindon as a super low poly model, which was originally intended to be seen only from above. (This was so we could throw frogs into the car park from the top of the Fayju Building.) As the game evolved the road markings have been an aspect we have wanted to correct. In earlier versions on Af? even on Steam, the original low resolution road makings from the first model were still present. Then when Hal made the new concrete roads in Unity 4 earlier this year, disappointingly, it was not possible to add road Markings onto a detailed tiled material. Now in Unity 5 it has been finally possibly for Hal to craft them in a way that he is happy with. And you can see from some of these screen shots how much detail there is in the roads inside The Swindon Walls now. Also, everywhere the detail is much higher. If you look inside the new VROG you can see how much detail there is inside. I think at some point I will need to do some evolution screen shots, or perhaps we can set up an exhibition in game of the evolution of Amazing Frog? All this detail does create another layer that worries me- Hal does have a habit of hiding things in the game environment and with this level of detail everywhere, well...
Fart Gyms
Something else that happened this week is that Hal passed me back the upgraded Gym that you can move freely in and out of from Swindon. It has seen an upgrade to the detail and without going into much detail… it has been expanded and there are more, functioning doors, leading to more .. er rooms...
Among other things, this week Hal will be spending some time on the task of integrating the Sewer and Lab into the larger world. One of my many tasks will be to fill the pool and get the gym frogs functioning in their new environment. Each of these processes will inevitably create other tasks, some if which i don’t know what they are yet.
Causality
Yup, I’m not going to lie, sometimes I wish I was more organised, but its not how I am wired. What I do know about the way i approach problem solving is one solution can easily lead to so many new possibilities. So its a positive process. One major problem I had over the past few months in Unity 5 was that every time I allowed the NPC Frogs to be activated not only would the build crash with no explanation, but also the Unity Editor would crash. It really stumped me. I knew it would be something small as these things so often are, Ii put it to the side and carried on with all the other things that needed doing. I even went to speak to Unity about it at Steam Dev Days, but I actually found the cause while in Seattle. It was, as i suspected, a very simple thing, literally one line of code that had worked fine in Unity 4 and even in some versions of unity 5, but not any more. When fixed, the Frog citizens of Swindon became active again. At this point I realized that further optimisation was needed since Swindon was about to receive a lot more frogs as the sewer and gym areas were now also going to be active in the same world. I had built a bunch of helpers that define “zones” of activity , but they had always needed refinement. Now seemed like a good time. I soon realised these zones could be used for other forms of optimisation, such as rendering. Zones to guide the rendering choices the camera makes. This led me to tidying the camera code in a lot of ways, recreating the camera manager, enabling more control for camera take overs, more versatile movie cameras, more variety of vehicle cameras, the updates to the cameras then had an effect on how the on screen interfaces would be displayed, the messages, etc this sequence of events and changes goes on and I am not sure if I can pin point all the benefits that followed the fixing of that bug but they were plentiful and helped us make some interesting toys.
The Little Things
I guess the summery of this devblog is to say its all really coming together now. All the little things too, like the traffic cones. There is actually a lot more going on with the development than I have mentioned in this DevBlog. I haven’t even touched on whats happening with Online and how thats going to work or whats going on in the community. I will, but for now I think thats enough for today. Its going to be a nightmare writing the change log for the next version :/
Part I
Often, I throw images at these blog posts so you can see what we have been up to. Today, I think, this is going to be a word heavy post. This is because most of our time recently has been spent working on solutions to existing problems.
It might seem at times that most of the game is inplace and that all we should need to do with updates is just add more stuff. To a certain extent this is true or has been true, it's a balancing act. Imagine you have been riding a unicycle for some time and you have become really good at it. So much so, that while you are unicycling, you can carry quite a few boxes and then some more boxes. You want to keep carrying more boxes, but sooner or later you'll need to rethink the unicycle or you will end up in a mess on the floor.
The "unicycle box stacking thing" is a metaphor where the boxes are new ideas and features and the unicycle is the existing engine or framework of the game. Put simply, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs and in this case the unicycle which represents many of our underlying architecture for the game... is eggs.
If you are thinking,
"This is an announcement that Hal has built an unicycle and Gaz has programmed so you can carry boxes while riding it",then I am sorry... but the metaphor had to come from somewhere, so I am not saying we haven't thought about it and thinking about it I do love eggs.
As you know, if you have been following these devblogs, our main focus is Online play and we are happy with how this is going, but the systems that we have built up over the past few years are not conforming well. Many are having to be completely restructured to accommodate the change. Change is good because it means improvement, but it is time consuming.
Amazing Frog? is a physics based game and its important to us that we aim to keep as much synergy between what objects are doing on every ones machines as we can. For us, this means that we are integrating online capability to all objects at as low a level as we can and this has involved a major restructuring of virtually all "frog" systems.
A bit like upgrading a unicycle to a BMX.
Its taking longer than we had hoped. But its looking better than we had imagined.
Its Steam Dev Days, I am writing this in the early hours of the morning before it starts ... I think I have jet Lag...
I'll write part II after Steam Dev Days is over.
Since the last Devblog we have fixing a lot of leftover problems inherited from “The Big Switch” (see Devblog 008). Luckily, by its very nature, that process of “fixing” soon evolves into a process of refinement.
SwindonShire
Hal has spent a lot of time with the landscape, adding to its detail at a geological level, preparing it for a new layer of flora and fauna and subsequently, what we are most excited about - a layer of civil frog engineering. Also having the time to refine the landscape has made it possible to reduce the impact on the CPU .( i.e. making it run better ) We’re excited about this as, oddly, even though the landscape looks more detailed it seem to run more efficiently than before. We will most likely dedicate a whole devblog to this at some point.
Online
On the one hand I want to get a beta out as soon as possible for online frog activity, but i don’t want to just release the bare minimum. I have been getting a lot of questions about what shape the beta is going to take. It is an evolving process, like Amazing Frog? always has been. But, in terms of how the Beta will be delivered, we do not want players to lose the content from f0.2.8, so its likely that we will create a split build. This will mean that you can have both versions until the new one is ready to fully replace the Unity 4 build. We want to be sure that the new version is working ok before we remove the current version. Also this gives us some small opportunities to fix any outstanding bugs in f0.2.8c. The features available for online will grow as we add updates. For example, right now I have no plans to set up a bunch of dedicated servers, its too soon to think like that. We just want to empower players to play online with each other and to give you as much control as possible on how to set up your online game. This week I have been looking at how to provide frogs with these controls. It will be done through the fPhone. The fPhone will need an upgrade in terms of controls and components, but it should give you the ability to play Amazing Frog? for a bit and then at any point decide to open your game to other players or jump into someone elses. A Social fApp, essentially… I am sure you can have a guess at what we are going to call it. Growing the companies that exist in SwindonShire is something very high on our agenda. We will be making specific game types and modes in time, but thats the format we are heading for initially. As I said though, this is an evolving process.
Stuff we are thinking about.
https://youtu.be/16rUOnsTgGY There are loads of awesome Amazing Frog? videos that inspire us for all sort of reasons and we are really thankful for that, but I just wanted to share Pungence’s Olympics video as its a good example of a video that inspires gameplay and can help shape development. Often, when we are wrapped up in either fixing, building and developing its refreshing to think about how Amazing Frog? is being played. Its no secret that we haven’t added achievements officially, but we do know that there is a hell of a lot of stuff you can try or learn to do. After watching this video we spent a while talking about how you could set and possibly share your own tasks or challenges. Especially since we will be connecting players together through online, we started to think very seriously not just about what shape a system like that might take but also very seriously how we could develop it. It also reminds us of the many conversations we have had about a whole stream of activity that could be fitting of some kind of reward. Anything from how many exploded cars in a single jump, or longest airtime on a BMX :)
Questions from the community.
from that thread i posted last week ... LegionOfSkeletron asked [quote]are you guys planning to add some kind of plane? or are you sticking with blimps? also I would love to see some stunting mechanics, such as being able to stand on vehicles while there moving or, even better, some kind of just cause three style grapple. Btw, great work fayju! keep it up :D[/quote] First off - thanks. Planes- yes. We can't say when it will happen and it is typical of us to make a spaceship before a biplane, but we have a list or crafts that we are working on. Stunting mechanics ... we have a few things in mind yes. on grapple - we did try out a tongue in the early stages of Amazing Frog development, it was very powerful but very glitchy. We decided to drop it back then and revisit grapple when the game was more developed... Teemo asked [quote]Will a debug menu or something similar to Skate 3s menu where you spawn items in such as containers, ramps and cars ever be added?[/quote] Usually something like this exists in a game because its something that the developers use while building the game. This is not something we have been using yet. Hal and I have often discussed how we could use more in game tools to help us to test things. We do have plans around this purely to help us develop, if it will turn into a feature i do not know yet. The movie camera is an example of an object that is derived from us wanting to do something for ourselves, we wanted to make screenshots and movie clips (not that we have got around to updating the store page). Besides, after the movie camera it was clear to us that we needed something more GoPro ish to get some trailer footage. Spawning stuff is not out of the question... we do have a major frog item that is as important as the fPhone in the works which I will talk about when unity 5 version is more stable. Pootispaghetti9001 [quote]How fleshed out will the frogluminati be? When will story come into play? And also specifics on the UI and capacity of online and if there will be any other features that will be online other than multiplayer?[/quote] Firstly Pooti, what's the frog illuminati? ... :) Online, currently we are all about making it work, it's not easy. A bit like I was saying earlier, we want to add features like survival modes and team stuff, sharing data, but we also don't know how this is going to evolve. Zeron asked [quote]Where will the garage where you park your modded cars be located in the map? Also, will it have a parts shop included in it or is it going to be separate from the garage?[/quote] So the area outside the hideout was always intended to be your "driveway" however we may have to build an extension, for reasons that may become clearer in the future. As for a parts shop, yes. The frog Milk Coffee Co. Shop was created to test out the whole shop thing and we intend to flesh out the entire high street with shops. Each shop can take us a few weeks and I will announce when we have entered our shop creation frenzy... It's not yet as we are focused on "the big switch" and online. Also modding the cars - as esteban_da_good asked about the Tiny Poopers, yes all vehicles will follow... But it takes a lot of Hal's time to make all the custom parts so it will start with just the folvo, frog all other vehicles to follow. Alex Costa [quote]I actually have a question as I am a bit of a football fan. Will the Swindon Town Stadium be added at some point? I think it would be interesting.[/quote] Hmmm... We need a stadium, eventually. Where else could the ceremony of Claw-Plach happen? But as to its purpose, I'm not sure how grounded in the reality of Swindon a stadium would be. It is not as high on our list as many other architectural necessities, like a network of roads, for example and maybe more roundabouts. And Finally from Hypnotoad [quote]Can you guys add it so the police have guns to make them more threatening. And so that they also have a police helicopter please and thank you.[/quote] Thankfully in the UK the police don't carry guns that often.... But in Amazing Frog? For me, your question is asking -will we see an update to the FrogLife™ system that allows frogs (including police) to carry guns. Yes. However as we move through all the components of Amazing Frog? Not just making them work in Unity 5, but also online ready, FrogLife™ is one I will not be able to upgrade until the later stages of this process. Thanks for all the questions, it really helps explain the process, keep adding to the thread and I will try and answer all in due course. Also I need to condense the suggestions down to something manageable too to put into a post. Also thanks to you all in the community who help out, it doesn't go unnoticed.
Things have been moving on with Amazing Frog? But its difficult to decide what to talk about. Some things, like whats new beasts we are working on, we would probably want to keep to ourselves, as we don’t want to spoil the surprise. Other things like day to day development I would imagine could be a bit boring to read about, but I guess thats the nature of Game Development…bits of fun at the summits of mountains of hard work.
Lets start with the boring stuff.
The Boring Stuff
Most of my time has been wrapped up with Online and I am quite happy with how things are going (considering online rag doll physics is not generally recommended). If we had followed the recommended paths of game development I’m pretty sure Amazing Frog? wouldn’t exist. Even so, the process so far has forced an unavoidable restructuring of the frog. Originally, I was quite frustrated about this, as not only is restructuring boring as hell, its very demanding to keep track of where you are. When i look at the positives emerging from this restructure, its feeling very encouraging and I can see glimpses of how much I am going to enjoy playing it when its ready. In the restructure I have had to look at how “split screen” works, how the controls are implemented and indeed assigned, how frogs are loaded, how scenes are “built”, what time of day it is and all sorts of customisable attributes. This is leading to players, ultimately, having more control over setting up their game experience. I want control over these variants while developing and now I have things available like the fOS and our UI system it should make it pretty straight forward to expose a lot of these customisable attributes in game. Bit boring to develop, but its going to be awesome to test.
Quality
Not sure if I have mentioned this, but we loves Unity 5… :)
There are so many graphical enhancements available to us now. And as much as the frog has been undergoing mass reconstruction for physics and online, So too has the Architecture and the assets. We know also that its imperative that we don’t cripple your machines, so as much as the graphics are undergoing improvements we are also considering how to address quality settings. We don’t want to lose the aesthetic of Amazing Frog? we just want it to feel more detailed and take full advantage of the new redesigned pipelines in U5. With the the day/night system its also important that all assets can work with varying light and environment conditions. I touched on this last time, its an ongoing concern.
Vrog
On a more exciting note, Car Modding is becoming a reality, Hal recreated the original Amazing Frog Car (the Vrog ) and in doing so has made all the other vehicles obsolete :) and put me in a position where building a system to fully customise the cars in game is now unavoidable. There is a high level of customisation available for this one car, with all manner of options that we are going to have a wicked fun time calibrating and testing. More to come on how this progresses, other vehicles will follow suit …and, of course, we need a car show room and mod shop.
Stay tuned, we are working as fast as we can and we really want to get some multiplayer tests out there as soon as possible, but there is still quite a lot to do, so be patient.
Exciting times for us, we have been really busy with the Unity 5 transition. There is a lot to talk about so I won’t cover everything today.
As I have mentioned before, Hal and I have been looking forward to being full-time in Unity 5 and we have been planning toward this transition for quite some time. Things are going better than we had hoped and our initial tests show an uplift in performance, so It’s all very encouraging…. but its also a lot of work.
This Devblog I will try and start to give you some idea of how we are going about it.
Atmospherics
We have been playing with Unity 5 features for a while. There are many features that we had always known that we wanted to introduce to Amazing Frog? but had, frustratingly, been forced to hold off until we were in Unity 5. One of the major changes is the way lighting and image effects are handled. This has so many, many …many areas of influence in the game, for now lets just think about how it works with atmospherics.
If you have been reading these devblogs, then you’ll know I’m not great with technical jargon. When I say atmospherics, i think i picked up that word from the Truman Show. What I mean is Day and night, weather, humidity and a big long line of stuff. Its not just for visual effect, it means more than that to us. We added the Weather fApp on the fPhone with intent…we just didn’t get the chance to expand on it in Unity 4, but we have a lot of surprises around the corner.
The Loneliness of Swindon Shire
It can get a little lonely in SwindonShire… its a Big Place. Its a perfectly reasonable question to wonder, why did we need such a large environment? what were we thinking?
Well, we always had Big plans for Swindon Shire and even bigger plans for Amazing Frog? and we never wanted you to have to play alone.
I’m not going to lie to you though, the road ahead is clouded with uncertainties, but also so many possibilities.
For f0.2.9, originally we were just going to do a kind of visual update, which would have been fairly similar to f0.2.8c, but with loads more detail and “atmospherics”. After some testing and careful consideration, we decided that now was the time to hit the "Online integration acceleration pedal" and devote our FULL attention to Online and therefore heading straight for f0.3.0. Now we are in the full swing of developing Amazing Frog? for Online and as part of this process, we are stripping out each of the assets and tinkering with them, and then reintroducing them with online compatibility and all their visual upgraded simultaneously.
Its going to be a pretty tough development period ahead, and, to be honest, that fills me with a sense of dredd, but we are so ready for this.
We have just released a hot fix update to f0.2.8c after a frantic four day bug hunt. Last Thursday we released The Frog Milk Coffee Co. Update only to discover minutes later that pocket mode was broken on Windows and Linux. One thing led to another and we ended up fixing a few more things... It felt like Unity 4 was throwing us some last minute pain before we finally said goodbye and moved on.
Before I explain what was wrong I need to first say again about your DATA.
YOUR DATA
I have noticed that many players said that their Data was lost. Its gone but not lost. You can get a lot of it back. I know it is not very clear, but there was a button put into the Settings fApp on the fPhone just for this purpose called Reclaim Save Data. There was some confusion here because I made a supplemental mistake where i did not increase the data allowance for Amazing Frog in the Steam Cloud. So this meant that it could not save the new data for some people, because it still had the old data taking up space. I resolved this over the weekend without the need for an update, but it was worth mentioning. Amazing Frog? saves two types of data, local settings and cloud saved data. Local settings are things like quality settings, population density and controller settings, these are saved locally on the machine you are playing. Cloud saved data is for game progression S.C.P. Unlocks, rewards, Trophies, outfits, cats etc…They are saved to your Steam Account in your cloud. This way if you are playing on multiple machines it should take your progression with you but maintain you hardware specific settings per platform.
PIG HUNT
So what happened? We were set to celebrate, because both Hal and I knew that as soon as we were done with f0.2.8c we could fully concentrate on the next stages of Amazing Frog? As is stands we spent the weekend chasing what turned out to be a PIG. We had no idea what the bug with pocket mode was and it took us completely by surprise. There was no error, nothing to read in the crash log and it only happened in windows and Linux builds. Pocket mode was deconstructed piece by piece until we found the crashing culprit. When we finally found it …. IT WAS A PIG.
The material on the pigs was breaking the game… ( only in pocket mode ) and we still have no idea why. We recreated the material and threw our hands in the air and is if by magic… it worked again. I guess thats sometimes how game dev works. Pretty frustrating when it does work like that, but its all good. During the process of elimination of reasons why pocket mode was crashing we also sorted a few other things too. We fixed some notification problems and improved the space flight simulation room. Also by accident we discovered why sometimes holding a gun or an object results in jitters (often the frog attempting to touch what is being held). The process of fixing those jitters also helped us make the physics even more optimised for this last Unity 4 version. So this update is now THE LAST, but hopefully THE BEST Unity 4 version of Amazing Frog? Bring on Unity 5.
So whats next? Well certainly the next Devblog will be about the Unity 5 stuff that we are working on, but in the meantime I expect we will probably spend a day or so playing the hell out of the The Frog milk Coffee Co Update as there is a few things we have been eager to try out. Maybe we’ll make some videos, and if we feel up to it… I guess we better update out completely out dated store page :)
Amazing Frog? f0.2.8c The Frog Milk Coffee Co. Update is now available.
It has taken a while to get this update released. If you have been following the beta, thanks for helping out. Doing a Beta has been a really helpful process for us. We have learned a lot from doing it and its going to prove really helpful as we move forward. f0.2.8c has seen a whole bunch of stuff added and upgraded. There are more options for cameras, improved interaction with objects, zombies and ants are much more deadly, sharks can now bite things, the fOS on the fPhone has been upgraded, there are more stuff to unlock (… some things that people didn’t find in the beta) and even Fart Gyms has upgraded their fApp. I’ll just focus on some of the key features this announcement but before that...
IMPORTANT NOTICE, fOS on the fPhone has been upgraded this means your save files will not load by default. But they still exist
SAVE FILE RECLAIM - If you don’t wish to start over you can reclaim data from version f0.2.8b and lower in your settings fApp on your fPhone by selecting Reclaim Save Data
Frog Milk Coffee Co.
As I said before, The Frog Milk Coffee Co. building and its Rewards fApp were being built for the upcoming Unity 5 version along with the rest of Swindon. You can complete tasks, earn Reward Points and buy coffee. We wanted to introduce currency into Amazing Frog? purely as a game mechanic. Its a starting point for us and the main reason why the operating system on the fPhone needed a big upgrade. We like the idea of earning rewards to purchase temporary consumable upgrades as it provides a system by which we can add all sorts of content in the future. Our plan is to continue adding more shops and services, so this is really just the beginning of the high street.
Gas Cannisters
We’re excited about the potential of Gas canisters, not just because they are so stupid and make us laugh, but because of what they may lead us to create. … Coming Soon Gold Gas Cannister
Knockdown™
You already have the TimeTrial fApp and GemSmash which, by nature, are more conventional challenge based fApps. Knockdown is a little more the mischievous, We’re really looking forward to playing more with it.
Pocket Mode and population density
Pocket mode is one of the more useful features of this update. It basically allows you to load Swindon without loading the entire 20km Map of Swindon Shire. Its great if you just want to muck about in Swindon with higher quality settings or with more player frogs in split screen mode or you wanted a go at the time trials with a better framerate… or wanted to see how high your system can push the population density. The idea is that should help you get more out of Amazing Frog? with less power. We always want to support as low a spec as possible for Amazing Frog? but at the same time we also want to take advantage of the power that new machines can yield. Making the game scalable is the only answer and as we move into Unity 5 we plan to continue with this thinking.
So there it is, we’re really pleased to announce that f0.2.8c The Frog Milk Coffee Co. Update is now available, enjoy and stay tuned for the Unity 5 Betas soon to follow… Goodbye Unity 4 :) Hello Unity 5, 64 bit and PBR!
Is its friday again? Technically no I think it just turned into Saturday. Well, the update is pretty much done, apart from a few things, so I am updating the beta with our latest dev build :)
It should be much more stable than the last one…. I am just replacing the beta that was there. If you are in beta already, it should work like a normal update.
What have you been up to Gaz and Hal?
Good question, Gaz. Thanks.
Fart in a Jar
We’ve been planning to put the methane canisters in for ages. Like the sticky frog tongue, helicopter, skateboard and BMX, the gas canister is one of those objects we played with back in the early days of OUYA in 2013, but to this date have completed or never released anywhere…mainly due to stability issues…. :) Basically, its somewhere between a weapon and an object and a jet pack. Its great fun. However be warned that Frog Methane Can be highly explosive. The canister is now possible, thanks to all that nonsense I was talking about last week (devblog 005) to do with coffee cups. Also the coffee cups have been upgraded, they still will be tweaked a little before the official Frog Milk Coffee Co Update.
Shark Bite
After viewing some very educational material on YouTube, early this week, we started with some serious thinking about the Sharks. We had updated the sharks for the previous beta, but we realised that they were not too great. We set out to give the sharks more “bite”. I don’t really want to explain how the sharks er… think, but I would say that sharks can now draw certain objects into their mouth and bite on them. We started this system in the previous beta and now we have expanded upon this and in doing so we have made a certain larger shark more stable in the water… and more deadly. We have also been tinkering around with their swimming and “targeting”
Smile for me you son of a ….. :)
KnockDown™ fApp
We have been having a lot of fun with KnockDown. It is not particularly easy to measure, which is why we made the “rewards” accumulative rather target based. You can of course set yourself your own challenges… My personal favourite is a densely populated, pocket mode high street and Tiny Pooper at full speed. We have made Knockdown possible in Fart Gyms too, which is a bit chaotic. I’d be really interested to find out how every one likes to do knockdown. Now that we have the fApp it feels like something that we can expand upon in the future.
More Criminals
It may be worth knowing that you can put more criminals away. I know carrying the NPCs can be difficult at times. Each week I do try fiddle the code a bit. After the Coffee cup thing, grabbing frogs by the head had to be adjusted slightly too. I think it may be easier, But I expect I will look at it again before the update next week. In an ideal world a frog would grab another frog by any limb… but things do get very unstable, very quickly when grabbing at any limb. We’ll keep iterating on that, the Physics in Unity 5 is forcing our hand on some issues, but I can talk about that another time.
So When Is the Official update f0.2.8c ?
We are in early access and we make the updates available, pretty much as soon as they are ready. We build it, then its playable. This update [ f0.2.8c The Frog Milk Coffee Co Update ] will be fully live and out of beta early next week. I’m pretty confident this time, because this beta is pretty much there. Have a look :) There are a few areas of instability that we need to address and a few bits that need to be finished. We have been getting mixed results with pocket mode, which is a shame as pocket mode is critical to the update. Ultimately, we want to throw ourselves fully into Unity 5 and start bringing you betas of that. Completion of f0.2.8c means just that. When its done, we are 100% in Unity 5 development, can't wait!
The Coffee in the The Frog Milk Coffee Co Shop kind of lost its kick in the beta because the rewards points were not working correctly.
Sorry :)
If I am honest I knew the beta had a LOT of issues, but I just kind of figured that people wanted hands on stuff and considering we will be starting Unity 5 betas soon, I thought why not just provide the option to try out a beta build. While some of the issues, like the rewards, I've sorted the code, things like the effect of “getting jacked up on premium grade frog coffee” were not really fully complete any way, so you didn’t miss much. But I am working on that right now too… well now I am writing a devblog, but you know what I mean.
I really wanted to say thanks for the response to the beta, its been really helpful, I'm so glad we did it. We were not actually expecting many people to play it, but its great that you did. As the game grows its becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of all the changes and bugs between the two of us. Sometimes even one wrong line of code can cause multiple bugs that may seem unconnected, like when the keycard and the Key to the city did not work without restarting the scene… one line :/
This past week has been pretty much fixing all the problems you found and of course fixing some we already knew about. Most have been fixed, so expect the beta to be updated pretty soon, dependant on the following stuff in the Devblog.
Hold the Coffee
First up, I’ve been wrestling with a single coffee cup for the past few days. Reprogramming the way small objects are carried and/or interacted with.
So I think I have mentioned before how attempting to solve one little issue can lead me to create bigger problems for my self, like a butterfly effect... holding coffee is one of those. Currently, when you walk around with a coffee cup, a can of croak, a toilet roll or anything small that you pick up from the floor, it is held infront of you… as one might carry, I dunno, a full cup of coffee :). I wouldn't expect items like this to be carried in this way, if a cup was empty, you could run around with it like in the images above. There are a lot of items I would expect you to run around with as the image above including the smaller guns( when you are not aiming). It sounds really trivial, but how objects are carried is at the heart of a vast set of interaction mechanisms that drive a lot of the stupidity behind Amazing Frog? Each object should be capable of "individual purpose”, but they should all be driven by a unified set of principles and systems. This would empower Hal and I to make a huge variety of stuff to mess about with quickly that all does different things. Something as simple as the difference between how you hold a coffee cup when either full or empty has forced me to re visit some old work that we had done to drive melee in some of our pre release test versions. I am not saying that you will be able to swing a baseball bat or sword in the next beta…But think of it like this - when you pick up a full cup of coffee and holding it upright and then hit “shoot” and drink the coffee by raising the cup to your mouth providing your frog with some sort of consumable powerup, it is done very much the same way as one might pick up a sword and perhaps press attack and expect it to swing in front of you. in short, I have been modifying the way a frog holds coffee cups so i can get us one step closer to swinging baseball bats and throwing grenades.
FrogLife™ Ongoing modifications
FrogLife™ NPCS were created to phase out the old style NPCs that were basically the same objects as the player frogs… but with slight modifications. These were the original NPCs in Amazing Frog? It felt like the right thing to do (to have characters that were the same object as the player frogs ) but it wasn’t. It may come in handy for something else like more focused bots, but for the general populous, that process wasn’t optimised enough. They carried too much “baggage” from the player frogs. We always wanted more frogs. When asked should there be more frogs in Swindon our answer is always … yes. This is why the FrogLife™ system was created. Its not perfect, but it is way more optimised.
The last place where FrogLife™ was not in effect was in Fart Gyms, so one thing we did do this week was update the gym frogs there. While there are certain things that are currently not possible with FrogLife™ NPCs like riding them, there is more that is possible and each update the system is growing. We try to refine elements of the FrogLife™ system as often as possible, such as how frogs react to explosions and gun activity or what attracts their interests . Also each of the emerging personalities are gaining attribute governing their reaction, like the police, crims, gym Frogs, business, king, ants and zombies. I knew they they were not reacting properly in the beta so we have spent some time tweaking and improving this.
Your Old Data
Your old data from f0.2.8b still exists, so don’t worry. It is completely separate to the data saved in f0.2.8c with the new save system and updated fOS. If for example you sign out of the beta and default back to f0.2.8b it should continue as normal.
As I had said in a previous post, I did not want to try and run an automated process that converts your old data as it would be a bit risky. In the end I went for quite a simple process of collecting specific data from your versions lower than the beta. So for example if you got half way through collecting the cats you can "Collect f0.2.8b Trophies" and add what you collected before to what you may have collected since you started in the beta. SCP on the other hand is set as a restore. e.g., if you had 500 SCP in the early version and since being in the beta you had collected 600, you probably won't want to hit the restore button.
Community
Its really difficult to keep up to date with whats going on in the discussion when i’m so wrapped up in development. I’m doing my best, but I have to thank a lot of you that help players out with their questions. A lot of the time providing better answers than I do :). Its been pointed out to me from various sources, that I might need to make moderators. The fact that I haven't so far is not that I don’t want to, I just don’t know the ins and outs of it yet and I really want to focus on getting the definitive version of f0.2.8c out as soon as possible. Its been really exciting to do our first beta and I’m glad we did it. We’ll get an update to that beta as soon and possible and hopefully that should be pretty much the f0.2.8c update.
also its odd, I’ve not seen any massive bits of shark sushi yet….
Welcome to Amazing Frog? f0.2.8c - The Frog Milk Coffee Co. Update, Kinda… I’m making a beta available, The official update will come this week.
Sorry its been taking so long, I hope you will find it worth the wait. Its practically done. But there are things that I still need to fix and that may take a few more days. So what I’ve decided to do is make a beta that is not password protected - Its called Preview you can opt into it in 'Betas' in game settings on Steam. That way if you cannot wait a few more days for me to resolve the rest of the issues in f0.2.8c, then you can switch to beta and preview it. Also if you experience any craziness or crashes, you can let me know and hopefully I can fix it. Just a note: It will not effect any of your previous save data from older versions, but it will not load any of it in either, so it will start you from the beginning.
Preparing the Builds
Since the last Devblog (003), the past couple of weeks have pretty much been trying to wrap the update up , so we can get it to you. This is always our priority, but it rarely goes as planned. While we can play around in the editor with new features and experiments, when it comes to the build process there are so many things that can go wrong. The size of the project also contributes to this problem. Time seems to move at a strange rate during build weeks. I started writing this devBlog yesterday ( Friday )afternoon and actually had a build ready for public beta. Unfortunately a couple of hours into play testing Swindon, I realized that some important features were not working, like buying coffee and so had to fix and rebuild. Its now 8 am on Saturday morning and I am reuploading another build. (I will have to test it on the three platforms first so fingers crossed) Preparing builds for release from our current setup in Unity 4 can be a long process, one that I know can be improved. Happily, I can say we are about to upgrade our kit which should help there also we know from making builds in Unity 5 that the process can be more reliable.
The Butterfly Effect
There is so much code in Amazing Frog? its pretty easy to get lost with one small change that can create a butterfly effect which ripples through the whole system. Often I am confronted with a mess left by my past self and immediately i become frustrated and angry with his lack of planning, only to realise that this "previous version of myself" had, in fact, put safeguards and structures in place to help the presently, frustrated future version of me deal with that mess. Its like walking around a vast mansion and you walk into some rooms and think I don’t remember this one… but some one left me a present here… oh its from me, how nice. With so many details to focus on we have too keep reminding ourselves what the bigger plan is, frogopolis, frog park , swindon on sea, the moon, online etc etc . Detail is often our downfall in Amazing Frog? We know we should spend more time checking our spelling and there are many textures that need upgrading. But we knew this when we decided not to go for small and refined and headed out into vast and unpredictable.
Why I Like Pocket Mode
I won’t go into so much detail about f0.2.8c I will leave that to the official announcement this week. But I am excited about pocket mode, so I shall try to explain why. One of my biggest regrets and oddly the best things we have done for Amazing Frog? was to create SwindonShire. When we made the decision to go with 20km island from version f0.0.1 as the foundation of the world, we were deeply conflicted. We were worried that if we create such a large expanse it will take a long time to populate and having such a large area to render will take its toll on the other processes that are really important to AF? like the physics demand. We just couldn't resist it. Even now we find ourselves getting lost in SwindonShire. The potential of the landscape convinced us it was the way to go. As with most "executive decisions" on Amazing Frog? we went with our instincts and carried on moving forward regardless of how foolish our optimism may have been. Having a huge island surrounded by water did take its toll on how SwindonShire can run. FPS would drop on slower machines, split screen 4 player would only really work on faster machines and things like the population density slider when put to 100 would just cripple things. Not any more. The great thing about pocket mode, a final thing I can thank my old crappy Laptop for before I upgrade, is that 4 player split screen in Swindon is now much easier on slower machines, population density doesn’t have to be set to 0% on slower machines and can easily run on medium machines at 100% which will certainly help your scores in Knockdown. It opens up more gameplay in Swindon not just for slower machines but also provides more options for faster ones too.
f0.2.8c
I will come back soon with the official announcement for f0.2.8c The Frog Milk Coffee Co. Update. This is set to be the final Unity 4 version, which is a huge mile stone and I can't wait to abandon the shackles of Unity 4 and its memory issues. We just wanted it to be right, before we start hitting your guys with the exciting Unity 5 stuff. So again sorry its taking so long. I'll start a thread about the beta and that way you can post problems about it directly there
Late again… The Frog Milk Coffee Co. Update is going to have to slip to next week. We came pretty close this time and its almost ready. I’m going to keep this Devblog short because we need to keep momentum going to get the update out as fast as possible, but I want to keep up the practice of DevBlogging so we can keep you posted of what we are doing, thinking … farting etc.
FrogLife™ Knockdown
This week there has been a lot of modification to the FrogLife™system. Mainly because of a new challenge fApp called "Knockdown". The FrogLife™ System like many of the underlying systems in Amazing Frog? is always growing and undergoing optimisation. Some of the functionality behind the behaviour induced by the new fApp influenced much of the NPC activity. We were not planning on touching the Zombies in this update but change to one system can be infectious to others. So the Zombies got a pretty big rework too. We felt the Frog Zombies of the last few updates were not that aggressive or intelligent anyway. As it goes Updating Zombies also means updating ants.
FrogDead™
Cones and Gas Canisters
Here are some things that you can expect to see in the next Update. Like before, made for Unity 5, but downgraded for Unity 4. We are really excited about these Gas Canisters. OMG ….we have been meaning to get them in the game since we made the very first Red Barrel all them years ago.
Eggs
Hal has been using Substance Designer for while now and it really made a huge difference , not just to how much detail he can add, but also to how we think about constructing systems in Amazing Frog? whether it be the NPC costumes, the car skins, building components or any of the new assets. Substance Designer is literally empowering our ability to generate variation throughout Swindon Shire. This will be a lot more evident in Unity 5 as we switch to PBR rendering. For now here is a Substance that Hal created for generating Fried Eggs.
Why eggs?... Lets hope we get the Update out before the next DevBlog and you can see for yourselves.
Community
I often get questions about performance from various sources, I’m pretty certain pocket mode should help there. I know its not completely obvious how the quality settings work, some systems can benefit from lowFi quality, some from lower population density and others just need a lower screen resolution. This is the nature of developing a game on Steam. It can be very difficult resolving issues or even diagnosing the cause of a problem when there is such a huge variety of systems with a variety of hardware specifications. We are so grateful to everyone in the community who help people out when things are not working correctly for them. You are an awesome community, you really are. We want the game to run on as many different set ups as possible and making the game run more efficiently, is at an ongoing concern. Like in the FrogLife™ modifications I have been doing this week, I have been trying to make it run better, by looking at how many operations the NPCs think with, dealing with their physics more efficiently to make it run faster and with frogs, zombies…. and ants :) To round up, most of the questions this week have centred around when the update will be released, today or next Friday. I’m sorry it slipped, I guess I knew it might, but I really hopped it wouldn’t.
I’m going to try and keep writing DevBlogs (and calling them devblogs instead of devlogs). This seems like a good way to keep you all updated on progress and to answer some of the questions floating around the community.
Firstly, The The Frog Milk Coffee Co. Update is much closer now. We are aiming for next Friday, but it may well slip to the following week. Its a pretty big update as it is our exit from Unity 4, a big step that will allow us to focus completely on the Unity 5 branch that we have in development.
Thanks to everyone for your feedback to last weeks question with regards to saved data. Its so helpful and we really appreciate it.
This is what you can expect for your saved data in f0.2.8c - We are making it so some data will be reclaimable and some will not. The fSport App will have to be completely refreshed, thats unavoidable, and other things like your current appearance will not save. However, for other data we will create restore buttons on the fPhone. This is so you can restore some types of saved data like SCP or outfits to what was unlocked or collected in version f0.2.8b. This will be your choice.
So what have we been up to this week? Well I won’t tell you everything because that will destroy the surprise of the stuff in the Update. I want to tell you about egg timers, for example, but I won’t. I think thats partly why we had not written Devblogs before... for fear of spoiling upcoming surprises. These days there is so much going on each week thats not such an issue.
Bouncy Castles and Cake
Here are just a couple of fun things Hal has been creating this week. Cakes and the Bouncy Castle refresh. Here are a couple of editor screen shots.
This was exciting because we both felt like the bouncy castles had lost a lot of the impact of the original ones that we had made back in the early days of Amazing Frog? So when Hal recreated the model for Unity 5 it seemed like a good time to revisit the bounciness of it. (Thats what I refer to as fun programming). So on Wednesday we took the new model of the bouncy castle and downgraded to work in Unity 4 for The Frog Milk Coffee Co. Update. We felt much better about they way frogs flop around on it.
The Camera System
One of my favourite distractions this week has been the camera system for Amazing Frog? We introduced “Easy Cam™” a few versions back, but had never got around to implementing this for when you are driving a vehicle. So we have put some more options for the camera in the controls fApp to provide a bit more flexibility and to customise the Easy Cam™. Personally, I much prefer it when the camera moves behind a vehicle, Hal not so much, but with more settings we can both be happy. The plan is to set Easy Cam™ as the default, but those who know their way around the fPhone should easily be able to set it to Pro Cam™ for complete control of the camera. While messing about with the camera code it seemed like a good time generally tidy things up a bit and have a go at improving the first person camera a bit.
Community
We do frequently check the Community discussions and screenshots. It gives us a good impression of how Amazing frog? is being played. We are not big fans of metrics and data analysis, we are more interested in your individual experiences of Amazing Frog?. We do our best to keep track of it all but it can be tricky. We are so grateful when we see you helping each other out. By all means, if you have questions you want me to comment on, send them my way and I will try and address them in future DevBlogs. So heres a few comments on some subjects that have caught our attention. VR. Both Hal and I are massive fans of Virtual Reality. I know VR worked in previous versions of AF? but there have been so many changes in the way VR is done it has been hard to keep up, especially after the Oculus SDK didnt support OSX any more. Between us we have a HTC ViVE and a Oculus CV1 but unfortunately no PC powerful enough to run them on (…yet) lol, but we will and then we will re-integrate VR into a later version from the Unity 5 branch. I am guessing the demand is not that high of VR in Amazing Frog? and its currently a luxury add on. More Detail in unity 5 - As you saw last week and here with the cake and bouncy castle above, all new Amazing Frog? assets are made with increased detail. I just wanted to clarify that this does not mean that the Unity 5 version will cripple your machine. The great thing about the Unity 5 version is that we are streaming things. In the Unity 4 versions when you load SwindonShire you need to load everything, every texture, every model, all at once. This has been a major problem for us, especially as we have wanted to add so much more. But in Unity 5 we have been streaming not only the textures, but the models too. This allows us to deliver more scalable content at higher resolution for less CPU and graphics cost. Which is empowering us to keep creating more buildings, shops and grow things outside of the wall. The other costumes - With reference to the other costumes pictured on the wall in the hideout. We are not intentionally keeping them from you. The time just hasn’t felt right. The boba frog costume is my favourite of all the costumes... but, I would hate to use it without a functioning jetpack. Yup, we can holster things at the moment, but having interchangeable functioning items that you can “wear” on your back, its just not ready yet. Amazing Frog Online? - I often see the questions when is online coming? No one is more excited about online than us, I don't think. We can’t wait to play it with you all, please be patient with us. It will have to be delivered in stages, anyway. Don't expect to see the first Online tests until we are outputting the betas from the Unity 5 branch. We have done some tests and it looks good, but we also have to make sure other foundations are in place. When we commit to live online play it will take over so much of what we are doing and we need to make sure the scene is set properly. Everything we do is leading towards it. Finally I just wanted to share this. There are so many great youTube videos all the time its so hard to keep up to date with them all. We really do try. This is why we put youTubers in the game because I feel we are all in this together. But check this out. https://youtu.be/I9Ucke_eAIM
We noticed that other developers write DevLogs so we thought you would appreciate it if we did the same from time to time. So here is Devlog 001.
Its been a while since you have heard anything from us. So I thought it would be best to update you on what has been going on with Amazing Frog? since f0.2.8b -Who Let The Frogs Out?. We haven’t stopped, we are still developing like crazy and loving it. Thank you!
Reboot fOS?
One of the major parts of the next update f0.2.8c (The Frog Milk Coffee Co.) is the restructuring of the fPhones operating system. Generally at the end of a few weeks attacking the code I like to see some kind of output, you know, something poetic or artistic like an instantaneous "cough fart” in a crowd of frogs. It doesn’t always play out like that. Sometimes you’ve just got to roll up your sleeves and tackle the boring sh*t. These past few weeks it was necessary to rebuild the way the operating system of the fPhone (fOS) saves data. We had to think ahead and prepare the system for what we know is coming up in later versions. This has meant that I have completely changed the way data is saved. So at this point I would like to ask. How do you guys feel about losing your saved data in the next Update? I started a thread about it Click here:
f0.2.8c - Frog Milk Coffee Co.
Originally 0.2.8b was going to be our last Unity 4 version, so that we could focus completely on the Unity 5 version. We didn’t want to make you wait, so we have brought a piece of Unity 5 into Unity 4. That piece is Swindon’s first high street Coffee shop. There has been a lot of talk about currency and we have always intended to involve currency into the gameplay of Amazing Frog? The Frog Milk Coffee Co. is a good way for us to prototype this with you guys. There’s a shop, an app, coffee and rewards. Its a good way to prototype how currency can work in AF? We are only looking at using currency as a game play mechanic, like the good Ol’ days. But this also ties to the previous point about rebooting the fOS.
Pocket Mode
We know Amazing Frog? is not the most demanding game for your hardware compared to many modern games, but we do know that often there are people that play Amazing Frog on lower spec machines and run into problems in Swindon. So we have made a switch in settings called pocket mode. Basically this mode removes the 20km landscape, but allows you to just play in Swindon. Hopefully that will make a better experience for some of you on lower spec machines, especially while player split screen.
Is there other stuff in the next update ?
Are you kidding? There’s no way we could spend all that time just messing about with boring systems!! But we’ll let you find out when check the Swindon Town Planning Change Log App . Also, I know I have not been great letting everyone know when its going to be ready , but we do put updates out as soon as they are ready. We don't sit on them.
To follow that - The Unity 5 Beta Branch
So, f0.2.9 is the Unity 5 version and we have been putting a lot of work into this one. Its a big change in a lot of ways. We really see this as a massive, positive step. I mean sure… a lot of the physics has changed and needed rewriting in places, every material had to be recreated, a ton of code was invalidated and most of the models needed remaking…. but we are really proud of how its looking. Problem is that there are so many changes we are having to pull things out to add them back in and we don’t like making you wait on that. So we are going to create a public Beta Branch very soon for the unity 5 version. For many months now Hal has been creating and recreating assets to be Unity 5 ready . we have to then downgrade them for use in the unity 4 version. For example, have a look at the the Frog Milk Coffee Shop below from the Unity 5 editor window and the one above from f0.2.8c
Also here are a couple of screenshots from around Swindon in f0.2.9. If you are familiar where these are from then you'll be able to see how things are changing and thats the level of detail we are now working towards.
Welcome to the second part of Amazing Frog? f0.2.8 - Who Let The Frogs Out?For us f0.2.8 was a big mile stone for lots of different reasons.
FrogLife™
Our main focus this time has been FrogLife™. FrogLife™ is the Artificial Stupidity System (A.S.S.) responsible for how the frogs of SwindonShire … er think…Worried your computer can’t handle the new Population? Don’t worry, we have added a Population Density Slider in the Settings App to control how many NPC frogs you have around Swindon… if any :) We are always looking for ways to optimise Amazing Frog? and improve its scalability for high powered and low powered machines. we are working in stages and this will improve and we move forward.
The Swindon Constabulary is very much in its infancy, but with every town with a rising population, certain civil services are imperative.
Updates for your fPhone
The operating system for the fPhone has had an update to help with various aspect, but more importantly we have added some apps for you to play with, Including The GemSmash and Time Trial Apps
More Stuff
We always love adding weapons, but the Desert Eagles cannot be collected from the spawners.. you’ll have to find them. Play nice though :)
Oh… And This… because
And more… Don’t for get to check the Change Log Apps.OK Now I feel like putting an Update out f0.2.8b Thanks for your support every one !
Hello Everyone, I just wanted to bring a small typo in f0.2.8a to everyones attention. This is mainly regarding the Change Log in the recent Holiday Rush Update. The Holiday Rush Update was just that - a massive rush to get you guys some new content for Christmas, but there were (as always) a few things that got over looked.
In the Change Log there were two entries that were input incorrectly.
“teleportation in toilet and wardrobe fixed”
- I didn’t manage to fix this for the Holiday Rush update.
“nobody found the Ants in f0.2.7 ? well the room has been upgraded with an award”
- Unfortunately in the mad rush I forgot to activate the Award system in The Ant Room so this log is also incorrect. I just wanted to warn every one about this incase you actually gained access to our Secret Ant Room and were then subsequently disappointed by the lack of suitable reward.
Both have already been corrected for the new update f0.2.8b Who Let the Frogs Out? which we are aiming to get to you as soon as possible. We clearly can't allow santa Frogs running around Swindon for much longer. In other matters we wanted to let you know that we are checking the screenshots daily and really excited by what we are seeing, not just in terms of artistic merit, but the sheer, mind boggling sense of achievement needed to capture some of these awesome images. Below is an image of Hal's Cactus for your consideration… ;)
Happy Holidays every one. This is The Holiday Rush Update for Xmas 2015. I’m going to keep this short, its 4 am here. We both really wanted to get f0.2.8 out before Xmas, but its not ready yet. But we couldn’t bear the thought of not doing a Xmas Update - So this is it
f0.2.8a Holiday Rush 2015 note the ‘a'
In usual fashion I have just made it live and I think its best to just go and mess about in the game to get a feel for whats going on, But today its worth mentioning a few things.
SO...
SteamOS Amazing Frog? is now Linux too.
We have now taken the jump to support Linux as well as OS X and Windows. so Amazing Frog? is now available on the three platforms.
Ammunition!!
We are concerned this will be an issue for some. when you have been used to infinite ammo of so long and now you have to go o a vending machine or smash crates to get ammo. There is plenty of ammo around Swindon. Ammo has been introduced, because of where we are taking the game we didn’t feel infinite ammo was a good way to go. It certainly changes the process of death matching…
Roads and Pavements
Fayju Construction Ltd commences work on the roads of Swindon. The roads and pavements have been reconstructed with a better road system, We encourage you to jump in a car or a bus and and drive around a take a look. Or view Swindon from a blimp to get a feel for the improved road layout
FrogLife™
the main focus of f0.2.8 “Who Let The Frogs Out” is developing the intelligence of our NPCS. This update touches on what we have been working on in that areas and will give you a feel for where we are heading. but FrogLife™in this Update is a simplified version of it.
Also its xmas and Starwars two of our favourite things apart from both Morty and Rick so we have to put the outfits in just for that!
As many of you have noticed we released the Technology Update (f0.2.7) for Amazing Frog? Last week. Thanks so much for the feedback. As ever you guys are awesome.We have been very busy this past week making fixes and finishing of a few things which didn’t make the update in time. We will get that out as soon as possible, so stay tuned for another update pretty soon. Thank you to every one posting bugs, ideas and observations, Minecraft replicas! and illuminati guides in the Community. We are listening and always appreciative.So here, one week late is the official announcement for The Technology Update.
fPhone
Introducing the fPhone. You all know where we are heading, we all want Amazing Frog? to be playable online, this is no secret. Rather than jumping straight in we need to get all the right “kit” in place. Since we launched Amazing Frog? on Steam Early Access, we had not had any kind of interface really. We always knew we were going to make the fPhone as the frogs way to access ’stuff”… we just didn’t know at what stage. We made the decision to get our heads down and build the OS at the end of Summer. As much as the Amazing Frog? world is being updated and developed, so too now is the fOS and the fApps (heh) that go with it. Currently the fPhone’s hardware is the fPhone 1G powered by fOS 1.0. There are a bunch of Apps to discover and we have built the system with the purpose of adding more.
Swindon Citizen Points
Frog Court has been Refurbished and is home to the Swindon Citizen Points Totaliser and the trophy cabinets. We are really excited about this building as like the fPhone for us it was another major milestone. Now that we have the building we can continue with our plans for The Swindon Constabulary. What is SCP ? Every super hero has to start somewhere. Keeping the streets (and beaches) tidy, forwarding lost post and rescuing lost kitties is a step in the right direction. Your tasks start here.
Collecting SCP point will unlock various thing in SwindonShire. The first and most important is the new network of Gold Cannons, courtesy of Swindon Transport.
FartTech Laboratories. “The Lab"
Swindon is home to the Swindon Space Program and FartTech have been secretly active in the Sewers below. But there have been strange noises coming from the sewers. Find your way into the Lab, open the LOL door.
Misc. Game Development Stuff
The Technology update saw a whole bunch of changes, updates and additions. We love developing Amazing Frog? I can’t state that enough. The problem is that we find it hard to stop “building” it for updates and we get wrapped up in adding, fixing and modifying things. So Here are some of the things that have been improved, fixed added extra throughout the whole game that we felt were worth mentioning.
Blimps
The Blimps are indeed faster… be careful of the ground … they are very fast. However, we reserve the right to slow them down when biplanes are introduced. But the Blimps should help you get around for now.
Sound
We basically rebuilt the way that sound is delt with after we replaced the boom boxes. The way we were doing music on the Boom boxes was not doing the music any credit, now you can hear it from any split screen frog player and we have handled the environment sounds differently. We added air speed and with it contrails on the frog should help you feel like you are falling faster :)
Controls and Cameras
We made a first person cam for thrill seekers. Also Easy Cam, which was mainly mainly for people who get a bit lost when using both sticks of a controller, it may also be help for for those on keyboard and mouse. It basically adjusts the camera to move behind you as you run forward. These are accessible from the controls fApp on the fPhone. In the cars we made the camera have the option
Weapons
We added a whole bunch of weapons, the sniper rifle is our weapon of choice, but now you can holster weapons theres every possibility a shotgun wielding frog can descend rapidly on a sniper for a win. However, if you want guns in Swindon you will have to prove yourself. The switch to turn on “Dangerous” guns is on the tallest building in Swindon. If you achieve this you will be rewarded the “Gun” App. You will need this app to activate guns in Swindon. The water pistols, nerf guns and nerf crossbows however are always available. The overall Gun system was upgraded, not just allowing for Holstering, if you want to take your gun around, but they should just work better.
ScreenShots
We love your screen shots, because we know what you had to go through to get them. We go through them every day, so many awesome screenshots. I have grabbed a load of bunch and downloaded them to my machine so I can grab relavent ones when I need them and I have sprinkled a few in the announcement. The ones from the community I have put links to their community entries on the images.As far as Nature photography goes this one of the Mega Shark blew our minds.
enjoy The Technology Update - more coming v soon.
We know a lot of you are eager for the new Update. Its close… I am going to say we should have f0.2.7 available the first or second week of October. Its certainly the biggest content update we’ve done… code name - “The Technology update” .
Originally, we planned to just do a hot fix to make the blimps faster, but both Hal and I got carried away adding a bunch of other things.
We’re really excited about f0.2.7, but we don’t want to give too much away. For those of you who want spoilers heres some images that should give you a glimpse into what we have been cooking up. (Also Thanks SO MUCH for all the support in the community and the awesome screenshots!)
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We seem to be Developing a habit of announcing the new updates after we have actually released them. This is mainly because I am much more comfortable programming than writing announcements. We put out f0.2.6 which this weekend, it was f0.2.5, but was then updated with some “Friday Fixes”. This is a big milestone for Amazing Frog? A more optimized Swindon.
Hot Fixing and last minute madness
After a lot of fundamental changes, this has been our toughest update so far. Among many things we really wanted to make a performance boost and I hope this has worked, we have had a few problems and we have been hot fixing and testing like crazy and we may still output a few more quick updates over the next week or so. If you have problems with Amazing Frog? do come and tell me on any of your preferred channels. We really want you all to enjoy Amazing Frog? as much as we do. So Thanks to every one who flagged the bugs on this update.
So Whats New in Swindon?
Well..there are a few more things other than Blimps and Rocket Launchers. The Swindon Town Planning Office walls are starting to get a bit messy. I encourage you to head down there to get an update on how Swindon has been growing. As always The Swindon Town Planning Office is your local resource for ongoing Development information.
Around Town
Things are running more smoothly about town. There are a bunch more cars scattered around the Swindon and Swindon Shire and vehicles take less of an overall toll on the environment. Also, frogs will find explosions now look very different and are a much better way to get around.
In Local News
Town Mayor lets loose outside Frog Court, says some of the Frogs were “looking at me funny”. With new Gun skills he made short work of the menaces and restored safety to the Streets of Swindon one more time.
Strange Switches have been noticed around Swindon. The feeling is that more of these are set to appear, no one is sure if standing on them will being a positive outcome.
Fancy A Relaxing Getaway?
Swindon On Sea now has more to offer than before. The all new speedy Frogasaki Jet Ski is now available on the coast for recreational fun breaks from the city.
WARNING : Sharks enjoy dining on Frogs Legs dangling in the water.
More coming real soon...
The next update (f0.2.5) has been a tough one. As I said to various Community members, at one point we were almost ready to go live with it. So I thought it best to write an announcement to explain what has been going on.
Many people had pointed out that Amazing Frog? wasn't running so well on some of the less powered machines. Until recently we had expected to deal with most of the outstanding optimisation issues during the migration to Unity 5. the migration process is taking way too long and so we had to make a decision last month.
Plan A: - Release the new content for all and risk some of the less powered machines taking a big hit on performance.
or
Plan B: - Perform a series of much needed optimisations to make it run faster, but delay the next update as we would need to break quite a few key systems to progress. Eggs.. omelette etc.
We went with Plan B as we felt it would be better for All.
So for the past Month many optimisations have taken place. And I am happy to say they are now working really well and we are close to the next update, and just have to tidy a few remaining issues.
Quality
Culling - What we had for quality settings was in need of simplification and now with the new modifications many of the "quality options" are now redundant. We tried various configurations, but went for an object type culling system that can really help on all level of machine and basically just cleaned everything up to help the rendering run smoother.
Physics
Vehicles - Much of the demand on the CPU was actually in the physics and mainly from the cars. So they have been reprogrammed. This allows us to put loads more cars in scene at less CPU cost. We also had to look at this for other vehicles considering we put a load of Jet Skis in Swindon On Sea too and you can fly blimps now! (After f0.2.5 its also puts us in a stronger position for NPC controlled vehicles.) NPC - As it had been pointed out Swindon was looking kind of empty for frogs. This was because we made the NPCs/Zombies from the same mechanics as the avatar frogs were made from. This meant there was way too much "frogness" being calculated per NPC. This has been resolved and allows for more frogs to exist together…next we need to work more on their intelligence as… well currently they are a bit stupid.
So what's going to be new in the next Update?
Well quite a bit... Through the optimisation process we also reworked the frogs control system. Completely new Weapon feel with scopes and sights and all the weapons have been upgraded to work and look better.
We're bringing Jet Skis and faster boats. And while a shark may be able to pull you from one of the numerous Jet Skis you can take your revenge as the Sharks are no longer indestructible :) also a Shark would now be just as content munching on a pig as they would you… oh and pigs and be killed too.
This is all peppered with a bunch of new things like balloons, telescopes and sea buoys, all in a new Swindon layout and naturally there is more hidden stuff too. Including the flyable blimp to allow you to explore the landscape from great heights. Which has led us to start thinking about what the terminal velocity of a Frog might be.
But there's gonna be more, right?
Hell yeah! One of the major things we have been working on is mission delivery and ammunition. After passing the optimisation hurdle of f0.2.5 we can get Amazing Frog? back on track with more frequent updates. Its no secret that we are moving towards opening the Lab of the Swindon Space Program behind the LOL door to get to the Moon. From our point of view Amazing Frog? is not ready for space just yet and we want the mission flow for that journey to epic. Before that can commence there are various systems that need to be put in place, such as the fPhone network.
Yes, we have build rocket launchers and water based weapons, but these are dependant on ammunition. Storage, accumulation and multiple types of customisation we be reliant on the fPhone interface. So we can keep delivering content, we are introducing Switch activated micro missions and preparing for Versus and Party modes. Vs mode will likely be the first place you will be able to access our first online tests.
About Unity 5
Players have been asking about Unity 5, so here's our take on it. We have had access to Unity 5 for some time and have been slowly moving the project towards Unity 5, behind the scenes. On the one hand it is really daunting that there are so many big changes for a project like Amazing Frog? but on the other hand its really exciting all the power at our disposal. Early in the year, when we realised that the changes would be so vast, we decided that we would work on both Unity 5 and Unity 4 simultaneously. This was so we could keep moving forward, but actually deliver content. I can't really estimate when the Unity 5 version will be ready at this stage, but what I can say is its going to look and feel Amazing ….Frog?
Thanks for waiting, and thanks for all the support. Its a great community and you guys really Get it. New update coming soon. Gaz n Hal, Fayju :)
Hello Kitty…
Hello Again, welcome back to Swindon, home of Amazing Frog? We have big plans for the cats of Swindon. Lets face it the first step to becoming a Super Hero is finding lost Kittens :) . For now the Cats have just come to say Hello.
Swindon Fashion Taster
The inhabitants of Swindon have been calling out for more fashion in the town. The truth is we love dressing up frogs. We have been working on a library of quite extensive fashion capabilities for the frogs of Swindon. Alas, our frog customisation system is only one part of a growing web of larger game systems for Amazing Frog? that are not quite ready to put into the game. So we figured we would introduce a "Dress Up Taster". A temporary "Test Room" that allows you to use a standard GUI to edit the character skin with a Taster set of garments to choose from. Also Dotted around the Countryside more brown toilets have appeared containing some of the more "special" costumes.
Swindon Expansion Progress
Swindon is still growing. Its a big task and we are working super hard on it. Behind the Scenes we have been Migrating to Unity 5 for more awesome graphics and super optimised physics Developing the Amazing Frog Multiplayer Engine Looking at Steam Integration Enhancing the weaponry aspects A mobile phone interface to tie it all together.
We are doing our best to keep you posted about the progress, reading all the discussions. Thanks for all the suggestions, problems and positivity. Its a great community here on Steam Early Access and we're so grateful :)
Swindon Town Planning Office
Don't forget to check out the Swindon Town Planning Office for more information on the update.
SWINDON NEWS
- GIANT FROG GATE - NEW ROADS - SHARK ATTACKS - fART COUNCIL CRITICISM - SWINDON SHIRE NOW IN VR
Giant Gate added to the Great Wall of Swindon.
For those who what to get Geographical - Swindon Exists on an open world 20KM ISLAND called SwindonShire. Swindon is surrounded by a giant wall. What is unclear is if the wall was put there to keep something out or to keep the frogs in. Nonetheless, Fayju Construction Ltd. has installed a giant Frog Gate… but the switch on the inside is broken ;)
Swindon Borough Council Build New Roads
The Swindon expansion and restoration program in well underway. The new Swindon Town Planning Office was opened for Frogs to keep tabs on the growth of their town into Greater SwindonShire. The construction of a new planned Road network to explore the island has begun. Fayju Construction Ltd, who was commissioned by the Council to begin construction of the new holiday resort, Swindon-On-Sea, had requested a new road leading to the site in order to begin its construction work. Obviously the seaside a hazardous place to undergo construction work because of all the damn Sharks. Many frogs have been eaten and this is causing much criticism of Fayju Construction Ltd treatment of Health and Safety issues with regards to allowing Frogs to frolic around with reckless abandon.
Sharks keep waters Dangerous
2 surviving frogs stand by helpless as a tragic car accident quickly descends into their co workers being torn apart by vicious Sharks. This took place yesterday the construction sight of the future holiday resort of Swindon On Sea.
Swindon Borough Council Says - [quote]
"could have been worse…"
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The Swindon fArt Council under attack.
A recent exhibition of a Shark preserved in Formaldehyde from a notorious Artist, famed for using shock tactics has received fierce criticism today from activists. In light of all the shark attacks some say this exhibition is in poor taste and many Frogs and are demanding its removal. Swindon fArt Council said - [quote]
"we are looking at the possibility of a replacement exhibit, perhaps Keith Robert Gazelda could help…"
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BETA VR support for Oculus Devices
If you have Steam VR running and you open Amazing Frog? then it will run in VR mode. Head tracking is supported by Oculus DK1 and DK2 currently. There have been some big VR announcements from Steam, like VIVE, so every one in Swindon is getting really excited about all this. Gaz and Hal from Fayju made a video of Gaz Playing Amazing Frog? VR with an Oculus DK2. Take a look and you can get a feel for what it is like.
http://youtu.be/pzEdPj4IonQ
Swindon Town Planning Office
Gaz and Hal have been running out of space on the walls of the Swindon Town Planning Office and have been looking for a different solution to supplying news about feature changes in Amazing Frog? other than scraling on the wall with a Sharpie.
Also, as aspiring film makers, Gaz and Hal rented a bunch of "movie cameras" from the local college in order to document "frog stunts" and film their crazy Swindon, Frog antics. Unfortunately the cameras have been misplaced and must have been left in key locations around Swindon Shire.
As Always... This is the 8th update to Amazing Frog? in Early Access. We have always been committed to adding new features to the game. Amazing Frog? is built by Fayju. Fayju is Gaz Bushell and Hal Jackson and Swindon is a real town (-Minus frogs and Sharks :P ) Amazing Frog? is a openworld physics sandbox game featuring:
- a 20Km Landscape
- A whole bunch of vehicles
- 4 player split screen
- Oculus VR support.
- Pigging backs… and pigs
- ridiculous ragdolls, trampolines, cannons and explosions
- Weapons like crossbows lasers and machine-guns
- Vicious Sharks
- Swimmming ish and Boats in the ocean
- Fully fitted Fart Gym
- Underground Zombie Frogs in the Sewers
- A Giant chessboard
- A bunch of test rooms
- and a whole lot of mystery...
We are almost ready with the 8th Early Access update for Amazing Frog? we are calling it Frog Gate (f 0.2.3).
Since "Dingy" we have been primarily concerned with the journey out of Swindon. The Road networks of Greater Swindon Shire are starting to take Shape. We'll have more on this when we launch the update. As usual it will be as soon as we can.
Amazing Frog VR support.
There have also been a lot of ongoing experiments, but we have always found VR and Amazing Frog? to be fun. Since not every one has an Oculus headset we won't spend too much time on it, but we love running around Swindon as a VR frog so much, we thought it would be best to just put an alpha version in the next update. If you have a head set great, but Amazing Frog? VR is not for the faint hearted.
YOUR AWESOME SCREENSHOTS
The Screenshots… Again, we have been really enjoying your screenshots. Thank you so much for posting them, It really drives us on to want cram more things into each update. Truly inspiring. Some Great Shark Images.If you guys thing the sharks are too difficult, let us know ... we'll throw some Killer Whales in there too :0)
Swimming was one of the funnest bits to work on in Amazing Frog? since it begining, seriously Arty screenshots emerging.
And Don't forget just messing about in Swindon
This frog is chilling out after he burst the atmosphere in the game with some impressive farting check it out here
We just Made Amazing Frog? Buoyancy (f0.2.1) Dingy Live, our 7th Amazing Frog? update on Steam Early Access
http://youtu.be/hpB7S_PB2_Q So you can fart in a Sharks mouth to escape it, its just a bit of fun since you will probably land in another sharks mouth any way, but it does give you a bit of an edge. I think we got a little over excited with the buoyancy Update (f0.2.0). To be honest we were never intending to put floating stuff into Amazing Frog? so soon, but I just kind of ran with it. Hal made a Shark we rigged it and laughed our asses off, so much that we just couldn't help focusing on buoyancy sooner than planned. Now we are pretty pleased that we have buoyancy in Amazing Frog? as it allows us to move onto the Lab and spend more time on The sewer, shooting and switches. Also it has opened up a whole new way to play. Buoyancy involved a lot of fundamental changes to the physics and it caused some problems. Many of you have been drawing my attention in the discussions. Thank you so much. Since 0.2.0 we have been working like crazy looking at why the cars were broken, for example, also there are a lot of fixes in this update not listed here.
I felt under a lot of pressure to get 0.2.0 out and as a result overlooked somethings. Although thanks, I like the pressure, I think it makes me work harder, especially when I know people want more Amazing Frog? which is great. Also, as always, we love checking out the screenshots page. Some times an image can really inspire the hell out of us and show us scenarios we hadn't thought of.
A Note on Slower Machines and Optimization-
Culling has been reworked and it should give a performance boost on slower machines. We are aware that the Swindon world demands loads more processing power than the other worlds. There is just so much in there and optimisation is an ongoing concern there. We will get there I mean we managed to build a 3D game on OUYA. You will see some huge performance boosts soon…. We will support lower spec machines more with the Swindon World, but while we are adding so much new content Its very hard to strike a balance between rapidly adding the new content and fierce optimisation. Those of you that have been experiencing problems, if you have time, play (f0.2.1) and let us know if it is any better or not. There are further steps I can implement for a bigger performance boost in future. Part of my week is always focused on Optimisation. This week the pick up of weapons is better, easier to stand when holding a one, culling improved so when you are outside the "WALL" the fps doesn't dip as much when you look back at Swindon. Mattresses Fixed, A bug where if you get on a players shoulders and then that player gets in a car it goes crazy, fixed, Blimps can be entered properly, the life ring settles around you when rag doll, the boats are less likely to fly off into the air. These are just the ones I can remember right now.
Exploration of Swindon Shire
We encourage you to explore the island, we don't know all the great locations on it yet, its pretty big. We are looking at a big Civil Engineering Update, Hal is focused on a Road Network, bit by bit we will start enabling better transportation and access.
A New Test Room
We have been having a lot of fun in the new test room for sharks so we added another.. Still no scoring but when we add it it will be added everywhere at once. This room was inspired by a video sent to us on twitter.
Amazing Frog? f0.2.0 Buoyancy Amazing Frog? s 6th update on Early Access is now available. The Gym has opened it's pool so go take a dip.
As Always Visit the Swindon Town Planning Office for news and information about Updates
The Gym Pool has been Cleaned and is ready for a dip.
If you fancy something more adventurous head down to the coast for some water sports
Just be careful
Always use Protection
you can also read this here
We are close on the next Update… really close. We were aiming for today but got carried away with an extra feature, but its only a matter of days now. In the meantime, we just wanted to share some screenshots.I should say, however, that this coming update is not just about sharks and buoyancy. There is an element of danger coming to Amazing Frog? which is why we are upping the next build to version to f0.2.0.I will go into more detail about this when we upload f0.2.0.
In other news The Swindon Frog Arts Council have also commissioned a new Contemporary Exhibition to help you contemplate your very existence. Conveniently the Launch of this new prestigious exhibition is set to be the same date as the next Update of Amazing Frog? Here is a Preview:
Also - Thanks to all the players submitting screenshots and engaging with suggestions in the community. I do my best to reply to all of them. The screenshots tell such an amazing story and we recognise the Artistry involved in capturing these images.In future updates we will provide more tools for frogs to create these awesome artworks. Here are some that were posted to the Community page that gave us a giggle or reached out to our emotions in other ways.
Here is the next update for Amazing Frog? We are calling it f0.1.2 P.O.P.
Apologises that this one took longer than we hoped. Some players pointed out in 0.1.1 it was starting to get a lower frame rates, This was because we got over excited by the vehicles and were adding too many without properly optimising them, which is a process we am still working on. Eventually when they are optimised properly there will be many vehicles and NPCs in Swindon. So For now, temporarily, we have created, P.O.P. a performance optimisation panel to help address this issue.
Please remember to visit the Swindon Town Planning Office for update on changes in the all version …. since we added the Swindon Town Planning Office.
THE DUMPER TRUCK
Fayju Construction Ltd are expanding their operations as the regeneration process of Swindon continues. Whats needed is more equipment to perform the tasks of construction… As there is so much to do, building roads, renovating major town buildings, excavating the sea side for Swindon On Sea,the future Frog Tourist Attraction and The major task of the construction of FrogOpolis. …. So Lets start with a Dumper Truck.
P.O.P - A Temporary Performance Options Panel
Press "o" at any time to bring up options, BE CAREFUL. If you are getting slow frame rates and you have set quality to fast and used a lower resolution and have reduced the draw distance then removing some of the vehicles may be the best option for you. The Vehicles will be more optimised soon, we are working really hard on that and developing the P.O.P has also helped us in making that happen faster. As always come and talk to us in the steam community about how you are getting on. We keep and eye on all the threads and try and respond as often as we can when we are not busy developing.
NEW SETUP IN FAYJU CAR PARK
It was looking a bit barren in the Fayju Car Park, so here is a quick set up of obstacles and clutter to jump around in and generally smash up and er… you know, Amazing Frog? into etc. We will change this often, as eventually we want you to be able to set up and save your own custom clusters of crap :)
TV DUMPSTER CHALLENGE
The TV Dumpster is a kind of challenge. What you need to do is find the 5 Hidden TVs in Swindon (not out side the Walls because that would be near impossible) The timer starts when you enter Swindon. For now it doesn't save progress so if you leave to go to the hideout or Gym or Sewer then the TVs will reset. They could be any where its kind of tricky, we placed them then forgot where they were and it took us ages to find them all. I wish I could say thats why the update was delayed, but its was the P.O.P. really :)
… Search High And Low ...
TRUCK in TEST TRACK
I love driving this Truck or as we call them in the UK Lorry. It cracks me up because the frog can barely see over the dash. Seats up to 2 and there is one in Swindon Shire at the Future sight of FrogOpolis.
Thanks For Playing and supporting our Frogs!
More action coming very soon
Amazing Frog?
Fayju
Fayju
2014-11-21
Indie Singleplayer EA
Game News Posts 89
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
🎮 Full Controller Support
Very Positive
(9647 reviews)
http://www.amazingfrog.com
https://store.steampowered.com/app/332570
The Game includes VR Support
Amazing Frog? Depot Linux [1.19 G]
Welcome to the town of Swindon, UK. Home to flatulant super hero, Amazing Frog?
The Hideout
Start in hideout, play on your own or split screen with your friendsSwindon
Enter Swindon where you can drive cars, buses and mobility scooters, jump on trampolines, fire yourself out of cannons, into explosions, search for trophies and Tvs and reach the heights and a whole lot more. Its your Swindon do as you please.Swindon Local Attractions
Take a quiet trip to the Swindon fArt Gallery if it pleases you…. Feeling aggressive ? find a crossbow, machine gun or laser and shoot the hell out of each other. Visit the Fart Gyms for a workout or discover the Zombie filled underground Sewers.SwindonShire
Plan your escape of Swindon to explore Greater SwindonShire (a 20KM island) where you can go offloading, ride pigs, discover secrets, go for a swim or drive boat in the surrounding Ocean and LakesSHARKS
... but watch our for the relentless sharks… cos they huuuuungry.The Swindon Town Planning Office
Remember to always The Swindon Town Planning Office after an Update. This is where Gaz and Hal from Fayju will notify you in game of updates and additions.Frogulus Rift
Play in VR if you want to get super dizzy. Comfort not guaranteed. I mean if you like being hurled way up in the sky by an explosion or driving a car of a building in VR… then this mode is for you. Currently supports Oculus.Test Rooms
There is also a bunch of test Rooms to play around in. For testing out vehicles, trampolines , weapon testing facilities, playing with sharks… basically seeing what your frog can do. Many mechanics are built in these test rooms.Amazing Frog? Key features:
- a 20Km Landscape
- A whole bunch of vehicles
- 4 player split screen
- Oculus VR support.
- Pigging backs… and pigs
- ridiculous ragdolls, trampolines, cannons and explosions
- Weapons like crossbows lasers and machine-guns
- Vicious Sharks
- Swimmming ish and Boats in the ocean
- Fully fitted Fart Gym
- Underground Zombie Frogs in the Sewers
- A Giant chessboard
- A bunch of test rooms
- and a whole lot of mystery...
play together.
- Processor: i5 2 GHZ quad CoreMemory: 8 MB RAM
- Memory: 8 MB RAM
- Graphics: 2GB
- Storage: 6 GB available space
- Processor: i7 quad CoreMemory: 16 MB RAM
- Memory: 16 MB RAM
- Graphics: 4GB
- Storage: 6 GB available space
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