Episode 7 is finally here and with it is our update that brings us out of Early Access! We're ending appropriately with the song that was featured in our original announcement trailer so many years ago: Long Live the New Fresh by the ever talented Danimal Cannon
I can honestly say there are times over the past several years where I didn't think we'd make it here. There were a lot of trials and setbacks and it may not be exactly the game I had envisioned when we launched our Kickstarter back in 2017 but it's a game I'm proud of.
Thank you once again to all of our Kickstarter backers, friends, family, and everyone who has helped with this game over the years. I can say with absolute certainty that this game would not exist without each and every one of you.
What's Next?
If there is demand for more Waveform content then I would love to return some day and flesh out more features, add more levels, and finish out my original vision for the story. So if you enjoyed Waveform Wipeout and would like to see more, please let us know!
As of right now, we are moving on to our next projects. You can always visit the Charcoal City Games website for information on our latest projects and releases. We hope to have an announcement ready early next year.
This has truly been a wild ride and thank you all for sticking it out with me!
~ Drew
v0.6 Story Episode 6 Update
Episode 6 is here!
Episode 6 brings the final update before v1.0 and leaving Early Access! But I don't want that fact to overshadow another amazing track from Halc. This time it's the wonderfully moody Zero-G.
That's all for today. See you on October 5th for V1.0!
~ Drew
v0.5 Story Episode 5 Update
Episode 5 Arrives!
Didn't we already get an episode this month?
That's right! But my obsessive nature wouldn't let me take a break. I have been toiling away at the last few levels and managed to get ahead of schedule. Very ahead of schedule. So much so that I am not only releasing episode 5 early, but I am accelerating my entire release schedule to 1 episode per week. That means that, if all goes according to plan, Waveform Wipeout will be leaving early access with update 1.0 on October 5th, 2022! Mark your calendars.
Wait, who are Da Pliars?
Ahhh, yes. My choice of song for this episode is very... eclectic, but it has a great personal meaning for me. That song, of course, being Save Me Now, by Da Pliars.
Da Pliars are practically unknown in 2022, but they actually broke the Billboard top 100 charts back in the 80s! Or was it the 90s? I don't know, I was very small at the time. My dad and uncle were both in Da Pliars, which is definitely part of my attachment to this song, though nowhere near the whole story.
Around this same time, my dad and uncle would get together with their cousins and some friends to go camping and white water rafting. Being huge music nerds (and music producers) every year they would record a new song, often a parody, about camping and white water rafting and bring it on the trip to show each other. Over the years these songs were compiled into an album we affectionately call "The Camping CD".
All throughout my childhood, adolescence, and still to this day, my dad plays The Camping CD in its entirety whenever we go camping and have large family gatherings. It has become such a large part of our culture as a family that at my cousin's wedding, completely unknown to the bride and groom, my entire family stood up as if to offer a toast, and instead sang the entirety of Save Me Now.
Dan, Maddy, and the entire Breimhurst / Nicolo clan, this one's for you guys.
~ Drew
v0.4 Story Episode 4 Update
Epsidoe 4 is here!
I'm a little amazed at how well I'm keeping to this whole "One episode a month" thing but here we are! This episode introduces my favorite character, Eugene! I think this is a great introduction, but we've really only scratched the surface on his character arc and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
This episode also features Hydrocity, another track from the wonderful Halc. Please go check out his other works, they're all terrific!
See you all in October with Episode 5!
~ Drew
V 0.3 Story Episode 3 Update
What's this? A regular update?!
I know, I'm surprised too! August is here and with it comes the second month in a row with another episode of the story mode, as promised.
This month's song is Astronaut, by the incredibly talented Stemage. If you like listening to people absolutely shred on the electric guitar, then look no further!
That just about covers it this time. See you guys in September for the release of Episode 4!
v0.2 Story Episode 2 Update
V 0.2 Release Notes
Hello Again!
I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me, but you're not that lucky! Believe it or not, I've been hard at work behind the scenes since the release of episode 1. I decided to frontload the work on the story cutscenes and episodes 3-7 are all roughly 95% done (some minor tweaks and voice acting are still needed). This means the majority of the work left to do is on the level design for the 5 remaining songs.
My current release schedule is to have 1 story episode released every month and launch out of early access with v1.0 December 2022! This has been a long time coming, but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! I can't guarantee I will be able to make this deadline (I know last update I gave an estimate of end of 2021...), but I can promise that I will continue to work hard on this behind the scenes. My full time job still keeps me very busy but I'm back to just working one job now (for the most part). I believe that I have frontloaded enough of the work already that I will be able to keep to this schedule.
Content Updates
Episode 2 of story mode is here, featuring Avoid Direct Sunlight by the amazing Halc
Bug Fixes
I made some changes to the way the button preview icons on obstacles are loaded during gameplay. As a result, performance has been improved across the board. This does also result in it taking a few seconds for them to update if you switch control schemes mid level, but I felt this trade off was worth the performance increase.
That's all for now! Thanks again for sticking with me and I hope to see you all again in August with the release of Episode 3
~ Drew
v0.13 Patch Notes
Hello everyone! I hope this summer finds you well. We're back with a minor patch before the next big story update. There is one notable thing missing still: the custom level editor.
Level Editor Update
The level editor is still only an internal tool we're using to make the story levels for now and I'm going to have to retract my statement that it will be releasing before the story mode continues. After putting in some time on making it a public facing feature, I realized the depth of what still needs to be done. It is not a short or simple task, and I don't want to hold the story mode hostage while I work on it. I had originally thought I could get it done in a week or two, but that was incredibly optimistic. I don't think it makes sense to prioritize a feature for user generated content over having more content people can jump into and play immediately. It was a mistake to promise it before taking a deep dive into the state of the code, and for that I apologize. It is still in the works and I plan on finishing it, but it's going on the back burner until after story mode is complete.
Leaderboards!
Leaderboards are now fully implemented into the game! Each story level will have its own set of leaderboards, with each song being further broken up by difficulty.
Minor Features and Bugfixes
The D-Pad on controllers can now be used in addition to the face buttons for those extra tricky sections.
Cutscenes are automatically skipped when retrying or restarting a story level
Confirmation popup comes up asking if the player would like to keep their settings when changing display settings.
Tutorial has been condensed and revamped
The game will now pause when the Steam overlay comes up
A visual indicator that your tricks are getting stale now comes up
Added some visual polish to the desert ruins background
Adjusted balance for story mode level 1 on easy difficulty
That's all for v0.13. I hope to see you all again real soon for v0.2 when Episode 2 launches!
~ Drew
v0.12 Release: The Update With All The Things
V 0.12 Release Notes.
It's been a while!
Hello everyone! We're still here! Surprising, I know. I'll go into more detail later in this post, but the tl;dr is:
- My art team went on to bigger and better things (no hard feelings, and I'm super excited for them!). I've adapted the art style of the story cutscenes to 3D, a style that I can execute on myself. - Google has shut down our YouTube playback feature. - We built a custom level editor to replace YouTube playback.
Here's a list of all the major updates
The first episode of story mode is now available! It features the first of seven planned episodes of the story mode. It also features pre-designed levels for each difficulty instead of procedural generation.
YouTube playback functionality has been removed from the game. You can still play procedurally generated levels of local .wav and .mp3 files.
Twitch integration has been removed from the game. It was heavily tied into the YouTube playback feature. The Unity plugin we were using has also been deprecated. We are investigating ways to bring this feature back in future versions but felt it best to remove it for now.
Tutorials and first time user experience have been overhauled.
Player can now remap inputs (button tooltips can also be manually changed between supported layouts).
A general round of visual polish has been applied to the game.
A New Art Style, You Say?
Yup! Meet the new Lila!
We will be using this style for the rest of the story cutscenes, but we will not be changing any of the in-game pixel art. The cutscenes take advantage of rendering techniques we can't replicate in game.
So What Happened?
In short: A lot happened.
That's all for this update, I hope you look forward to v0.13!
Okay, in all seriousness, shortly after our last Steam update, we noticed that our limit for calls to the YouTube API was much lower than we had anticipated. I submitted a request to Google to get our limit for search queries increased. A few months later, they finally responded to my request, but instead of raising our limit, they revoked our API access. They felt that our integration of the YouTube API into our game was a breach of their terms of service. I reviewed the article they referenced and disagreed with their decision, but ultimately my attempts to appeal their decision went nowhere.
At this point we had no choice but to just remove the feature entirely. We decided to create a level editor that we could use internally to create custom levels for the story mode, and also give the players a way of engaging and expanding their music options. Unfortunately it was also around this time that our artists got full time job offers that were too good to pass up. I couldn't afford to pay them what they were worth so we parted ways on good terms. The bank account started dwindling and I had to figure out how to create the story mode that the game now hinged on without an art department or money to hire a new artist, so I did the only logical thing: I watched a ton of YouTube videos!
I'm rubbish at 2D art, but believe it or not, I went to school for 3D modeling and animation. I figured I would shake the dust off my old modeling skills and go from there. I hit the books but I haven't done any modeling in over 10 years so I had a lot to catch up on. During this time I also reworked the original story I had planned into something more manageable with a 1-person team.
Side note, for anyone looking to get into 3D modeling for free with Blender, definitely check out Blender Guru's Beginner Tutorial Series. It's a fantastic free resource and a great way to get introduced to Blender and 3D modelling in general. From there I moved on to the Stylized Character Workflow on Blender Cloud by Julien Kaspar. Blender Cloud isn't free, but it's well worth the subscription for the fantastic courses they have.
Anyways, between only being able to work on Waveform in my free time and having a lot of ground to cover, it took me well over a year to get the final render of Lila you see above. I apologize for the lack of communication during that time. I had wanted to wait until I had good news to share before sharing the bad news, but it ended up taking way longer than I was hoping to get to the good news part. But now we're here! My goal is to have all seven episodes of the story mode completed by the end of 2021.
What's Next?
I am working on the remaining six story episodes, but I will be putting an update out before episode 2. The next update will give you guys, the players, access to our level editor. Right now we're still working out some kinks and making it more user friendly, so it's strictly an internal tool we're using to construct the story levels. I wanted to get this episode 1 update out ASAP so I decided to drop the level editor feature in a future update. As I'm still working on this in my free time, I can't give a solid estimate on when that update will drop, just that it's coming Soon TM.
This update has gone on long enough, but I thought you all deserved an explanation on where I've been for almost 2 years. Thank you all so much for your support and patience with me as I work on actually releasing Waveform Wipeout and leaving Early Access!
~ Drew
V0.1 Early Access Launch!
We finally did it!
We've made it to our first major milestone: Early Access Release! I really cannot thank all of our backers and beta testers enough for supporting us and sticking with us all this time. I know it's taken a lot longer than we anticipated (can you believe it's been almost 2 years?) but we're making progress every day! Now you might be asking "What is Early Access? What does this mean for the future of Waveform Wipeout?"
The Early Access release version features a fully functional and polished Arcade Mode (you can play any song on YouTube or locally on your hard drive). We have also included the licensed music soundtrack under Story Mode, though the actual story mode will be released at a later date. We didn't want to keep you from being able to jump in and play the game or check out the awesome music we licensed, though, so you can play all of the story mode songs whenever you want until we release Story Mode in version 1.0 (at which point they will be locked behind story mode progress). All of the backer messages we received are in game under the "Extras" menu.
Here's a quick look at the roadmap for Waveform Wipeout development. I'm not going to make the mistake of giving release estimates this time, but I will make sure to post updates and let everyone know when we are approaching each milestone:
V0.11
- All screens will work like the Arcade screen works now (clicking a button on the title screen takes you to a location with an NPC. These NPCs will be the remainder of the NPC kickstarter rewards).
- The Cache / customization feature will be implemented. Here you will be able to select which character you want to play as (all playable character Kickstarter rewards will be completed) and customize your character (choose a board, add effects to your character while they're surfing or doing tricks, etc. Who knows, maybe we'll even add hats?).
- Leaderboards unlocked
V0.2
- Couch co-op multiplayer! 'Nuff said, right?
V0.3
- first story chapter update. From here we will be releasing a new version update as each chapter is completed. Think of it like an episodic release, only you don't have to pay for each episode. Story mode chapters will feature unique gameplay mechanics and hand made levels not present in Arcade Mode.
V1.0
- Leaving Early Access for full release! Story mode will be complete along with all other features and polish.
Thank you all again so much for everything you've done. Before we go, I want to leave you with this rad new release trailer we put together.
https://youtu.be/nNKrc_UbbTg
V 0.09 Patch Notes (Twitch Integration, Options, and Extras)
Hello again all you wonderful people! We have just pushed another build live to Waveform Wipeout and I wanted to post and update to let you know how things are going. We got unexpectedly bogged down with contract work for several months and I apologize for the lack of updates. We're working hard to get the early access release ready as soon as we can. With today's update we have one of our biggest outstanding features completed: Twitch integration! Twitch streamers will have the option to hook the game up to their chatroom to listen for commands from viewers. They will be able to queue songs in the streamer's playlist directly from chat. Streamers can change permissions on song requests to keep their chat safe and friendly. We're really excited about this feature and we hope it lets people all over the world connect over the music they love.
Thank you all again so much for supporting us and Waveform Wipeout. We would never have made it this far without you!
Below is the changelog for V0.09
Major Features:
Twitch Integration
In game Options menu
change resolution and sound settings
Extras menu WIP
Minor Features / Bugfixes:
Improved BPM algorithm / supplemented with Spotify lookup
improved menu support for controllers
Improved calculations for star point threshold based on song that was played
Can add a song just played to a playlist if it's not already on one
Game now supports both 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratios
Polished file selector
Can now add the same song multiple times to a single playlist
Separated tutorial into two parts (basic and advanced mechanics).
Game will not ask the player if they want to play the tutorial after they have either played the tutorial or declined it.
Basic and advanced tutorials can be played at any time from the extras menu.
