PogoChamp News

It's hard to believe that I've been writing these update posts for an entire year. It's amazing to see how far the game has come in that time, but also interesting to see what has stuck around. If you want to see how far things have come you can check out the full progress report history.


I was hoping to have this level ready in time for this update post, but there are still a few bugs to fix with the way that replays work. It's pretty close to being done, but I wouldn't want to release it in a partially broken state.

Making a level that's 2D was a pretty interesting experience. Internally everything is still fully 3D, but I needed to do things like prevent the character from moving or rotating into the Z axis. It was easy enough to prevent user input from tilting the character that way, but due to the way Unity collisions work, there was a small chance with each collision that the character would lean into the Z axis slightly, and those slight offsets would compound over time, eventually resulting in the character jumping out the back or front of the level in the 3rd dimension.

There was also a bunch of work to do to make sure that the level used the proper cameras, but now that I've done it all once, it should be relatively painless to make additional 2D levels if I think of another fun 2D idea.

• BUG FIX: Adjusted demolition geometry to be less prone to bad corner collisions.
  
• BUG FIX: Fixed issue the jump animation would not properly reset if you landed after failing to jump because you slid off of a surface.
  
• BUG FIX: Add border walls to Spin To Win so you can't fall out of the level anymore.
  
• BUG FIX: Adjusted walls in Target Practice to prevent you from jumping out of the level.
  

Hey everybody,

Hope you're doing well. I spent most of this week working on a bunch of end-game related content that you won't be able to see until I finish the rest of the levels. I'm excited for you to see it, but it won't be any time soon. In the last couple of days I also built some new levels to help people practice wall-jumps.


This level should provide players with a nice, safe space to practice wall jumps. It requires a lot of wall-jumps, so should help people get comfortable with the idea of jumping between walls.


This level is another wall-jump training level. This serves as a gentle(ish) introduction to some of the skills you'll need for later wall-jump based levels. The conveyors mean that you can focus primarily on just staying alive / maintaining height, and you don't need to worry about moving forward while jumping between the walls. Of course, people looking for high scores will have their work cut out for them, since this level is pretty long, and high speed wall-jumps are tricky!

• CONTENT: Add ~30 level entry points to the Level Select.
  
• BUG FIX: Exiting the options menu now properly reselect the "Options" button in the pause menu.
  
• BUG FIX: Fixed bug where the level select not having enough level entry points could result in a situation where you couldn't move. (Only relevant to dev builds really)
  
• CONTENT: Various updates to the Level Select geometry.
  
• CONTENT: Lots of stuff related to late game content that you won't be able to see until I finish the rest of the levels.
  
• BUG FIX: Prevent shift-tab from opening the pause menu even when you shouldn't be able to open the pause menu.
  
• BUG FIX - REGRESSION: I accidentally broke pause menus. Fixed.
  
• BUG FIX - REGRESSION: I accidentally broke the camera in level select. Fixed.
  
• UX: Survival Mode/Daily Challenge menus now close when you hit B/esc.
  
• CONTENT: Added new level to help train wall jumps. (Level #51: Demolition).
  
• CONTENT: Added another new level to help train wall jumps (Level #64: Hang On).
  
• BUG FIX: Change a bunch of colliders in new levels to be convex.
  
• BUG FIX: Fix a replays on Demolition.
  

Quick bug-fix patch before the weekly update.

* BUG FIX - Steam: Shift-tabbing could cause pause menu to appear in situations where the pause menu should not be openable (like in the Main Menu).
* UX: Pressing Esc / B in Survival/Daily Challenge menus now closes those menus.
* BUG FIX: hitting A and B simultaneously during victory animations could cause the level to restart, but the leaderboard would still be displayed.
* BUG FIX: Closing the options menu with B button caused the pause menu to lose selection focus.

This week brings a new level and some bug fixes.



After prototyping a bunch of new levels in the past few weeks, the idea of making a level "that's just really big" came up, and I thought it was a great idea. This level is pretty much just that. It's huge, the goal is almost 1 km from the start. If you haven't learned how to gain speed & momentum, this level shouid provide you with a nice, mostly safe place to practice.


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
The return of "Bug of the Week"! If you were skidding along a surface and slid into water, the skid effect wouldn't be disabled. This was a pretty easy bug to fix, but I thought it was dumb/funny and wanted to highlight it. The fix was just to add some code to the swim code to disable skid effects.

• USABILITY: Adjusted the camera damping so it's more resistant to looking weird when you jump directly at the camera.
  
• CONTENT: Add "Gotta Go Fast" level (level #47).
  
• BUG FIX: Fixed bug where you could infinitely skid in water.
  
• BUG FIX: Character no longer instantly resets position to default when you miss a jump by sliding off something.
  
• BUG FIX: Prevent issue that made it look like you returned directly from a level to the main menu if you were mashing "exit" after level completion.
  
• BUG FIX: Survival Mode leaderboard scores were calculating improperly, resulting in scores being ranked out of order. This change required resetting the Survival leaderboard, so sorry to the people who had posted scores!
  
• BUG FIX: Survival Mode leaderboard header wasn't properly updated when loading directly into Global view.
  
• BUG FIX: The goal zone activation in Slow Your Roll wasn't recorded in replays.
  
• BUG FIX: The wall in Gotta Go Fast is now recorded in replays.
  
• BUG FIX: Survival Mode Leaderboard could lose navigation focus if you changed between the friends and global mode while a row was selected.
  

So this week was actually about as productive as I expected. I was out all weekend visiting with family, so I didn't get a ton of time to work. I did manage to fix a few bugs and create a new level though! I hope you like it.


This new level is designed to help teach people that they can jump multiple times to gain additional height. It's relatively early level (#19), hope you like it!

• CONTENT: Added new level "Hurdles" (yeah there used to be a level with that name, that level was bad, and this is a different one).
  
• BUG: Fixed an issue where trying to set Steam Rich Presence while not connected to Steam could cause errors.
  
• BUG: Fix bug where Daily Challenge leaderboard would display infinite spinner if not connected to Steam.
  
• UI: Changed name of level "Shooter" to "Cannonball".
  
• BUG: Fixed bug where hitting "Reset Level" from the pause menu while watching a replay from the leaderboard would improperly load the level (and your character would instantly crash).
  
• BUG: Fixed a bug where you couldn't access the last level entry point in the Level Select menu.