PogoChamp News

I spent this week working through some of my backlog, adding various sound effects, fixing bugs, and working on some new stuff like cutscenes and new options. Progress toward 1.0 is going well, though I do need to think of one more achievement to add. Let me know in the comments if you have any ideas!


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
If you're already a Pogo Champ, you may have seen the placeholder cutscene for obtaining all the stars in the game. It was a black screen with white text that said pretty much "A cutscene would go here! What should it be? I don't know!" Well in the lead up to 1.0 it was finally time to make a real cutscene, so here it is! Hope you like it.

• ACHIEVEMENT: Added "High Score" achievement. "Score 3x as many points as you need in a level with a scoreboard."
  
• UX: Adjust achievement menu size.
  
• BUG FIX: Anonymized leaderboard names didn't carry over in replays.
  
• UX: Toggling UI visibility now hides names in leaderboard replays.
  
• BUG FIX: Exclude engines from occlusion culling in The Beginning so the animation plays properly.
  
• BUG FIX: Ball power up in The Beginning now only triggers once.
  
• UX: Allow you to skip credits by holding start or escape.
  
• BUG FIX: Fix glass shatter SFX.
  
• BUG FIX: Hydroplane-ing uses ring style power ups now.
  
• SFX: Add sound effect to gate opening.
  
• SFX & VFX: Add visual and sound effect when bouncing on bounce pads.
  
• SFX: Add sound effect to flames in This Is Some Bull.
  
• SFX: Add sound effect to breakable platforms.
  
• UX: Add option to disable in-game achievement notifications.
  
• BUG FIX: Om Nom achievement now works properly with ragdolls (should be more reliable to unlock).
  
• CONTENT: Added a real cinematic for obtaining all stars.
  

I spent a few days this week working on adding support for LiveSplit auto splitters, and making an auto splitter for the game. It's now available in the LiveSplit client! Simply select PogoChamp from the game menu and pick your run type!



The auto splitter has a few different modes you can use depending on the run you're doing and your preferences for number of splits:



I've also worked on updating PogoChamp's speedrun.com page to include new speedrun types (Any %, All Levels Complete, All Stars, All Rainbow Gems), and some premade splits files. And yes, I know that a perfect "All Rainbow Gems" run would also count for "All Levels Complete" and "All Stars", but until someone does it, those other categories are still relevant.

I also made a few LiveSplit split files that you can use to get set up. They're available here: https://www.speedrun.com/pogochamp/resources

For anyone interested in making your own PogoChamp auto splitter, the code is public: https://github.com/JakeRabinowitz/PogoChampAutosplitter , and if you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments or pop into the PogoChamp discord.



After going through the process myself, I decided to make a guide for other Unity developers on how to add auto split support to Unity games. You can check it out here: https://jakerabinowitz.hashnode.dev/adding-livesplit-auto-split-support-to-your-unity-game

It includes an explanation of LiveSplit & auto splitters, and example source code from PogoChamp.

• BUG FIX: Fast Travel achievement no longer unlocks automatically.
  
• SPEEDRUN: Export various game state variables so that auto splitters can use them.
  
• BUG FIX: Time spent in level select is now added to the total playtime.
  
• BUG FIX: Changing profiles while not connected to Steam was throwing an error.
  
• UX: Add special logic for camera recentering when you have a jetpack in zero gravity. Now uses a combination of your angle and velocity instead of just velocity.
  
• UX: Add "Reset Camera" help text when the Y axis of your camera is not in the normal range.
  
• BUG FIX: Some arrows in the options menu were the wrong color.
  
• VISUALS: Some minor lighting improvements in various levels.
  
• BUG FIX: Finally add colliders to the doors in The End.
  
• CONTENT: Add 2 more gates to the level select, at level 90 (200 stars) and 95 (210 stars).
  
• BUG FIX: Fix bug where reset camera hint displayed in 2D levels.
  
• UX: Add rotation to the character model in level select.
  
• BUG FIX: Fix issue with the floor geometry in "The End" which could cause some bad bounces.
  
• BUG FIX: Fix issue where auto split levelIndex variable wasn't properly set for The End when entered from a cutscene.
  

Today marks a huge milestone for PogoChamp development. With this release, all of the planned levels are now playable! It has been almost 1 year (362 days) since the Early Access launch, and it feels amazing to call the game "content complete" at this point. (Until I think of something else "really cool" that I can't help but add.)

This marks the end of any planned new levels, but I'm not done working on PogoChamp. There are still a few features I plan to add, and lots of places that need more polish & attention.


I'd rather not spoil anything about the end-game content, so I won't be including a level teaser in this post, but I hope those of you who make your way through to the end will enjoy what's in store.


Over the last couple weeks, I started brainstorming ways to play PogoChamp competitively against your friends. I was focusing on ways to play that didn't involve any new features to be added to the game, and I came up with something I think is pretty fun. WaltzingDucks (the current #1 player on the leaderboards) and I played this a few times and had a blast.

[h2]C.H.A.M.P.[/h2]
This is a variant of the Basketball game HORSE, for PogoChamp.

This mode is for 2 players, but could probably be modified to support more.

The game is first to 5 points. Players take turns competing in individual levels, alternating “Attack” and “Defense”.

[h3]Steps[/h3]

1. Attacking player picks a level that hasn’t been chosen yet.
   
2. Attacking player has 5 attempts to complete the level.
   1. If they beat the level, that becomes the challenge time*, and move on to step 3.
      
   2. If they don’t beat the level, the next player becomes the attacker, and you repeat step 2.
3. Defending player now has 5 attempts to beat the challenge time on that level.
   1. If they don’t beat the time in their 5 attempts, the attacker gains a point.
4. The Defending player becomes the new Attacker, go to step 1.

* If the Attacker completes a level but still has attempts remaining, they can try the level again, but only the final attempt counts as the challenge time.

[h3]Setup[/h3]
To see what the other person is doing, you’ll both need to be screensharing. You can do this by going into a Discord voice channel and both picking “Stream” (doing it in a direct call will replace the other person’s stream). Feel free to use the #stream-1, #stream-2, etc channels in the PogoChamp Discord for this. I can also create additional channels that only allow 2 people if you want to play privately..

This works best with multiple monitors, but should be fine if you only have 1, you’ll just need to swap back and forth if you want to watch the other person’s attempts.

When you set a challenge time, just leave your game on the replay, so the other person can watch it & compare / plan their route. This will also prevent the need to remember what the challenge time was exactly, because the replay shows the time.

[h3]Variations & Optional Rules[/h3]

• You can change the number of attempts from 5 to any other number you want. WaltzingDucks and I found that 3 or 5 felt pretty good, but we’re also probably the 2 most experienced PogoChamp players in the world, hahah. If the experience/skill level difference of the two players is big, you can give players different numbers of attempts as a way to make it more fair.
  
• Level Veto: you can add in some number of Vetoes that people can use to force the attacker to choose a different level. These can either be done at the beginning of the match, or after a player picks a level you can have the option to veto it.
  

With all the levels available, it's now open season for speedrunnning! PogoChamp already has a page on Speedrun.com. The two current categories are "All Levels complete" and "All Rainbow Gems", but let me know if there are other categories you'd like to see.

Currently I'm using the in-game timer for listing speedrun times, but I also plan to add support for autosplits external timers like LiveSplit to the game

• CONTENT: New level: The Beginning. (#100).
  
• CONTENT: New Level: The End. (#101).
• CONTENT: Added end-game cutscenes (still need some work / SFX stuff).
  
• CONTENT: Added credits.
  
• BUG FIX: Transcendence achievement is now unlockable.
  
• BUG FIX: Beyond Perfect achievement is now unlockable.
  
• BUG FIX: Updated Supernova unlock condition from 300 stars to "all stars".
  
• BUG FIX: Fix completion % measurements in the profile menu.
  
• BUG FIX: Fix achievement notification text overlapping for long achievement names.
  
• BUG FIX: Fast Travel achievement has been reworked to be attainable again (it used to be "Use the quick select menu", but that menu doesn't exist anymore, so now it's "Warp between levels in Level Select", which you can do by just hitting left/right, or clicking on a level that's more than 1 away from your current position).
  

Whoops, it's not Saturday!? Sorry for the delayed update post! I had some family in town for the weekend and honestly just sort of lost track of time. I've been working on the "Final Level" and related cutscenes, and it's pretty exciting getting close to a "completed" game. There's still a bit of work to do before it's ready for release, but it's all coming along pretty well so far!

There's no visible changes to write about this week. I'll be going on a vacation starting Wednesday for 8 days, so the next update post will come out on April 9. The plan is to have working versions of the final level & cutscenes as part of that release, but the official "1.0" will be at a later date after I've finished the completionist cutscenes and some other features & polish I've had on my backlog.

I've been working primarily on the final level & related cinematics. Still a decent chunk of work to do, but they're coming along very nicely! In the mean time, here's the last "normal" level:

• BUG FIX: Fix issue where moving quickly through the level select could result in being on the wrong level in certain situations.
  
• BUG FIX: Fix Null Reference Exception related to Options Menu tooltips.
  
• BUG FIX: Options Menu "Reset" buttons work again.
  
• UX: Remove Under Construction sign from Level Select.
  
• PERF: Use Object Pooling for the orbs in the Level Select tubes.
  
• BUG FIX: Fix a bunch of DoTween errors when closing / resetting levels.
  
• PERF: Use Baked Occlusion Culling in the Level Select for another 90% reduction in rendered tris/verts!
  
• CONTENT: New level: "No Hesitation" (50)
  
• DEV: Lots and lots of work & bug fixes for the final level stuff.