We've been working hard on Chippy's biggest update yet, and we're very excited to announce that you can test out a preview build today. This release features improvements to every single stage from the official campaigns, a UI overhaul, and (last but not least) local co-op!
To play, you'll need to switch to the redux-preview beta branch in Chippy's properties in your Steam client. You can find detailed instructions later in this post, along with more information about the new content in this release. We're looking forward to hearing your feedback before we put this update out in the main branch!
Redux campaigns
In the time since Chippy's release, we've been taking into account your feedback about each of the 14 official stages. As we didn't want to invalidate the leaderboards frequently by changing those levels too often, we've been saving up a big bunch of improvements for one major update.
You can look forward to utilising new powerups, enemies will have some new attacks in their arsenal, and we've added some new sound effects and speech lines. Balance has also been adjusted, and bugs have been fixed.
[previewyoutube="4UQAQtsN5yc;full"]
The test branch will have separate leaderboards from the main build of the game while we check for bugs and get your feedback. After everything seems nice and stable, we'll push the improved campaigns to the main branch with new leaderboards. Don't worry, we'll make sure the old leaderboards (along with their replays) are accessible, most likely through the Workshop.
Co-op
For the second major part of this update, we are adding local co-op! You and a friend can now play through the entirety of both official campaigns, with either one or both of you on a gamepad. Steam Remote Play Together is also supported, so with a decent connection you can play over the net too!
[previewyoutube="H5C78qittAg;full"]
To enable co-op, you (or your friend if using Remote Play Together) will need at least one connected controller. Pressing the Start button on that controller while on the campaign screen will switch to co-op mode, and Player 2 will be using the gamepad to play. To go back to single player, simply press Start again.
Co-op features separate leaderboards from single player, with replays fully supported. We're trying out a form of adaptive splitscreen: the screen will only be split if both players are far apart, and it will smoothly merge into one view when you meet up. If you like, you can disable this in the Video settings while in-game.
How to try it out
Before we fully release this update, we need your feedback to make sure there aren't any problems we've missed. You can test this new version today, by switching your game to the redux-preview beta branch:
1. Make sure Chippy isn't currently running 2. Right click on Chippy in your Steam client, select "Properties" 3. Click on the "BETAS" tab 4. In the drop-down, select "redux-preview - Work in progress redux campaigns" 5. Close the Properties window
Steam should now download the preview build of Chippy! When you want to switch back to the default branch, follow the steps above again, but choose "NONE" in the drop-down.
For more information on how to use Steam Remote Play Together to play with a friend over the net, check out this guide.
Switch & Soundtrack
Besides the Redux campaigns and co-op, we've also been working on the Nintendo Switch version of Chippy. Hopefully we'll have some more news about that soon!
Finally, we've had a bunch of requests for Chippy's OST to be released. To heed that call, Alex has been putting together a final mix of each of the songs used in the game, which hopefully will be out soon!
Get in touch
We hope you have a great time trying out co-op and the improved campaigns! If you have any feedback, or need some help, you're very welcome to join us on our Discord.
Community Update
New Official Stage: Quartet
Destroy four unique bosses as fast as possible. Each boss gets stronger when another boss dies. You can fight them in any order, so experiment with different strategies and compete on the leaderboard.
It's available on the workshop here, though you should be auto-subscribed to it already.
Community Highlight: Workshop
Chaos Campaign
If you're itching for even more challenging content, make sure you check out the Chaos Campaign by community member GNL2002.
At the time of writing, their creation features 8 inventive new bosses to defeat, complete with custom attack patterns and dialogue. While already impressive, the campaign is a work in progress so there might be tweaks and additions in the future.
Also worth checking out is W1ND's reimagining of our official campaigns, with 11 bosses transformed into unique and stylish galactic waifus. Hopefully we'll get to see the remaining 3 bosses converted soon!
Last but not least, current #1 player Krahie has authored a custom stage of their own called Gridlock. This challenging design has a particularly satisfying second form, give it a try!
If you're interested in creating your own stages, check out the tutorials, and feel free to ask for help in the Chippy Discord.
Community Highlight: AGDQ
We were thrilled to see Chippy on Awesome Games Done Quick recently. The Crusade campaign and Xulgon (spoilers!) were run by Scrublord, who did a great job of presenting the game, demonstrating high level play, and performing some exploits.
Here's the vod: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/532240714?t=11h08m37s
Future Plans
We're still moving along with the Switch port, and are optimistically investigating adding local multiplayer support to all versions.
You can also expect some more official workshop stages at some point.
Change List
Features
Added Quartet stage
Auto-subscribe to Quartet and Crossfire stages
Changed button highlight styling
Fixes
Fixed menu music for workshop stages
Fixed an issue preventing new workshop leaderboards from being created
Fixed possible cause of error spam in scripts
Easy Mode Update
Easy Mode
For anyone that finds the official campaigns too unforgiving, we've released easier versions of all stages (except the final boss). These are available right now on Chippy's Workshop, although you'll automatically be subscribed to them the next time you launch the game if you haven't already done so.
A variety of elements have been tweaked, for example you will start with some shields from the get go, and powerups are more generous overall. Most enemy bullets have been modified to be more easily avoided, and there are some stage-specific changes like reducing Overgrowth's regeneration speed. You'll also notice that Chippy has been adorned with a fetching bow, which provides a much needed morale boost.
Workshop UI Improvements
Also in this update, we've added a bunch of new features to the Workshop UI we introduced last time. You can now rate subscribed campaigns while in-game, and see if any of those campaigns have received updates since the last time you played them. Also, now it is possible to sort subscribed campaigns by various criteria by clicking the headings of each column in the Workshop menu. Finally, there's now a button to open Ryleigh's modding tutorials right from the Workshop menu.
Relative Aiming Mode
This is a more experimental change for any mouse and keyboard players. You can now bind a key or mouse button to enable "Relative Aim" while that input is held. This mode will switch the crosshair to move relative to whatever is behind it, instead of relative to your screen. You can use this to, for example, automatically track a certain part of a boss, even while you fly around it. Let us know if you find this mode useful, or have any ideas for how to improve it!
The Workshop Update
Workshop Now Available!
This update's most major feature is the ability to create, share and play custom levels. As mentioned in our last update in August, everything needed to create any of the official levels is accessible, including using custom graphics, sound effects, music and scripting.
To demonstrate what's possible, Ryleigh has built a brand new fully-featured level: Crossfire. This stage also demonstrates the new Endless Mode that we mentioned last update, where the goal is to survive for as long as possible against an increasingly escalating onslaught. This stage also features 4 unique minibosses, with some inventive new attack patterns to avoid.
You can subscribe to Crossfire here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1863739017 After you have subscribed to some custom levels, you can find them in the *Workshop* tab in-game. Each item in the Workshop can contain one or more levels, organised in a campaign. Levels downloaded from the Workshop have leaderboards and replays just like any official level.
The first time you play one of these custom levels the game will need to do some extra pre-processing to make sure it can run as smoothly as an official level, resulting in a slightly longer load time. However, the result of this process is cached so that it only needs to be performed once (until the level gets modified by the creator).
If you want to try your hand at making your own level, or even a whole campaign, check out Ryleigh's tutorials:
You'll mostly be writing JSON files to describe the appearance and behaviour of your levels, but we've also provided a pixel editor you should use to create the visuals for your own animated bosses, as these use a custom format. Included in the game files is an example custom stage, which you can use as a springboard to try fiddling around with your own creations.
Legacy Replay Support
In the process of implementing Workshop support, quite a lot of the internals of the game have been redesigned and rewritten. This had the added benefit of allowing us to resolve some performance issues, and in general clean a bunch of systems up. Unfortunately, this came at the cost of supporting replays recorded in the old version of the game.
Since we don't want to wipe the leaderboards (as no gameplay elements have changed in a way that would invalidate them), we've opted to keep the leaderboards intact, and made a legacy version of the game available to watch these old replays. This legacy build can be found in the Betas tab, after right-clicking on Chippy in your Steam library, and selecting Properties. This new legacy-v56 branch will allow you to play the pre-Workshop build of the game, including watching replays from that version, but we've disabled submitting new high-scores from that build.
New Achievements
Our final new feature in this update is a bunch of new Steam achievements, mostly geared towards experienced players. These seven new goals all involve carrying out daring displays of expertise against seven different bosses from the original campaigns:
Join Us On Discord!
As always, you're welcome to join Chippy's community on Discord! That's probably the best place to get in touch with us if you encounter any bugs, and it's also a great resource for discussing strategies. We'll also be around to answer any questions about creating custom levels, and you'll be able to get feedback from the community on what you create there too.
For any expert players that can attain all gold medals on one or both of our official campains, you can be granted the Gilded Crusader and Gilded Invader roles to show off your prowess.
What's Next?
Besides continuing to patch any problems that come up relating to the new Workshop update, we'll be continuing work on a Switch port that should hopefully be ready in the next few months. Any new features we introduce for that version will also be added to the PC release. Along with that, we're hoping to put out a few more new "official" Workshop levels like Crossfire for you to try.
Update - August 10th 2019
This update adds the ability to bind items to individual keys, along with some fixes and improvements. We're also making good progress with our new Endless levels, writing documentation for building your own custom workshop stages, and starting work on a Switch port.
Change List
Features
Added item binding functionality to pause menu
Added setting to disable pause on focus lost
Can now use Ctrl+V to watch a replay URL from your clipboard
Fixes
Fixed rare issue with pixel destroy effect velocity
Fixed keyboard bindings on replay menu
Fixed Phobia first form attack perpetually looping sound effect
Fixed sound effect spam after victory
Fixed case where controller input would be ignored
Fixed some stage scripts that weren't being optimized correctly
Improvements
Items are now alway sorted (first by category, then by name)
Can now hold down with left click to scroll a leaderboard quickly
Can now properly navigate items menu on controller
Added D-Pad button icons
Replays are now only stored locally until you share them
Stage selection colour improvements
Show "=" for tied scores
More UI uses accelerating navigation while a direction button is held
Item Binding
We've gotten a lot of feedback about it being challenging to select a certain item in the heat of battle, so we hope this feature helps.
In the pause menu, navigate to an item using the controller, press A to enter binding mode, and then press one of the dpad buttons. Pressing that button in-game will now swap to that item.
More than one item can be bound to the same button - hit that button multiple times to cycle through them.
For mouse & keyboard, simply select an inventory item and press a number key from 0-9. Press the same key again to clear a binding.
Once a binding has been set, it should be remembered across multiple sessions.
Endless Mode Progress
Our 3 brand new stages for Endless Mode are coming along nicely. Here are some teasers of ideas we're playing around with (you might need to right-click and Show Controls to play the vids):
We've also been working on documenting everything you'll need to know to create your own stages. You'll have access to everything we used when building the levels in the game, so we're really excited to see what you'll come up with when the documentation and tools go public.
Update - July 15th 2019
This update features a new replay management menu, from which you can browse and share any recently recorded replays. We've also greatly improved leaderboard navigation, and added percentile stats to give you a better idea of how you are ranked on each stage.
Change List
Features
Added replay menu
Added percentile UI to stages and campaigns, showing your relative global rank
Fixes
Fixed possible bug with assigning sort order to new scores
Made sure camera can never have an invalid size
Fixed music playback issue causing performance problems on some stages
Fixed "Personal Best" UI showing up on victory after hijacking a replay
Improvements
Leaderboard scrolling greatly improved: scroll speed accelerates while holding up/down, and it no longer waits for entries to load before scrolling
Added medal award text to victory screen
Leaderboard entry style tweaks
Progress bar medal visual tweaks
Replay playback now pauses on divergence
Replay Menu
You can now browse the replays recorded during your last 100 attempts of any stage, using the new replay menu.
We've also added replay sharing links that can be generated from the replay menu. Clicking on a replay sharing link will launch Chippy, and start playing that replay. Additionally, tabbing back to the game while a replay link is in your clipboard will prompt you to download and watch it.
Shared replays will be locked, and won't get automatically deleted.
Percentiles
Also included in this update are percentile stats for each stage and campaign. This will tell you your relative global rank, for example if you are ranked 100 out of 500 players it will list you as being in the "Top 20%".
This should give you a better idea of how well you are doing, especially when you're not near the top of the leaderboards like the 3 players that have already beaten every single stage (for comparison, over 4,700 players have beaten the first stage).
For the rest of us, we've made it easier and faster to scroll around the leaderboard.
What's Next?
The two big things we're working on at the moment are a new "Endless" mode and Steam Workshop support.
Endless mode will feature some completely new stages, and task you to survive for as long as possible against a perpetual onslaught of tougher and tougher challenges. We're currently planning to start with a campaign of 3 endless stages, each with a different style of gauntlet to endure.
Here's some concepts of the enemies you'll be fighting in one of those stages:
For Workshop support, our next job is to provide documentation for how to build your own stages, and later on create the UI that will let you upload and play these custom levels.
Update - June 29th 2019
Here's a small update while we're working towards some larger features. This patch fixes a handful of bugs you reported, greatly improves memory usage, and now you can bind inputs to toggle shooting.
Change List
[B]Features[/B]
Experimental custom stage support on "debug" branch
Added optional toggle bindings for shooting and braking
Added additional speech lines to some bosses
[B]Fixes[/B]
Fixed some missing sound effects
Fixed Dash indicator sometimes showing when not selected
Fixed game not pausing when focus is lost
Fixed leaderboard time display for times over 1 hour
Fixed hijack button not showing after watching to the end of a replay
Fixed not being able to bind actions to the mouse wheel
Fixed timer flickering after the end of a replay
[B]Improvements[/B]
Much better at unloading unused resources, reducing total memory usage
Also reduced memory footprint of music
Made sure the player can never go off-screen during gameplay
Bindings revert button now only resets current page
Debug Branch
While replay divergences are much less common since our last patch, there are still some edge cases that cause them. If you want to help us find out how to reproduce and fix them, the best thing you can do is play on the "debug" branch. This will record a ton of extra diagnostic info with your replays.
You can switch to the "debug" branch in Chippy's properties on Steam:
Custom Stages
Also on that branch, this week we've included the first steps towards letting you build your own levels. In the install directory of Chippy, you'll find a "custom" folder like this:
The "Template" folder contains an example stage (Kraken from the main game), so to get started messing around with your own stuff you should create a copy of that folder (with a name you choose) in the "custom" directory. You can load a custom stage from that directory (but only on the "debug" branch) by setting Chippy's launch options to this:
--initial-stage :
Each folder contains a list of stages, so the "stage index" at the end tells the game which to load. So for example, to load the Template folder, you will set it to this:
We'll be putting out documentation in the near future, but for more information right now you can ask us in the #workshop channel in our Discord:
https://discord.gg/xNguzDH
As always, if you have any suggestions for improvements or features you would like to see, you can also head over to our Nolt:
https://chippy.nolt.io/
Update - June 22nd 2019
We've added a bunch of UI and control options based on your suggestions, implemented an optional split time UI feature for speedrunners, and improved replay stability.
Change List
Features
Show your "ghost" on the progress bar while watching a replay
Added button in pause menu while watching a replay, to attempt that level
Added option (off by default) to show split times, with split time differences on replay ghosts
Added options to reposition powerup display
Added option to shoot automatically while aiming with an analog stick
Added hotkeys to jump to the first leaderboard entry while browsing (Home on keyboard, Menu on controller)
Fixes
Fixed replay divergence caused by something not being properly reset on level restart
Fixed cases where the pause menu could be opened at an invalid time, overlapping other UI
Vibration now stops on pause
Fixed case where music wouldn't change in main menu when you switch campaign
Fixed a bunch more minor errors
Improvements
Better pooling of resources while playing music
Font tweaks for numerical displays (timer etc)
Almost all options can be reverted to default values now
Leaderboards now show warning icons for missing replays / replays recorded on an outdated version
Chippy Arcade - Rust
Also of note, the Rust team have added a fun, fully-interactive craftable arcade cabinet, exclusive to players that have purchased Chippy. You should be granted the item after playing at least 30 minutes of Chippy, if it doesn't show up immediately you can try joining a Rust server, then restarting the game. Restarting Steam may also trigger the item.
Refunding Chippy will cause you to lose the item, and unfortunately we are unable to grant the item for a second time if you buy Chippy again later on.
Chippy's been out for a few days now, and we're really happy to hear that you're enjoying the game! You've been giving us some great feedback and suggestions, which we're excited to implement over the next few weeks and months to make this game the best it can be.
Before we talk about what we have planned next, it might be interesting to go back and look at how the game has changed since Ryleigh's original prototype.
History
The first version was called Space Usurper, a Unity Web Player game showing off the mechanic of breaking apart bosses made of pixels. While we've moved to a much higher fidelity art style now, you can still see that the basic design of a triangular ship with a rotating gun has persisted since way back then.
Here's a video by a player that tried it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0H1tByghKY
Next came a rewrite with a focus on making the levels entirely out of image files that could easily be shared. Enemy turrets would have their shooting patterns defined by which colours of pixels you arranged into a square, and more complex behaviour could be constructed using the Wireworld Cellular Automata. The ship design is even closer to the final version, although the visuals of the bosses are still much simpler than we have now.
This is what it looked like, with some gameplay by another player:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgK_bhbJTUU
With what we learned from those two games, we started fresh to create what would become Chippy! Now let's look ahead to see what plans we have for the future.
Future
Here's a general outline of what we have planned going forward, although this is open to change based on what you all would like to see. We've set up a suggestion box for you to send in ideas, or vote on other players' suggestions here:
https://chippy.nolt.io/
You can also find a roadmap there, which we'll update as we go along. As of now however, here is what we'd like to achieve:
Next few weeks
Add some extra UI features, suggested by Jake_Rich and Noxis on discord:
Show your best run's progress while watching a replay
Add a way to browse and share any replay you have recorded, not just highscores
Add a stats page to show information such as total attempts for each level, medal times etc
Show split times when defeating a form of a boss, and show how far behind another player you are
Fix reported bugs and errors
Improve memory usage and performance in general
Fix replay stability
Finish off boss dialogue on some levels
Tweak levels based on feedback (looking at you Overgrowth)
General gameplay tweaks
Next few months
Add Steam Workshop support, allowing players to create and share their own levels
Add some new official levels
Including some using a new Endurance game mode, with the goal of surviving for as long as possible
Hardcore runs, where you attempt an entire campaign with one life and a special leaderboard
Ship customisation with cosmetics unlocked by playing, that other players can see when watching your replays
Have fun!
Thank you for reading, and for taking an interest in Chippy! We'll keep you posted as we update the game, and in the meantime you can join our Discord community if you have any questions or want to chat with us:
https://discord.gg/8pVW9jz
P.S. There is a Rust cross-promotional item in the works, but the Rust team wanted to take some additional time to make it extra neat. Sorry about the wait!
