Trombone Champ News

Version 1.095 of Trombone Champ is now live! This one does a bunch of stuff...

[h2]Tech:[/h2]
Trombone Champ is now compiled using Unity 2019.4.40f. This is the reason this update is a larger download than usual (most updates are around 50mb, but this one is ~300mb). We will likely use 2019.4.40f for the rest of the game's lifespan.

We've tested 2019.4.40f with a bunch of user-created content and mods, and it doesn't seem to cause any issues that we could find!

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]

• On MacOS, the Wireframe character + Trombone should now display correctly. Turns out the "Metal" graphics API doesn't support the geometry shaders that were used by the Wireframe skin. We've replaced the shader with a simple texture that works cross-platform, uses less system resources, and also looks a little better!
  
• Adjusted the secret rainbow particle effect on Hot Dog card. It should no longer "flash" when first displayed.
  

[h2]Updates & Improvements:[/h2]

• Added new song: "Old MacDonald!"
  
• Added the option to turn off the rainbow effect you unlock at a certain point in the storyline. You can find it in the character select screen, once you reach that point.
  
• You can now press any letter key to search for songs in the Track Select screen (e.g., press "T" to go through all songs that begin with "T"). At the moment this searches the long name and short name of each track, because some tracks have significantly different short and long names. For example, "Also Sprach Zarathustra" starts with an A, but it appears in the sidebar as "Zarathustra," which starts with a Z. So, it will turn up if you press A or Z. Please note that this may require updating mods that accomplish the same thing.
  
• Added graphical setting for antialiasing. This makes the trombone slide look a lot smoother during gameplay. Please note that this setting doesn't affect any 2d content, such as menus.
  

[h2]External Parameters[/h2]

We've added an external parameters file, which appears in the same folder as your saves and settings. This contains a handful of flags that can adjust the game. Basically, these are extra settings that we didn't want to have easily accessible in the Settings menu.

We originally implemented these as launch parameters (e.g., "trombonechamp.exe -classroommode"), but launch parameters are a bit tricky on MacOS. For the moment, an external file was the easiest cross-platform solution.

To find this file, go to the folder with your saves. On Windows, you can paste this into the Start menu and press enter:

%APPDATA%\..\LocalLow\Holy Wow\TromboneChamp

On Macs, the folder is hidden by default. Select Go > Go To Folder and try the following:

~/Library/Application Support/com.holywowstudios.trombonechamp

In that folder, look for the parameters json file and open it with any plain text editor. At the moment, all you can do is toggle an option to skip the title screen and toggle a few options to launch the game in "classroom mode." You can change these by changing "false" to "true" and saving the file. We will almost definitely add more parameters over time!


[h2]Classroom Mode Details[/h2]

By editing the external parameters file, you can open Trombone Champ in "Classroom Mode." This limits the game's content so that the game could theoretically be left out in a classroom setting. Basically, it makes the game slightly more kid-friendly by adjusting a few things and locking a bunch of content.

PLEASE NOTE: Classroom Mode has NOT been formally evaluated as an educational tool, and Trombone Champ has not been formally classified as a children's product. Use this setting at your own risk!

That being said, here's everything Classroom Mode does...

• "Choose Yer Tromboner" text changes to "Choose Your Character."
  
• Cosmetic options are fixed to specific set: the standard human characters, the first 6 trombone colors, and the first three sound sets. No fart sounds, baboon characters, etc.
  
• The Baboon / Tootvessel screens are locked.
  
• In the cards screen, the "turd" and "build" buttons are hidden, as is the "turd" counter. No mention of "turds" anywhere! You can still purchase sacks of cards and view the cards, since some of the cards do contain historical figures. However, the cards still contain jokes, so if you're extremely concerned about exposing an audience to weird jokes, you can lock the card screen entirely by setting the "lockcardscreen" parameter in the external settings file to true.
  
• In the card screen, the NPC demon character never appears.
  
• The spooky title screen is always skipped.
  
• If you create a new save, the opening cinematic is skipped.
  
• If you create a new save, all songs are unlocked - you're not forced to start with "Warm-Up."
  
• Leaderboard buttons are hidden.
  
• The shortcuts to the Card Screen and Tootvessel Screen are hidden in the Points screen.
  

We have so much more coming soon... Thank you for your continued patience!

-Dan of Holy Wow

Version 1.093 of Trombone Champ is now live! This update adds a new track and fixes a surprising amount of embarrassing jank that's been in the Card Collection screen for a while.

• Added new song: "Gymnopedie No.1!"
  
• Added a screen that should appear in place of a blank black screen if the game fails to load correctly.
  
• The mouse cursor is now hidden during gameplay (except for Free Improvisation mode). It reappears when hitting ESC, so you can click the Back or Retry buttons.
  
• "Hot Dog" card now displays a special effect when reaching a progression point, so users can see that something has changed. (Very excited about this change - should make the storyline progression feel a lot better.)
  
• The Card Friend's legs and tail now match the rest of his body. Until now, his legs and tail were using a different version of the artwork than the rest of his body!
  
• Cards should now display at the correct size at all times. Previously, "turding" a card would make all cards appear smaller until the Card Collection scene was reloaded.
  
• Chest summoning animation slightly improved.
  
• Treasure chest materials + lighting slightly adjusted.
  
• Improved holographic effect and lighting on cards.
  
• Breath waves in gameplay now animate correctly at all framerates (whoops).
  
• "Warm Up" and "Old Gray Mare" tracks ends less abruptly after the final note.
  
• "Trombone Champ" text in the pre-homescreen title screen should appear less pixelated.
  
• Included Cinemachine + Text Mesh Pro packages, for use in custom tracks.
  

We'd like to update the game more often, but a few things held us up this time: preparing for the Mac release, getting used to the build workflow for Mac, and other project management stuff we're working on behind-the-scenes, including attempting to upgrade Unity without breaking the base game. We're keeping very busy!

You may have noticed that we're rapidly approaching v1.1 - there's a large update we'd like to push live for that one. We also have more songs in the works that we're very excited about. Hope to share more soon!

-Dan of Holy Wow

Hi everyone! Excited to announce that Trombone Champ is now live for Mac users on Steam! Apologies for the wait... we expected to have this done sooner, but it was more steps than expected.

We've tested this on a handful of Mac machines and the performance is surprisingly good! It runs smoothly on our 2015 Macbook Pro, and it runs extremely smoothly on our brand new MacBook Pro. In fact, it runs better on our new Macbook Pro than it does on our primary development PC...

Some things to note about the Mac version:

• If you're buying this because you want to play custom tracks, please hold off! The mods that load custom tracks are currently only available on PC.
  
• We'll try our best to keep this updated to match the PC version, but some PC updates might take a day or two to propagate over to Mac. Updating the Mac build takes a number of extra steps.
  
• There seems to be a very minor bug where clicking near the very top or very bottom of the screen will cause the cursor to change from a musical note to the standard system cursor. This doesn't really affect gameplay at all, but we'd like to figure it out.
  

Thank you for your patience! We hope the wait was worth it - the PC version was missing a ton of fundamental features at launch, and is in much better shape now. Mac users will start with a much smoother version of the game on day one.

More updates coming soon!

Dan of Holy Wow

v1.091 of Trombone Champ is now live! This one doesn't do a lot, mainly adds a new song and implements some minor improvements to the Steam Leaderboards

• Added new song: "Funiculi, Funicula!"
  
• Added some anti-cheat functionality to Leaderboards. The game should now block scores that are too high from being posted.
  
• Adjusted language in Leaderboards Help page for clarity.
  
• Various optimizations in gameplay scene.
  

As you can see, we're rapidly approaching v1.1... we're hoping that will be a big one! In the meantime, we have lots of stuff going on behind the scenes. We hope to be able to make big announcements soon!

Thank you for your continued patience!

-Dan of Holy Wow

Version 1.09 is live! Mostly, this adds Steam Leaderboard support.

Please note that the Steam Leaderboards will probably be updated a few times in the near future. We've been testing them out with a small group of users, but it's difficult to predict what these will look like after they've been rolled out to the public.

One important thing to note with leaderboards: your scores aren't uploaded until you look at the leaderboards! The leaderboards have upload limits, and if we tried to upload every score for every track at once, we'd bump against that limit immediately.

Here's a fuller list of updates from this patch:

• Added Steam Leaderboards to the Level Select screen and Score screen!
  
• When getting a new high score, "New High Score" text appears below your score in the Score screen.
  
• Improved some button shapes in the Score screen to prevent accidental "Retry" clicks.
  
• Added an option for 120fps target framerate.
  
• Once again attempted to fix a bug that could cause extremely short notes in custom tracks to yield enormously negative scores.
  

More updates coming soon! Thank you for your patience!

-Dan of Holy Wow Studios