IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (READ BEFORE BUYING) - The Future of The Club
There are going to be big changes in the future of Friendship Club. Progress on the game has been slow and to help solve the problem, Nick (the project lead) has left Force of Habit and is taking the game with him. He will continue to work with Clockwork Cuckoo (the artist and animator of the game) whilst looking for a new programmer who's up to the job.
You can read more about this (entirely amicable arrangement) here: http://forceofhab.it/blog/parting-ways-to-make-us-better/
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR FRIENDSHIP CLUB?!
In the short term, development will halt and bug fixes will be few and far between, if at all. Nick's objective in the long term is to rebuild the game from scratch in a new engine (the current version is a proprietary 2D engine in C++). Obviously this is quite a large and expensive undertaking. Hopefully this will all help Friendship Club to one day reach its full potential, whilst also freeing up Ash (the remaining member of Force of Habit) to make his own new games.
Our advice in regards the game at present: feel free to buy it, but be aware that it doesn't guarantee any future updates or bug fixes, much as we hope that it happens nothing can be promised at this point.
Release #23 - Christmas Update!
Hey there!
Sick of Christmas and needing to settle some scores between family and friends? We've got just the thing: GIFT MODE!
Start with no bullets and no rug recharging. Gifts then randomly spawn on the map. Dash into one to tear it open and reveal its terrible prize - A TURBO BULLET, JUST FOR YOU!
Major new features:
GIFT MODE!
Christmas overhaul!
Temporary Christmas themed music, graphics and gibs (everyone loves a Christmas gib)
We hope everybody has an awesome festive period. Thanks for all your support in 2015, we really appreciate it! Be sure to keep an eye on Friendship Club in 2016 as we've got lots of things planned. Oh yeah, and before I forget, we did a 2015 retrospective blog post too.
Take care everyone,
Nick, Ash, Sophie and Tom… and James!
P.S. Here's a little demonstration of a heart-warming gift exchange between Shakey Jake and The Canardinal. Aren't they just adorable!
Full Changelog:
Main Features:
GIFT MODE! Randomly spawning, mega-presents, each one containing a Turbo-Bullet
Christmas overhaul! Temporary Christmas themed music, graphics and gibs (everyone loves a Christmas gib)
Code:
Updated pie position in stats screen so it sits higher on the plate. Attempted to remove graphical bug of squished pie to the side of screen during next/previous animations
Correct (brownish) plate now shows in TWW stats screen
Fix to rogue squashed pie in StatsScreen
Fix bug where victory text was upscaled on the win game screen
Updated win game overlay to include all Arena skins/colours for team wins
Fix bug where win overlay text was positioned in the wrong place for team games (only teams with less than 4 players)
Fixed bug where pressing backspace would immediately exit a game
Nana Ricketts now has turbo bullets
Fingers shadows now show up behind walls in the stencil buffer
Added controller input to controller configuration screen. Also allow user to press backspace/escape when configuring the controller so they don't get stuck in the menus!
Optimised pies on stats screen a bit. (It only draws pies it needs to.)
Added the ability to display arena-specific stats on the stats screen
Updated some mode/text copy
Fixed gaps that appear between tiles when scaling
Fixed bug where heads could not be picked up on Character Select
Arena specific fonts are now used on the stats screen
Lots of little updates for new ARK2D (3D) library changes
Depth sorting refactoring, sort of works maybe, probably
Xbox controller config - start button fix
Art & Animation:
Updated the colours on the purple pie to match purple danger
Updated character animations. Fixed hands not returning to correct style after pit falling animations
Updated colours on the unselected arena icons for the [redacted] and the wonky wagon - they didn't match!
Updated plate crumbs for all arenas (wagon and [redacted] were too small, and have removed plate 'shadow' on all, as it looked a bit odd whilst the crumbs were floating)
Edited quickdraw countdown to start off screen and drop below top of screen
Fixed bug with scaling
Audio:
Refactored all main menu sound events
Added new world specific selection sounds on the world select screen
Additional side-chaining to the music buss from certain events
Misc:
Removed bully mode.
Happy Halloween - Windows Controllers Fixed!
Hey,
Panic over, we hope. Ashley has picked through his mountain of C++ and found what we think to have been causing the problem.
It's pretty weird that it was only happening when the game was being run through Steam, but ho hum. We've implemented a beta-testing branch now so we can test things via Steam before releasing them in future.
Please let us know on Twitter (@forcehabit) or via the forums if you find any other problems.
Have a terrifying Halloween everyone, be sure to get sick on sugar and fear...
Cheers,
Nick
Windows Controller Issues Workaround
Hey,
So, with the latest release we've seen the return of our good friend "Windows Specific Controller Bug That Only Occurs When Launching Through Steam". We're really sorry for not picking this up during QA, it's a problem that only happens when the game is running through Steam. Go figure.
THE WORKAROUND: For now, you can still run Friendship Club (with full controller support!) via the Local Files. If you've not done this before, here's a step-by-step guide:
1) Open Steam
2) Find Friendship Club in your Library and right click on it
3) Open 'Properties'
4) Click the 'Local Files' tab
5 )Click 'Browse Local Files'
6) Double-click friendshipclub.exe
We're looking into this ASAP and will be contacting Valve (again) to see if they have any suggestions. We're also looking at refactoring our controller handling (fun) to see if that fixes it. Lastly, we'll be implementing a beta-branch in Steam so that we can test the game via launching it from Steam. In future we might be on the lookout for beta testers so keep your eyes peeled if that sounds interesting to you.
Cheers!
Release #22 - 8 Player Action!
Hey!
After a bit of a release-hiatus, we’re happy to announce a new version of Friendship Club!
Sorry about the slow progress this past six months. Due to slow Early Access sales, we’ve had to spend quite a bit of time trying to get money together to work on the game (cough indiepocalypse cough :D). Fear not though, things are coming along and we’ve worked out a pretty good balance now to allow us to make consistent progress, it’s just that we’ll have to be splitting our time a bit more than we had hoped. Anyway, new stuff!
Major new features:
In future we’re going to be releasing less frequently than we did in the first year of development, but each update will have major new features, rather than the incremental ones we had in the past. We decided that this would be the best way to work on the game, meaning that there would be less downtime spent doing the releases (compiling builds, testing, contacting press etc.) and hopefully means we might get a bit more media coverage for the releases. I guess we’ll see…
Speaking of which, if you’re a fan of the game, we’d be really grateful for any help you can give us in spreading the word, whether it’s reviews, tweets, getting people over to play the game together, whatever. The more time we can dedicate to Friendship Club, the faster it will come along. We’re trying to make the best darn local-multiplayer game we can and we’re not taking any shortcuts along the way. It’s going to be worth it, I promise - there’s SO much we want to get in there, your support is vital to us.
Take care everyone,
Nick, Ash, Sophie and Tom… and James!
Full Changelog:
Main Features:
Code:
Art & Animation:
Audio:
Misc:
Controllers Now Working Again!
Hello everybody,
We're REALLY sorry about the controller issues that some people have been reporting. We've reverted Friendship Club back to a slightly older build for now, one where controllers should work again at the expense of hotplugging and a few bits of in game furniture.
This bug only seems to occur if you run the game through Steam - if you play Friendship Club from local files, as we do when we're testing, it doesn't seem happen. We've contacted Valve for some input on this to try to figure out what's going on.
So yeah, pretty annoying and again, sorry for anyone who's been unable to play. Hopefully now you should now be able to smash your friends through a wild west table, just like old times.
Cheers,
Nick
P.S. Hit us up on the forums if you have any further issues. The game is Early Access, but we want to keep it playable and fun at all times.
P.P.S. We've got some exciting stuff planned for the game, can't wait to get it in... )
Release #21. MORE FURNITURE!
Salutations! Have you been enjoying Armour mode, Hardcore mode or Tasty Pies recently? Have you left us a Steam review yet? Is your name Boris? If the answer to any of those questions is either "yes" or "no", we have a special treat for you... More new cool features in Friendship Club of course!
More Furniture
Grab the latest update right now, and open up a game in Timmy's House. You'll notice a heck of a lot of new furniture, including...
TIMMY'S NEW TOYS
2 x Armchair
2 x Standing lamps
1 x Fruitbowl table (with 3 x fruit)
1 x TV
1 x Wobbly Sidetable & Vase
Some of those items sometimes generate in odd places, such as TVs facing walls. Issues like that will be phased out as time goes on, much like analogue TVs!
The Wonky Wagon has some furniture and decoration updates too. Items hung on the wall are now sometimes interactive: wagon wheels will spin if you shoot them, and WANTED posters burst into flames. Other things too, check them out in-game!
They're all cool!
Turbo Bullets
We've made a slight modification to the biggest type of turbo bullets -- they now blast right through furniture and other room objects! If you get one of these in The Wonky Wagon, see if you can catch your friends offguard by shooting them through walls -- amazing moments ensue.
BAM! - GIF of this is at the top.
Updated Statistics Menu
We've added a menu to the end-game stats screen that lets you replay the game you just played really quickly. If you - like us - are always in that "one more go" mood, this is for you. Oh, we hope you like biscuits too.
Bikkits!
More YouTube friendly!
In an effort to make the game more friendly YouTubers and streamers, we now allow people to set their names in the game options. Names can be 3 characters long (arcade style!) and will appear above/below the avatars in the corners when playing. If you've seen any of Stumpt's videos of Friendship Club, it looks a bit like that. Less editing work for you - hurrah! :)
8 Players?
We've been working on supporting up to 8 players! It's all under the hood at the moment, and there are still a few issues to iron out. e.g. What do we do with the game scale? Shrink the players? Make the arenas bigger? What about split screen? Will there be too many bullets on-screen? Who or what will the new characters be? Questions like these (and others) will need to be answered before it's ready for release on Steam.
That said, if you're coming to Bristol Video Games Social XIX next weekend, you might just catch a sneak peek of it -- we're hoping to have it set up to get some feedback. Come along if you're in or around Bristol!
Stay friendly!
- Ashley
What are you most looking forward to from Friendship Club? 8 player mode? AI/bots? Online multiplayer? Something else? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook or really spoil us and use the Steam community! :)
Full Changelog
New things (as above):
Lots of new and updated furniture!
Turbo bullets (large) can now blast through furniture and walls!
Tasty-biscuits Statistics menu!
Set your name in the game. Youtube-friendly feature.
Code (game):
Added all the new furniture.
Made turbo bullets go through furniture and walls.
Players can now set their names in the options.
Bubble particles in the speed machine are now batched into the same draw call.
Added cursory support for 8 players. We have debug builds where this is enabled.
Code (engine):
Fixed a bug in the HSV shader where switching back to regular texture shader broke everything.
Added AngelScript library for both Windows and OSX releases.
Added AngelScript bindings for lots of engine functions (input, rendering, filesystem).
Debug builds now work properly on Windows again. Whew! They were totally broken for ages.
Max gamepads set to 10, not 16, 32 or some crazy number.
Project path is now relative instead of fixed.
Added catmull-rom and bezier spline functions.
Added some more matrix multiplication functions.
Added basic Scenegraph functionality.
Art & Animation:
Release #20. MORE STATS!
Holla! To follow on from Friendship Club's last release where we introduced Unlimited Ammo and Hardcore Mode... this update seems rather small in comparison. You can kind of think of it like a hot-fix, but it's a bit more than a hot-fix. It's somewhere between a hot-fix and a release. Yes, yes...
New Statistics
We've added a few more statistics to the end-game stats / tasty pies screen.
The main take-away from that list should be that you can now see which of your friends has been smashing the place up the most. If you didn't get that, go back and try again.
The one other potentially cool feature - but also particularly standard - is that you can now hotplug controllers. This just means you can plug controllers in after the game is running, and it will know that the controller exists. One small step towards a more seemless experience.
Right-o, that's everything. Have fun with this release, but most importantly, stay friendly!
- Ashley
You can say things to us in these places, amazing huh?! Twitter, Facebook or really spoil us and use the comments below.
Full Changelog
New things:
More in-game statistics! More juicy pies.
You can now (sort-of) hotplug game controllers.
Art:
Updated custom in-game font to have accent characters. This will be useful down the line when we localise the game.
Icons for unlimited ammo, hardcore modifier, furniture destroyed, bullets fired.
Code:
New Gamepad configuration helper. If you gamepad doesn't work with Friendship Club, go here!
Touch control functions are now loaded in dynamically. Friendship Club doesn't use touch controls, but our first game Toast Time did. This would have caused you problems if you tried to run Friendship Club on a Windows Vista machine.
Misc:
Our press management system now automatically tracks game coverage from websites, blogs and YouTube channels.
We can add coverage items in manually and remove false positives.
We also include a "thanked" field to make sure we do not become horrible people. :)
Release #19. Unlimited Ammo & Hardcore!
Hello! It's been two weeks since we released the ever-exciting Armour features, and today we have another release with more lovely things.
Unlimited Ammo
First up, we added an Unlimited Ammo toggle into the advanced modifiers. This is exactly what it sounds like! It's very manic, and is equal amounts game-design breaking, but some of you might find it fun, so why not? Sometimes 8 bullets just isn't enough...
Next up, we added a Hardcore toggle. As mentioned in Tom's last blog post, hardcore mode is the result of stripping the game back and removing a lot of visual hints. Player scores in the avatars are removed, there's no gun reticule so you cannot see how much ammo your opponents have, and there is no dash cone overlay so it's harder to attack someone at just the right moment. We can potentially go further with this idea, removing team hats and the rest, but for now we just want to hear what you think!
Anything else?
Yup! It's a bunch of smaller things, really. We've added sounds to the new paintings from the last release, we've fixed up Relaxed Play a bit, we've updated modifier descriptions, we've changed fonts in certain places throughout the game, and more.
There's other stuff too, but it's all under the hood. We can now trigger sound events from our animation tools, we did a bit of concepting for another new arena, we did a bit of concepting for new guns, we worked on updating the win-screen for team play... There's more, and as always can be seen in the changelog below.
Charging up!
That's it! Have fun with this release, but most importantly, stay friendly!
- Ashley
You can say things to us in these places, amazing huh?! Twitter, Facebook or really spoil us and use the comments below.
Full Changelog
Bug Fixes:
Finger of God kills now spawn the correct armour gibs.
Team hats now appear on top of armour. Always.
Fixed Relaxed Play freeze bug that happens at the end of a game.
Code:
We now show the speed at the bottom of the screen in expo mode.
Added debug keys for character select. Hit 1, 2 and 3 to move characters onto rugs quickly.
Implemented new options screen.
Implemented Hardcore modifier.
Implemented Unlimited Ammo modifier.
Art & Animation:
Improved icons for Armour modifiers.
Removed shadow from Finger of God spawn animation.
Updated game fonts to include < and > glyphs.
New options screen!
Audio: <*> Integrated first FMOD sound events to be triggered from Spine keyframe markers (pictures in Timmy's house are now made of numerous sounds, meaning they stay in time with animations at all speeds).
<*> Experimented with applying game speed to manipulate reverb settings (nothing added now, but will be in future).
<*> Set-up keyframes in quickdraw animations - now awaiting new sounds to be designed and added
<*> Reorganised VCA routing in FMOD so that ground gibs (tables etc.) have a small amount of reverb added to them (room sounds will have reverb, character sounds will be dry by comparison - gives seperation and sense of immersion)
<*> Experimented with bullet-ambience (an event that creates a gentle hum depending how many bullets are in the map and is to control other sound groups volumes and possibly effects)
Release #18. ARMOUR!
Take off your hard hats, flat caps and snapbacks. It's time to don some ARMOUR! Yep, this release of Friendship Club introduces a brand new Armour Mode, and many other smaller (but just as cool) things.
How does armour work?
Playing with Armour on means players can be hit by two bullets before getting eliminated. However, it doesn't mean players have two hit points! Armour is not affected by the dash attack. In fact if two players dash into each other with armour on, they both lose their armour. It's more like having a *protective shield*.
Why is it so cool?
It might not sound like much, but it drastically changes the gameplay -- matches become longer, and the meta game gets ramped up significantly.
Players with armour try to stay out of melee combat as there's the potential there to lose their advantage. Play styles also become more reckless as players know they need to get multiple hits in order to pull off their awesome victories.
Essentially, Armour introduces more ways to totally humiliate your friends, and that's what this game is all about.
First pass of the armour. Not as cool, right?
What about those other cool things?
There's a lot in the full changelog below, but here are the best bits.
Bullet sounds are now affected by the game speed. Turbo Bullets also have new, more impactful sounds.
5 new interactive paintings in the Timmy's House arena!
Dash cone animation now plays
super smooth* regardless of game speed.
You might see progress slow down ever-so-slightly over the coming months -- Ashley our programmer is contracting 3 days a week to keep the project funding healthy. Steam sales haven't made us millionaires, and the nature of it is we have to make compromises to stay afloat. Thank you (in advance) for being so understanding!
Cheers!
- Tom
Do you like Friendship Club? Do you have nice (or even not so nice) things to say to us? You can do so on Twitter, Facebook or here in the comments. ;)
Full changelog:
Code:
Armour gibs!
Armour hit points / health system implemented.
Armour sounds implemented.
Added stats screen graphics to preproduction.
Disabled story screens.
Added broken gun gibs. (People thought you could pick up guns!)
Pressing the Start button while in options now returns players to the previous game state.
Left bumper now longer goes to Advanced Modifiers.
New font used on end-game drop-down overlay.
Art & Animation:
Armour pass 1.
Armour pass 2.
5 paintings animated for Timmy's House arena.
"Quickdraw" timer for The Wonky Wagon updated to include shards of wood.
New dash animation done in Spine.
New furniture to include in Timmy's House arena. TV, 2x armchair, desk lamp, 2x floor lamp, globe, others. (not yet implemented!)
Updated Finger Of God holes in the floor.
Armour "hit" effect added.
Piano and Bar in The Wonky Wagon recoloured.
New "floor lights" for Nana Rickett's in The Wonky Wagon.
Icons for Assassins and Armour modifiers.
Audio:
Sound effects for dash changed when players are wearing armour. These are unique to each character!
Sound effects for being hit by bullet while wearing armour. These are unique to each character!
Bullet sounds are now affected by the game speed.
Turbo Bullets also have new, more impactful sounds.
Added a compressor / limiter on the master output to prevent issues with levels and make it sound lush.
Misc:
Set up Git for the game project (finally)!
Set up Git and FTPloy for the website deployment.
Tom finally bought a standing mat for his standing desk.
