Amazing Frog? News

Its Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet Part 3. Finally starting to feel like we are making some good progress not just in the rebuild but also in the newer things we have been adding.

[ WORKING ON TRAILER ]

[h3]Learn to fly[/h3]
Flight school has reopened it’s doors for new cadets! At the moment you can test your helicopter skills with four new courses. Enter the hangar, find each colour and get flying. Race against your best time. A pilot hat will be awarded to those skilled enough to complete all four courses and the second hangar will open.





[h3]Jet a load of this![/h3]
Swindonshire now has it’s very own aerobatics display team! Introducing the "Green Arrows". Find their jets at the runway and take them for a spin. This brand new aircraft includes an ejector seat to safety exit mid flight. Just remember to eject before any accidental collisions!





[h3]Movers and shakers[/h3]
Ever wish you could transport more items around the map than you can physically carry? Try the new removal van now and pack it full with everything you could possibly need.





This is the first time in Amazing Frog? that you can transport a secure stash conveniently with some "it's bigger on the INSIDE!" technology.



[h3]Alligators sighted at the pond![/h3]
They're quite hungery too so be careful.



Take one of the new airboats found in the pond for a ride and see what’s lurking in the waters.



The boats are fast but...



Try attaching some balloons with a balloon device for less resistance and more speed!



[h3]Missing the Jetpacs?[/h3]
All three jetpacs are back! Two of them are easy to find the last is more tricky, maybe the flies can help.





They work from the saddle too....



[h3]Fly catching[/h3]
These little guys are out in the wild again. See if you can find all three, they might be keeping hold of something useful.




[h3]To clear some things up...[/h3]
Save files have been an issue. Even we lost track of what was unlocked in Legacy and converted. All the jet packs and fly heads were not officially unlockable in QMMT (until now) but there are still transfered legacy saves that are not available yet to unlock in QMMT 'officially'- like Joke Frog. These will become obselete as they will be unlocked in QMMT, but the unlock process may be different. SO we made them available in a new 'legacy" tab in the wardrobe.




Also XMAS stuff is back in- The Holiday Part of the update has been resolved to be a more perminant feature in December. I will set up an Event on Steam about the Xmas stuff. Also I am aiming to introduce some more content before Xmas - its kind of a tradition for me to put a last minute build out on the big day before i relax into some choco and mince pies


[h3]Here’s to you[/h3]
Finally we wanted to shout out everyone who voted for us for “Labour of Love for the Steam Game awards. We appreciate all of your continued support. And for those who were expecting part 3 to be a zombie apocalypse… it's coming real soon, we need a bit more time for contamination control

Don't make me beg...

Ok too late.

Vote now.
Vote PLEASE...
Vote for Amazing Frog?

If you have followed us since we first put Amazing Frog? though Greenlight and then launched on Steam 9 years ago, then you will know how much we love making this game.
It's all we do.
Now that we have Amazing Frog? and Amazing Frog? 2 we are super excited about what's coming up. Not just towards the end of this year, but into 2024 and of course beyond.

100s more updates, forever Amazing, forever Frog?

[h2]Become the Pump King in Swindon today.[/h2]

Why settle for 5 nights when you can get 6 nights in Amazing Frog? Pick up the pumpkin and unleash Hell in Swindon Today.







Happy Halloween.
Heres a spooky take on Coronation Mode for Halloween. A bit of spooky fun before part three of the Quest For the Magical Mystery Toilet is ready. On that note.. watch out for poltergeists and ghost objects. Literally you may be able to walk right through some things... ok ok we'll fix that.



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This update also includes some major improvements to the "frog life" systems.
No I am not saying you will never see a "T poser" again, but I have spent a bunch of time stabilizing that aspect of the game.



[h2]Some Game Dev stuff (If you like that kind of thing)[/h2]
Basically one of the big enhancements of QMMT since Legacy is our ability to have frogs everywhere. We have been working on this for a while with the goal of helping the gameplay scale across the whole world. When I talk about the frogs customization system or placement and organization of dynamic objects I have my system acronyms like W.R.A.P.S. and F.A.P.S. I don't really have an acronym for this system other than AAARRGH maybe.



I tentatively call it Scheduling and Priming. So Wildlife/population or as I call them in code 'Avatars' are "primed" everywhere thanks to Hals ingenious placement systems that he has been creating in Houdini on the landscape for trees, flowers grass (not just for Avatars) Then with a kind of bespoke LOD thing we built I bring them in and out. This is why there will be sharks at every beach ( although this can be tricked by having two or more players on different beaches ) Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of this system, aside from the mental torture it inflicted on my brain, was that if it doesn't clear up properly we get T posers which were frogs that were supposed to be deactivated but had refused to do so. Its an evolving system. You may notice it in Amazing Frog? 2 (V3) when that update drops soon.



[h2]Things that are not ready[/h2]
So... Jet Pac can be unlocked by killing giant moon worm. Although currently, its very difficult. The giant moon worm can be ridden straight into the green lazer beam, but it would take some kind of a genius to work out how to do that.



Balloon pac and Fly pac officially are not unlockable yet. Currently they are only accessible if they were unlocked during Legacy and then a version prior to Last year of Remastered was opened. (Sounds like a Monty Python Sketch)
I am genuinely sorry for those that expect to have the back pacs because they had them in Legacy. There are so many right and wrong ways to simultaneously remaster and recreate a game I only know this way and I am 99% sure I am doing it the right way.

Of course, I could just make the back pacs all available in the dispenser round the back of the hideout for every one, temporarily, but at this point it won't be long. Making them all available feels like a 'game breaking' thing to do. The Magic for the Toilet is coming, its mostly built. Unfortunately there is nothing I can 'bring' over from Legacy and to be honest I wouldn't want to. The magic for the toilet will give you access to all the toys you could drop in before, saddles for all creatures (although I think a saddle gun may be a good idea.), poop heads, mini pigs, pimped up vehicle and the shark blimp its all coming, but with more.

[h2]Wardrobe[/h2]
This is typical really, but let let me tell you a story.



Did you know a major bug of the last update ( QMMT part 2 "Beaches Be Crazy" ) was the wardrobe exit not working and thats this bug was actually caused by fixing a bug you may not have even noticed. The bug I fixed the night before I released QMMT part 2 was that if player one entered a spawnPoint toilet and then player two entered a spawnPoint toilet before player one has left then they fused into each other and it was game over...
It took a while to fix, you'd think it would be simple, these things never are and then I uploaded and I did not think to go and change my clothes in the wardrobe after fixing. So I missed it.

Its fixed now sorry, Game development has its ups and downs.



[h2]The balloon Jet pack, Fixed? [/h2]
This is tricky. I knew it wasnt quite right for some time, but for some reason I forgot that you used to be able to unlock the balloon pack via Legacy. I used to invisibly import your Legacy save file and convert it. In retrospect this was a silly thing to have done. Its difficult to keep track of progress when progress is coming from two different places and the reality is I really wanted the game to offer the unlock to the balloon jet pack and balloon gun differently than just throwing stuff in the toilet. To put it bluntly fixing an issue with the balloon jet pack wasnt a major priority for me since it wasnt officially 'unlockable' in QMMT yet. ironically, the fly pack (only unlockable from Legacy currently) works so much better in QMMT than it ever could have with Legacy Physics. Long story short - I fixed balloons but I still want to spend some more time with them over the coming weeks.



This image by the wind farm is a classic representation of this issue of Legacy | QMMT confusion - balloon jet pack and shark hat unlocked in Legacy and a blood world Tshirt that is only available in the QMMT bloodworld, in the coffee shop (...To be completely honest, I don't know as I am writing this, if that T shirt award is currently working now the physics has been changed.)



Either way, QMMT does a few other types of things will balloons








[h2]Grapple hooks missing?[/h2]
On or off right ? how can we make such and unforgivable mistake?



This was an issue with the load process similar to the trophys not working (which i have also attempted to fix). I cannot guarentee its completely fixed as nothing in life is certain, but it should be more stable. The saving in QMMT is very robust, but the reading and implemetation of the saved data still needs work - this is one of the main reasons for the delay of the "Magic" in the Magical mystery Toilet. There will be a lot of 'unlocks' from MMToilet activity and a need to represent those unlocks.



Either way it was a lot fo fun double checking the balloon pack and grapple hook are still in good working order.
I am trying to get in the habbit of making a video each update since our intention is to make these upcoming regular updates more content based. Either way, it was fun to mess around with what had been fixed.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]T Posing Frogs[/h3]
Let me be clear - I have NOT fixed this yet... its is kind of freaky. However, it is a symptom of something good and something evolving. Before we made the changes to prepare for the Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet, having lots of Frogs and physics objects in the world was not possible in Amazing Frog? On the one hand, we could have drawn influence from great games like Human Fall Flat and made lots of smaller seperate environments with less physics objects in each, but we don't really roll like that. I think in our heads we are still trying to make our own Zelda/GTA/Tony Hawks Hybrid. (Skateboards coming soon)
So to explain the T posing ( or frozen, non simulating , non animating) frogs are actually continuing to work, but in their lowest LOD level. A LOD level they should not be in when so close to the player.


(Community Screen shot click to see)

Another symptom of this problem is shown by taking a sniper rifile and shooting something very far away, where currently the bullet might phase through the targeted object (I need to address this by activating objects via the scope). To enable more frogs and objects and vehicles etc, etc... Amazing Frog? now adds and removes objects from simulation, this was the only way we could bring content to the new world. (also it happens to be the bedrock of our evolving Online systems) So when I see them I know how far we have come ... but I guess without knowing what we have been building in the background it looks like we are just moving backwards... We are not.
So if you see T posing frogs and Objects not in simulation - walk away quite far then come back and they will be working like the Tyre was.



Also happy to hear of any non simulating objects - like the Fan by the Magical Mystery toilet... which I just noticed i did not manage to fix in this update.

[h2]Legacy[/h2]
It took me a while but Legacy is now available on a beta Branch called Legacy Branch.
I know you guys never really read these posts ...( I mean. if I am being honest I wouldn't if I was playing a game I would just get on with it too...) but despite what people were saying in the forums last week, Hal and I never intended to take Legacy away from any one. I simply needed it on a new branch and these things take time.
There are so many reasons to put it on a new branch. Its the kind of thing I could waffle about while making a you tube video comparing the two version, but here are two simple reasons

• I intend to be updating QMMT like crazy until we have UFO, aliens, sandwiches, money, an inventory, a big f*ckin' blob monster and a whole host of othert crazy sh*t we have been developing and uploading an non-updatable version of Legacy with it each time is a pain.
  
• Lets say I do decide to suddenly open up my old single core PC and get an urge to update Legacy because I love punishing myself... It would not really be possible to do so if I had to upload it with QMMT - the main Version of Amazing Frog?
  

[h2]A Note about Amazing Frog? QMMT , Amazing Frog? 2 and Amazing Frog? Legacy.[/h2]
We have been working on Amazing Frog? since 2012, Launched on OUYA 2013, on Steam the end of 2014 (where most of dev has taken place) iOS 2019 and Android 2022 (Android could not support Legacy tech). Origionally, what we now refer to as Legacy was built for single core machines, this is why Legacy does not run great on more modern multi-core machines (its embarrasing) , but it may appear to perform well on older single/dual core machines. Also it is near impossible to edit or develop Legacy on newer multicore machines. We didnt start QMMT (formally known as remastered) until just over two years ago and we did so alongside Amazing Frog?2.
QMMT is built with the evolving system that we have built from the ground up since 2020 to drive Amazing Frog? 2 . Visually it uses remastered assets from Legacy and new assets that we have been integrating and building. Since we started QMMT we even had to completely rebuild the landscape and change to a new rendering system. I believe whole heartedly that this process is worth it. So that Amazing Frog? can Leave Early Access on Steam with a more well rounded and complete game - Amazing Frog? Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet, can go to Console. All while we continue to evolve Amazing Frog? 2 to have more sandbox style, online gameplay much of which we can bring back to extensions to Amazing Frog? QMMT here on Steam in the future.
Feel free to dissagree with the way we develop, that bigger companies "do it better" -I know we do it different, but it makes sense to us.
So... It may seem that we have been away for a while, but we have been busy as f*ck. Hopefully over the next few weeks this will become apparant.
Also still no decision on the second part of the name for Amazing Frog?2 - but also a gentle reminder - Amazing Frog? 2 while it is currently included in a purchase of Amazing Frog? soon it will be sold seperately to new players, this will not change the for those that own it already.

So I guess it would make sense to launch a Halloween update right now, but these beaches... well they needed their buggies.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

They are a pretty robust all terrain vehicle. They climb hills better that the other vehicles.



Helping you see the sights.



But more importantly as we develop more of the Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet additions like these beach buggys help you reach other places with ease



But also they are a lot of fun to drive and we made some crazy ramps on the beach.



You may notice a few extra capes too. We are happy to finally find ourselves in a position where we can update the games easily. Now we can push forward and complete the Quest for the Magical Mystery Toilet.