next »

[cicla]

Hey guys I'm CICLA!

Welcome to Jolly World!

My friend Smerik and I have been working for the last 2 years on this really cool web sandbox game called Jolly World. The game is made completely on HTML5 so you can play it on your desktop browser and possibly later once we tweak it a bit also on your mobile browser.

We are on a stage in the development process where we need general feedback, bug spotting, security advice and some new cool levels created. So if you believe you could help us out please join us on this project.

For now you can test the game on this link: https://jollyworld.app/


At the moment we feel very confident about the future of the game and as you might have guessed... yes is inspired by Happy Wheels... so maybe and hopefully this game will be as huge as his mentor!


How To Play:
If you want to play a level just click that big orange PLAY button on the main menu, then select one of the levels that will appear next. At the moment I'm writing this post there's only one level created. But as more people join we hope that list grow a bit more  

CONTROLS: WASD
You can also jump out of your vehicle and wiggle around, but I will let you figure those keys yourself. Later on Some vehicles will have additional features and other control keys.

Level Creator and Editor

You can just place your feedback here on this post, we will be checking it regularly or join os on:

Discord https://discord.gg/qxnDvAy
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jolly.world.game/

[cicla]

Tutorial: Pins and Triggers


If you want to do cool stuff in this game you really need to learn how to use the Pins and the Triggers, they are really the bread and butter of the engine!

Let's say you want to create a level where there are a bunch of swinging axes rotating around and the player has to go through them and survive? For example something like this:



Pretty cool right?

So first of you drop the the object you want to add the rotation to into the stage, in this specific case we want to have a rotating Axe. You can find them on the Special Objects menu by selecting the star and on the drop down picking the weapons.

The next step would be to put a pin on it (but if you draw a physics object instead of using an axe, remember to click the object and uncheck the FIXED box option) let's put the pin in the top.



Click the Pin and adjust the motorSpeed the way you like it (positive values make it rotate clockwise and negative values the opposite) and maxMotorTorque is the force of the movement.

If you did everything correctly now you will have a rotating axe!

But wait... what about if I want the rotating action to be triggered by the player or by some other specific event?
Well, well that's possible too!

Select the PIN and uncheck the box that says enable motor


If you now click test (or shortcut T) you will see the axe is now just freely hanging in there. Look:



Ouch! Still pretty deadly!

So what do we do next? In the toolbox click at the trigger button (the clock) and drop the trigger ball or square in the place where you want it to be. In this case I've placed it in front of the player...



Now, click the trigger and in the trigger box click the Add Target Button, then click the PIN which we placed at the top of the axe.



If you did everything correctly it will look just like this:



What you see here is that the trigger has been connected to the PIN and if the Player (you can select other options in the drop down menu) gets in contact with it, the Target in our case the PIN we just attached, which is Target 1, will get it's motor Enable and will let the Axe start rotating. If you want to see it working, check this out:



What you just saw is the Axe hanging in there, but when the player touches the trigger the engine starts, the axe starts rotating as intended and sends our little guy flying through the skies! Fun eh?!

Join us on our discord if you have immediate questions or just post here we will be putting updates and more tutorials frequently!

Discord https://discord.gg/qxnDvAy
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jolly.world.game/
 

[JobLeonard]

Ok so... tbh this is not my type of violent humor. But I do understand the appeal (plenty of friends who were into Happy Tree Friends back in the day), so I'll just look past that to give some feedback on the rest. The HTML5 based sandbox looks like pretty cool tech, so nice going there!

(I would request that Smerik change their signature gif to something a bit less explicit though - I think of banner gifs as the kind of place where we shouldn't put anything that makes people go "hey I actually really didn't want to see that". I know the violence is part of the point but maybe there's a way to communicate that in a different way?)

[Smerik]

Hi @

Ok so... tbh this is not my type of violent humor. But I do understand the appeal (plenty of friends who were into Happy Tree Friends back in the day), so I'll just look past that to give some feedback on the rest. The HTML5 based sandbox looks like pretty cool tech, so nice going there!

(I would request that Smerik change their signature gif to something a bit less explicit though - I think of banner gifs as the kind of place where we shouldn't put anything that makes people go "hey I actually really didn't want to see that". I know the violence is part of the point but maybe there's a way to communicate that in a different way?)

Hi JobLeonard, good point! I will update my gif with something less violent.

[JobLeonard]

Thanks Smerik! The new sig still captures the type of humor you're going for quite well, with the silly helmet thingy

[PseudoFanboy]

As far as the violence goes, I definitely agree that it's part of the appeal. I did find that it didn't take much to absolutely mangle my character, which to be honest got it out of the way right at the start. The rest of the level still generates blood effects but the gore was generated the second I overshot one particular jump, so there wasn't much further I could go from there.
It might be more satisfying for players if you DECREASE the character's sensitivity to damage, since characters would likely build up their visible damage over a longer period of time and give players another thing to aim for - if all they want is a gored-up character, and they get it in the first few collisions, they've already gotten everything they wanted from the experience and have one less reason to keep playing.

[Smerik]

Hey, this is perfect feedback! Thank you so much. I have been putting so much effort in getting the Gore really gorey that I indeed didn't spend a lot of time tweaking the amount you get by hitting stuff. I will see what I can do, for sure make the thresholds a bit bigger. Currently it's all physics driven, so the mass of an object combined with the speed determines how much energy it transfers in the form of damage. I can just add a limiting scale on it. Will keep you posted once I changed it.

[cicla]

JOLLY WORLD UPDATE!
If you are an indie game developer who's lacking marketing budget and is struggling to build momentum, I will be sharing something that will help you hopefully kick start your game:

How to create your community and keep it engaged!
In this specific case we are using Discord
https://discord.gg/7ZWxBam9Hx

Our game is a sandbox game with an editor that players can use to build and publish levels. We are now in open beta, so we don't want just yet to get a big in-flow of players. For now we just need enough to make things work and help us move the product to a stable ready for release state
https://jollyworld.app/

The problem with sandbox games is that to make them work you really need an engaged and loyal community not only short term to spot bugs and help with the features, but also long term to create content and keep other users engaged.

So what are we doing?

Connect players to your main community: We've set up a discord channel and connected the logging in the game to it. This way if you want to create a level in the sandbox editor and needed some help you could just drop by the server and ask your questions without any friction. This has double edged efficacy because not only does it help the user on their quest to interact with the game, but also helps the community feel fresh and active as there is always an influx of new users coming in as the game's popularity keeps growing.

Keeping players engaged: Now that you are slowly getting new players on your discord every now and then is critical that you keep them coming and interacting not only with the game but with yourself and with each other! To achieve this YOU and your team have to be ready to spend time talking to the them, understanding their needs and getting their feedback.

Remember at this stage these players are your core community the early adopters and the most important users you will ever have. They are the ones most likely to remain loyal for years to come and will take you to the finish line.

So how do we keep the early adopters engaged?

1-Talk to them often and honestly: This is the most important point of all... like I said before these are your most valuable players and they deserve a lot of respect so be cool, be real, get to know them and connect with them.

2-Making them part of the development process: Talk to them ask for their advice, for feature ideas and once you implement them in the game they will be glad to play those new features that they themselves came up with and will continue giving you more ideas. This serves as Q-A and also as another tool for community building.

3-Reward engagement in the community: Taking and implementing feedback can only get you so far, that's why we've implemented in our server an EXP bot. You can achieve something like this in any other community and in many different ways.



4-Keep the In-game content coming regularly: If you are building a sandbox game, at this stage you will need to be creating levels and content yourself on a regular basis. Remember most users will not engage with your editor, they just want to play the user generated content and have a good time. So you need to have something playable for those that are starting to flow in and also you need to test live the new features you and your community have been busy brainstorming!

This is a major and critical task, so reach out to your creative friends and family for help, watch YouTube videos for inspiration and play similar games. Keep the releases often and consistent.

Something I've found out is that because you are part of the development team you have advanced knowledge and can find easy ways to create fun experiences that might be difficult for new users to build. Take advantage of this and create short but impressive, good looking and fun levels to play, basically you do more with less effort!

5-Keep the Off-game content fresh: Off-Game content are posts like this one I'm doing here, or tutorials in the community, memes, images, guides, videos, etc. They help you gain another perspective of your game as you have to rationalize what you are doing. They could serve as a marketing tool and help you bringing new players in, since you will be reaching out to other communities. Also Off-Game content helps in the long term build your game brand.

I hope this has been a helpful update everyone!