Trombone Champ News

Hi everyone! We pushed a very tiny update today, which does nothing except hide the "Save (Binary)" button in the Tootmaker level editor. This was intended to be hidden. We literally have a checkbox called "enable_developer_features" and left it checked. Whoops! This is the karmic punishment we deserve for making last-minute updates right before setting this version live.

It's not reflected in this hotfix, but we've already have made a LOT of improvements to the level editor since this last version went live... we may push a beta soon that adds a lot of level editor features, so keep your eyes open!

(The next "real" version will add more than level editor features, so keep your eyes open for that too.)

Anyways, apologies for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience... and now, to continue working on the trombone game...

Forever in your service,


Holy Wow Studios

Hi everyone! Trombone Champ has been updated to 1.23E!

⚠️ As usual, this update may require updating some mods! In the meantime, if you need to, you can play the previous version of the game by right-clicking the game in Steam, choosing Properties, clicking the Betas tab, and choosing last_version in the dropdown. But if you do this, please switch back to the newest version whenever you can!

Apologies for the long wait: in addition to spending a *lot* of time on the "Tootmaker," the built-in level editor (more on that below), we've also been helping the folks at Flat2VR Studios with Trombone Champ: Unflattened, the VR port of Trombone Champ that launches later this year. Flat2VR is doing the vast majority of work, but we're helping with lots of art, assets, music, writing, etc.

Anyways, this update adds two tricky new songs: "The Can-Can" and "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2!" These are both pretty fast and difficult! Personally, "Hungarian Rhapsody" is now one of our favorites, with lots of very tricky rhythms and mode changes.

[hr][/hr]https://youtu.be/9o-3brNQOns https://youtu.be/47qsxSRoEJs
[hr][/hr]

The biggest update here is something slightly hidden: a preview of the work-in-progress Tootmaker level editor! You can find it hidden in the Settings menu (you shouldn't have to look very hard to find it).

The main reason this update took a while is because we worked really hard to make this tool as polished and nice as possible... it takes a long time to put together tools like this!

We think the Tootmaker is a great way to introduce new users to the world of custom content creation. If even one person tries this out on a whim, and has their first experience creating their own content for games, it will all be worth it to us. I certainly have a lot of fond childhood memories hacking together DOOM levels, building maps for Worms Armageddon, etc... the first time you see your own stuff working in a "real" game is a magical experience.

However, if you're a power user or someone with a lot of experience making custom tracks for rhythm games, you will probably be better-served by one of the community-made level editors out there, since those have been out for a while and have tons of features that this one is probably missing.

The next update will hopefully make the experience much more full-featured:

• Updates to the Track Select screen so you can browse and play levels you've created without needing to launch them from the Tootmaker itself.
  
• Adding a proper button for the Tootmaker from the main menu.
  
• Localizing the text (currently it's only in English).
  
• Trying to integrate Steam Workshop so that Tootmaker levels can be freely uploaded and downloaded.
  
• Of course, fixing bugs & adding new features.
  

If you find any bugs with the Tootmaker, or have any suggestions, please leave a comment in the
Tootmaker Steam Discussion thread.

Hope to share more soon... as always, thank you for playing the game and for your continued patience!

Forever in your service,

Holy Wow Studios

Trombone Champ, 2022's funniest PC gaming phenomenon, is getting a snazzy VR version that aims to fully immerse you in fudging your way through Ode to Joy with the world's most inherently comical musical instrument...
Read more.

Hi everyone! Trombone Champ has been updated to 1.22D! This update adds three new songs, each of which we're very excited about: "Toccata and Fugue," "The Four Seasons (Summer)," and a "Trombone Champ Medley" that unlocks after beating the game. There are also some other small bugfixes and tweaks "under the hood."

⚠️ As usual, this update may require updating some mods! In the meantime, if you need to, you can play the previous version of the game by right-clicking the game in Steam, choosing Properties, clicking the Betas tab, and choosing last_version in the dropdown. But if you do this, please switch back to the newest version whenever you can!

https://youtu.be/PGFfuH1OCV8

https://youtu.be/yJR650Wk4Bo

On the PC side, this update isn't that huge - we spent a lot of this time researching input stuff for the Nintendo Switch™ version of the game, which should also receive an update today. That update has the potential to make Joy-Con™ performance better, and we're really excited about it!

Meanwhile, we're continuing to plug away at stuff that will eventually allow us to enable Steam Workshop. We've gone quite a bit of work on something very fun, which we hope to be able to share soon... we're at that slightly frustrating point where we have lots of cool stuff we'd love to show, but it's not quite ready to show yet. Trust us when we say we're working on it!

[h2]A Note for Mac Users[/h2]
Thanks to a user on the discussion boards, we're now aware that the game's performance on Mac is not great on Sonoma. Previously, our primary Mac was a year behind on OS updates. We upgraded that machine to Sonoma and noticed an immediate performance hit. Needless to say, this is super annoying... a game dev's worst nightmare is an OS upgrade that breaks their game. However, we're looking into various ways to fix it!

Ultimately, the solution will probably be to release a Mac version built with a newer version of Unity. This will most likely address the performance issue, although it will probably cause other issues in terms of compatibility: specifically, any user-made content that uses Assetbundles will not work in builds that use newer versions of Unity. In the meantime, apologies, and thank you for your patience!

(On the bright side, we've added two resolutions to the Mac version that may fit Mac laptop screens better.)

Hope to share more soon... as always, thank you for playing the game and for your continued patience!

Forever in your service,
Holy Wow Studios

Wow! Trombone Champ has been updated to 1.21D! This isn't a huge update, and mostly adds two songs: "Korobeiniki" and "Hello! Ma Baby!" We really love both of these tracks... especially "Korobeiniki," which is probably the most fun tempo-changing track we've made so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqqaxEl6_Y8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if4qryyqKCw

⚠️ As usual, this update may require updating some mods! In the meantime, if you need to, you can play the previous version of the game (1.19) by right-clicking the game in Steam, choosing Properties, clicking the Betas tab, and choosing last_version in the dropdown.

Temporarily, this branch is going two versions back instead of one, since there's such a technical jump from 1.19 to 1.20 (anyone using 1.19 for any reason will probably have their stuff broken by 1.20, which introduced localization and really shuffles around the game files).

But please, we beg of you - switch back to the newest version whenever you can!

This is a fairly small and simple update, but we're also working on bigger stuff! We mainly wanted to get some new content out quickly, because the Nintendo Switch version of the game hasn't received a content update in a very long time. This is because we were swamped with PC localization work for a solid month!

Anyways, here's everything that's new in this update:

• New tracks: "Korobeiniki" and "Hello! Ma Baby!"
  
• Replaced "The Blue Danube Waltz" with a much, much better-sounding version, plus made the background animations nicer. People complained about this track a while ago, and we finally realized how bad it was. Apologies!
  
• New setting: "Streamer Mode," in the Audio section, which completely hides tracks from the base game that may possibly get flagged during streams. With this checked, you should be able to play the base game to your heart's content without worrying about any songs getting flagged.
  
• Small updates and fixes to localized copy.
  
• Many optimizations to assets in the Baboon screen, which should load slightly faster now - with more to come!
  

We have a variety of bigger updates (new features) & smaller updates (new songs, new content) coming down the pipeline... Don't worry, we hear you in the comments! We know what we should be working on!

Thank you for your patience, and happy tooting!

-Holy Wow Studios