The last couple months we have spent a massive amount of time on the visuals of Jumping Jax.
This patch is the first taste of what we have been working on. Much of the levels, lighting, and textures may have issues as we are in the process of finalizing everything. However, feedback from the Discord made us feel confident this was the right decision.
Creating a custom server to hold leaderboard data. Steam has been unresponsive in our support requests, so we will be moving to our own leaderboard system.
Implementing a Kinematic Character Controller to replace the current one. This will allow us to do cool things like allowing the player to jump on moving objects, and fix random edge cases.
So, bear with us as we finalize all of these levels. Now, for the detailed list of changes!
Features added:
Hop 1,2,3 and 5 updated MASSIVELY. Hop 4 update coming soon!
Upgraded the project to a newer version of Unity, and a new rendering pipeline. We are hoping this will lead towards a more beautiful game, and better performance.
The timer will not start until the player moves (instead of starting when the player leaves a checkpoint). This is so that you can take a breather after a hard level, and not have to be frame perfect.
Updated lots of textures and lighting for an overall better experience
A new, gorgeous skybox!
Bugs fixed:
Portal collisions are temporarily “fixed”. We know it’s still not 100%.
Fixed an issue that broke crouch-jumping
Jumping Jax 1.0.6
This month we focused on level design and integrating our art direction with the level pipeline. So, the updates to the code were quite minimal this time around.
We did want to apologize, however. Last month we were informed of a bug that prevents the leaderboards from functioning properly. We have been in contact with Steam trying to get this fixed, however their responses have been slowed, and the issue has been shown to be on their side. Sadly, our hands are tied. So, we can't recommend trying to top the leaderboards right now, as your score may very likely get reset hours later due to a bug in the Steam Leaderboards.
Changes:
Ported Hop 2 to our modular pipeline. Reworked several parts of the level. This isn't quite done yet but it's much closer to the final layout!
FINALLY, we added mouse scroll for jumping.
Fixed a bug with the idle portal sounds.
The speed in the game UI now shows the speed you're moving instead of the speed you WANT to move. So if you walk into a wall it shows your effective speed (0m/s) instead of the speed you want to go (6m/s).
Fixed a bug where falling off of something doesn't reset gravity. This intentionally broke crouch-jumping for now, due to a collider resizing issue in Unity. We will be re-working the player controller, AGAIN to a fully custom physics system now that we have the proper experience to handle that workload.
Reworked the starting checkpoint. Your time doesn't start until you leave the starting area. The checkpoint has a new model and more accurate hitbox.
Changes in progress that aren't going to be in this release:
The animation for the main player is underway, and the corgi modeling has started! Cyborgi incoming!
Hop 3 has been reworked to focus on teaching the player air strafing.
Hop 4 has been reworked to give the player practice at chaining hops together.
Hop 5 has been reworked to give the player a tutorial for putting all of what you've learned together
The collectible system will receive a massive rework and rewards will be added in the coming months!
Jumping Jax March community Update
Hello everyone!
I am sure some of you noticed there was not a monthly update in March. We wanted to take the time to explain why, and what we are working on!
Over the last month our team has grown massively. A lot of our time has gone into onboarding new team members. We have increased our bandwidth for modeling, textures, and dev work. So, while we are a bit slow right now, in the coming months we will be much faster than before!
We’ve taken a good hard look at the way our tutorials and levels have been structured, and we’ve completely redone all of the levels after Hop 2 and scrapped most of them. Our goal is to really hone in on:
what it takes to teach new players to bunny hop
what we can do to make the game more enjoyable for the speed running community
how the visual appeal can be consistent and add value to the gameplay
So, with that being said, you will be seeing massive level reworks coming out alongside code updates to be more speed runner friendly.
We have been taking feedback very seriously, so if you have any to provide please join the Community Discord.
Features we are planning to implement/improve in the next couple of patches:
The leaderboard system has some bugs, we have been working with Valve to diagnose what is going wrong. We are aware how game-breaking these are and they are TOP priority right now. It is looking very likely we will have to create and host our own custom server to handle leaderboards, which will be a longer effort sadly.
Finalizing the collectible system and adding in rewards for them
Portals need some love. They have several bugs and quality of life fixes to make them more enjoyable to use
The level editor has been low on our priority list, but it will see some UI reworks and extra features after the rest of the core features are done
If you want to see what dev work is slated to be done, you can see our roadmap here: https://github.com/CaosCreations/JumpingJax/projects/1
