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[JobLeonard]

I feel like I've been bad at posting longer updates, sure I've been busy so hopefully that's over now. I do have made some progress since last update so let me get into it.

Feedback From Testers
Some friends and selected viewers from my stream got to try the game and had some feedback on the level editor. Much appreciated folks! The changes were to right click to remove objects, visually improved grid for better overview of the scale of a character. Then also a quick shortcut to start a level by holding left ctrl + Enter. There are more things on the list but I tried to pick off the quick and easy ones first to get a sense of progression which felt important to me right now.

I added a dumb thing that won't be in the game so don't worry but it was fun to try haha! So the camera just follows the players rotation... I could only last 60 seconds before I gave up.



Ice Physics
The biggest change is the new ground friction, I've added ice so the player can slide around. It's a lot of fun and adds more variation to the levels I'll make and the players in the level editor! My viewers have already shown a lot of interest in this addition to the game!





Level Select Update
Lastly for this update, I spontaneously decided to update the level select. I really wanted a screenshot of the level so I had to change the layout from a 3x4 grid to something like this. It's easy to manage and will be flexible once I add more levels. Worst case I'll just add different tabs if I split it up in chapters or something like that.




I've got news that I can't share yet that really lifted my motivation to finish this game so I'm beyond excited to make more progress over the coming months! Thank you all for your support!

Looks so good! And yeah, anybody even slightly prone to motion sickness would have a bad time with that. Ice physics looks like a great addition, seems fun! The level select looks nice as well, and I'm excited to hear more about those good news; congrats anyhow.

The ice ramp is definitely one of those things where I would spend waaaay too much time trying to optimize the timing of the jump to go as far as possible

[kevin andersson]

Thank you guys! :D I'm excited to see what people make with it!

[marcgfx]

Looks really smooth, good job man. I was wondering if the symbols that I assume represent the gamepad buttons could be bigger and brighter. I get the impression you are trying to hide them. Maybe you don't even need them anymore yourself? Currently I find it very hard to see, to the point that I doubt they would be any help. Maybe it would be sufficient to know where UP is on the character, this could be done by other visual means too, e.g. flowing hair or crazy eyebrows

[kevin andersson]

Looks really smooth, good job man. I was wondering if the symbols that I assume represent the gamepad buttons could be bigger and brighter. I get the impression you are trying to hide them. Maybe you don't even need them anymore yourself? Currently I find it very hard to see, to the point that I doubt they would be any help. Maybe it would be sufficient to know where UP is on the character, this could be done by other visual means too, e.g. flowing hair or crazy eyebrows

Yeah the gamepad buttons are pretty visible when you've got the game on a fullscreen but for gifs I could totally increase the size to further clarify what it is, it's a good idea!


On another note, a friend played the game on his stream last night and it was hilarious! I only have a tweet but check the video it's only 30 seconds!
https://twitter.com/AnderssonKev/status/1331114394227527680

[oahda]

Looks very difficult to do anything when the cube is spinning that fast

[kevin andersson]

Okay I don't have a long update but an important one.
You can now as a player:
-Make a level
-Upload it to steam workshop
-Go to the menu and browse existing custom levels
-Download any level and then play it.

All without ever leaving the game. It's amazing and will be smooth for anyone looking to try out a new level!

[kevin andersson]

So a lot of things have happened since the last update so let me dive into it!

Playtesting
I've sent out the demo to a few friends to iterate on it to make sure that it's playable and understandable without me hinting how to do things. Seeing people play the game and having fun is always wonderful so these past weeks has been a lot of fun! I'm going to go into some things that I did based on playtesting.



Updates From Playtest
So pretty quickly I noticed that when players got scared by almost falling down they pressed every button on the controller and pressing start or select would either restart the level or take you back to the main menu. This could ruin fun moments and was obviously not planned to be in the game later but I focused on other things, so I took my time to integrate the "restart from checkpoint" in the pause screen.

It's been fun to see the testers try to play as fast as possible so the timers in the level select are better presented so you can try and beat the par time on each level, this will probably also be in the final version of the game and not only in the demo.

Teching the player how to play is always difficult, I always want to avoid forcing the player to read any text. Learn by doing, so there is a "ghost tutorial" which is like a short replay system that jumps around and shows the player what to do. So far it's been teaching the player some different moves that I would have trouble with teaching through text. I think it's working very well.



Leg Updates
As some of you know, you can customize the character. Change legs, faces, boxes and also a hat.. but that last bit isn't in the game yet but the code supports it. ANYWAY, I've taken my time to iterate on every leg to try and make the shapes more fun and also have the outline be similar thickness to everything else that's colliding with the player. Just to make sure things feel consistent.



Steam Workshop
Okay so this one is still work in progress but things are good. I can browse existing levels, subscribe and then start that downloaded level without leaving the game which I think is very important for the game.



Remap
Okay so I'm excited for this one, it's working and this is one of the last bigger systems that I had to get working. So you can remap your controller in the game, but now the correct icon is displayed around the character based on what you remapped to. Works for controller and keyboard. I think I might iterate on this visually but at least it works technically.

[oahda]

Looks gooood! Ghost is a brilliant solution. Things are really coming together!

[JobLeonard]

so I took my time to integrate the "restart from checkpoint" in the pause screen.

This is essentially a four button game, right? Just wondering if it might be worthwhile to speedrunners to map a "restart from checkpoint" action to the left or right trigger to reduce that friction even more. The benefit would be that you never truly leave the game-loop.

[oahda]

I concur!

[kevin andersson]

Looks gooood! Ghost is a brilliant solution. Things are really coming together!

Hey thank you so much! I think it's so fun and things are really coming together!

so I took my time to integrate the "restart from checkpoint" in the pause screen.

This is essentially a four button game, right? Just wondering if it might be worthwhile to speedrunners to map a "restart from checkpoint" action to the left or right trigger to reduce that friction even more. The benefit would be that you never truly leave the game-loop.

oh my.. that's a great idea! I'm totally going to fix this!

[kevin andersson]

I feel like I say this every time but this time it’s way more! A LOT OF THINGS have happened since the last update! My vacation over the holidays are coming to an end and I wanted to look back at everything that got finished or improved

Editor: Copy, Paste, Undo/Redo, Selection Box & Sorting Order
Not going to lie, this was a pain. I got help from my friends Raze and Ebbe because there were some new approaches that I wouldn’t be able to understand on my own. But it’s working well, right now I haven’t found any issues with it but we’ll see once I add more testers to the level editor. There’s also a selection box which makes everything easier to handle, speeding up the workflow. Upon request from testers I’ve added full support on the sorting order for the decoration objects and background objects. They will start with a suggested sorting order but you could easily adjust it to what you want.




Screenshot Mode
So before uploading your custom level to Steam Workshop you need to have a thumbnail and I thought that instead of generating some image based on your level I figured that the player might want to hide some things depending on what type of level they make. So I’ve created a screenshot mode where you can fly around and change different levels of zoom to get the picture that you want. Although, I think you can change the screenshot in the folder before you upload if you’d want to make something more custom, just as long as you don’t change the name.




Item Unlocks
I made sure that this menu looked more like how I envisioned the final version to look like. There’s also some new fun support such as hidden items until they’re unlocked and rarity on certain objects. Items can now also be found in levels that you need to pick up and bring to the goal. So for the items that are hidden until unlocked will come in handy if I do seasonal events such as a winter update with timed challenges and unlocks. I’ve always had support for hats but never added any of them to the game but as it turns out… it’s a bit fun to wear them. I’m also planning on having redeem codes like I had in my previous game TaniNani to share on various occasions as a gift.




Workshop visual update
Quick update here where it at least looks like the rest of the game, I’ll have to come back here at some point to add more filters etc. In the worst case there are a lot of filters if you browse outside of the game, which means that this is not my highest priority right now.




Coop
Playing with a friend was something I added very early in the game but as I added more structure around the menus and general complexity it quickly stopped working through the main menu. So I sat down to make sure that it got back to a state where it was working again. I still haven’t made any levels for this mode but at least I’ve got support for remapping the controls for individual players so depending on what you remapped and what controller you’re using it should show correct buttons.




Minor Fixes
To wrap this update up I thought that I’d add the rest of the fixes here.

• Wobble legs as you jump, this is to add more “juice” to the game and make it less static. Game feels as some might describe it.
• Good jump particle, when you jump from a wall while having upward momentum you jump higher and longer. This should hopefully show the player when they did a jump like that.
• Touching the goal camera, I think this is a small thing but adds some dynamic feel to the game when you reach the goal, it could be fun if the goal is being touched while the player moves very fast and keeps flying out of the camera.
• Voice over example, the faces should make some grunting sounds so better start somewhere.
• Long and difficult level saves position, the level which is catered toward fans of Getting Over It and Jump King would be pleased to know that this level will save your progress as you climb higher.
• Waterfall, looks pretty and adds a more living feel to the background.
• More trees, I like trees.
• Cave parallax, did a test to get more depth to the cave. While I think the idea is good, it probably needs more work.

These were the big parts that got done during the past three weeks. I’ve also worked on a demo and testing the game a lot on people. Because in the next steam festival on February 3rd a Hoplegs demo will be available to download so please be on a lookout for that!

Also... please wishlist Hoplegs!

Stay safe,
Kevin

[JobLeonard]

Playing with a friend was something I added very early in the game but as I added more structure around the menus and general complexity it quickly stopped working through the main menu.

Anyone else low-key hyped at the idea of seeing a coop speedrun of this game by people who manage to become unreasonably good at it at some point?

[kevin andersson]

Playing with a friend was something I added very early in the game but as I added more structure around the menus and general complexity it quickly stopped working through the main menu.

Anyone else low-key hyped at the idea of seeing a coop speedrun of this game by people who manage to become unreasonably good at it at some point?

OMG, I need to make some coop levels and send it to some streamer friends! That's a brilliant idea!

[l0bster]

oh hey, i saw you on twitter nice to have a more detailed read about the development process  
definetely gonna get your game on steam when it's out

[oahda]

Good stuff. Love the waterfall especially! Maybe it's just the GIF format but I'm not sure I can see the wobble you're talking about.

[JobLeonard]

OMG, I need to make some coop levels and send it to some streamer friends! That's a brilliant idea!

Fun fact: QWOP is actually a coop game for up to four players.

[kevin andersson]

oh hey, i saw you on twitter nice to have a more detailed read about the development process  
definetely gonna get your game on steam when it's out

Hey thank you for that!

[Alain]

That is some cool news, Kevin. I am sure your demo will be amazing and I will definitely check it out in February!

[airbug]

This is super cool. Very nice idea & execution so far. I love the ghost tutorial.