Amazing Frog? News

First off sorry for the silence. We have been busy with Amazing Frog? development and I never really know when is a good time to share. I want to tell you about what we have been up to since April It's basically all been about getting a V3 update out there. We are pretty close now and the release of our first V3 update feels like a big milestone for us. Before I talk about what's coming up in the next update I feel like its worth a look back at the time Amazing Frog? has spent in Early Access. Since we are really hoping to come out of Early Access very soon.  So we scribbled down some thoughts of our Early Access Journey into a cheap sketchy timeline.



Of course this timeline you can pretty much see in the ChangeLog. This is not an app we intend to abandon in the upcoming Updates (some we will lose). As we move into V3 The Change Logs will persist as will (hopefully) most of the save data. I am looking forward to writing the f0.3.1 entry ( I may skip the letters at the end of the versions moving forward but…)



Well the natural progression for us after the Drone update was to continue with Helicopters and airplanes, it just didn’t work out like that. What it eventually came down to was the real purpose of adding helicopters. They are needed to pick up large objects and move them around, swing giant wrecking balls etc…We wanted players to be able to move things around more easily. It got to the point where we couldn’t see it happening using the "old school physics” of Unity 4, I mean the more recent V2 blimps could have been much better. Basically, we had taken V2 as far as we could. We toyed with the idea of making a definitive V2 “Gold Master” version that we could distribute on other platforms, but, ultimately the natural progression is only forward and on with V3,  to secure Amazing Frog? s ongoing development….So Flight School had to be postponed

As you can see from the timeline entries of V3 attempts, the scary problem was that we had not actually been able to produce the same level of ‘fun’ with the newer versions of Unity. Every route that we had tried to build Amazing Frog? into newer versions of Unity had always resulted in rigid, realistic, but ultimately, unstable physics.  It was great how things look and some of the newer features and capabilities of the more recent versions of Unity are super helpful and have led to so many possibilities for loading and managing content and just simply put all the boring stuff that makes games happen that we don’t often talk about but is insanely important. Yet with every encounter of the newer versions of Unity, It was almost like the physics was forcing us to be too “real world”.
So In March I decided to Start again line by line, system by system and rebuild. I’m not going to lie, it took a while and I often had this nervous feeling that I was taking us down a path that may end up leading nowhere. When we got to summer things started to look much brighter. The project was intact, I could make builds, and most importantly the frog was behaving like “Amazing Frog?” and not generic rag doll biped individual. Now we have a more stable “Amazing Frog?” with a more sustainable future proof environment to continue the development of the Universe. After all, to continue the development of what we think is the most important thing we have ever made is all we really wanted.


I wish there was a magic brush where I could convert every aspect of V2 into V3, but it doesn’t really work like that. Fortunately, much of the stuff since Grapple hooks has been programmed to exist in more recent versions of Unity and is less difficult to keep, but some of the older stuff is difficult to retain. But the benefits of much of the rebuild are now becoming more apparent. For example the water physics, You will have to wait to “see”( or play) that to see how different it is, but it just feels worth it. On the downside, it also means everything in the sea needed reprogramming or restructuring. Or the lighting V2 was dependant on static lightmaps baked into the environment, V3 we have a day-night system… but that means many objects like cars or lamposts and all sorts of ‘other’ things need daytime aware programming. That's just the tip of the iceberg.



Having said that, we are trying not to lose stuff. Even though you will encounter many changes to an already established environment,  we are also taking steps to keep older features active. Take for example the new frog. Just like the sharks and alligators, the water physics-ness had to be rebuilt for the frog, but also the look. The situation with the frog’s new clothes demonstrates some of the wider issues we have been facing in this upgrade process. The new frog has interchangeable clothes with physical rendering, puffa jackets, T-shirts hoodies, etc.. but most of the characterization of V2 worked through a more old school “skins” process. It's going to take a long time to recreate all of those “outfits” with physical (modeled) clothing. ( we will… we will, but not all at once) In the meantime, we came up with a way for the new frog to “wear” the old frog if that makes sense. But since the old outfits that you may have unlocked would not be able to work moving forward in the new Frog wardrobe system we came up with a way to physically archive them and still have access to them.



There are many established activities in Amazing Frog? Getting to The Moon, Unlocking the Magical Mystery Toilet, killing the Megladon, discovering the balloon jetpack, many of which we will have to divert or close off for the first few updates. We have even been debating if the Moon can work or if we even want to keep the Moon at all and if we do in what format. So we may need to lock some things off ...even if just temporarily. There are many things we just don’t know what the deal is yet. Take for example the Magical Mystery Toilet… We have put a few things through in our testing but we can’t be 100% sure what will happen with everything anymore (as if we ever knew)


I don’t really like making promises for an update date as I hate disappointing people if I fail. But October seems as good a month as any to get an update out. Last year I think we launched a Halloween update on the 1st of November which is pretty typical for us… and it was a bit broken :) But I want to get something "playable" for you all within a couple of weeks. I can’t promise what shape that will take. I may close off a lot of the world or features, but if I close off too much I will launch a beta rather than a replacement update... I DON'T KNOW, but it's only in the past few weeks that I have felt capable to commit to saying something like this and so write a "Frog Blog"
Also, for those who read this post on AmazingFrog.com I am trying to be a little more organized with posts. I always end up posting something at 3 am on a Friday night when it's just finished. As we move forward will try and post to Steam at better times :) If you want to get ahead of the game follow me on twitter or instagram. @fayju or get on the discord, If I post a premature beta it will appear there then I​ will get the assets together afterwards to make a "post"

Firstly, welcome to the new Drones Update for Amazing Frog?. We have wanted to include drones in the game for some time now. Not just because we wanted to use them to generate fancy cinematic camera angles to make a decent trailer ( …still pending… ), but also because you get to fly around like a maniac and explore Swindon Shire in a whole new way. You can explore areas you might want to be able to go. Part of Amazing Frog? has always been that as a new player it's difficult to escape Swindon. We used to enjoy that there would be an element of surprise when you eventually scaled the wall and realized you were in a larger world.





There are two types of Drones, one is more like a traditional camera drone with stabilization and has simpler controls, the other is more of a freestyle drone with twin stick controls. The freestyle one can be a bit tricky to master, but we have been finding it a lot of fun especially threading the multi story car park.





Obviously, it's an Amazing Frog? update … so there are some other things in there to discover. The pigs have not returned yet, we are working on something that will bring them back to SwindonShire and that will be available soon… In the meantime,  if you need to get somewhere snappy,  you might be able to find something else you can hitch a ride on.



The other main purpose of this update is that it contains some fixes and stabilization, I don’t think the last version was working particularly well. Had I not been so wrapped up in V3 and all the multiplayer code, I might have noticed sooner. Thank you to everyone who reaches out to me from the community to tell me about issues with the game, like leaving out the FrogMilk Coffee Co App Activation… Doh!  Also, genuinely, I’m really sorry I left Santa’s Grotto in the car park until March. (…again…) I think subconsciously, I just want to prolong Xmas because it's my favorite time of year.  Realistically, I just got distracted with development and was spending my time in a completely different environment where frogs actually have fingers.


So what have we been up to? Well, we launched the pocket version of Amazing Frog? on iOS at the beginning of January and then we began working exclusively on the multiplayer side of V3. We have been trying to push to a place when we can release the first alpha of V3 with online multiplayer. I won’t bore you with screenshots of that activity, because it would be mostly of code and a bit of me crying... The cost of V3 dev is that it can be very absorbing and almost grinds V2 progress to a standstill. This might not be a problem if we were done with V2, but we are not.  You will be seeing some more updates in the next few weeks/months.

Ultimately, our goal is to take V2 out of Early Access soon. I guess we could have done that already. Looking forward, I don’t anticipate leaving Early Access will change the way we develop and we are still creating and planning new content for V2..oink. It's just that Early Access is not a label we are totally comfortable with anymore. Mostly, because we have been in Early Access since 2014 and other peoples reactions to the phrase “Early Access” is weird. There were always certain things we wanted to do in Amazing Frog? before we left Early Access, or at least what our definition of Early Access is/was. We need to implement structures in the game design that make the world feel more complete. On the one hand, this is about facilitating the growth of the world, but on the other, it's about reinforcing the underlying narratives that already exist in it.  Also, we want to give a clearer picture of how we feel the world fits together, the companies, the activities etc. I touched on this in some previous dev blogs.



We are also trying to tidying some/many of the "rough edges" and refine the overall product of Amazing Frog? You may have noticed that we changed the capsule Artwork on the Store page. This is the first time we have done this since launch ...mainly because any time we had, we would spend on adding weird stuff to the actual game. I will also need to rewrite the description so it's more up to date.

Next week we head to San Francisco with the rest of the Game Dev world for GDC. GDC is a big event in the Game dev calendar where devs learn, meet and I dunno be a massive group of Game Developers, So hopefully we can find some stuff that helps Amazing Frog? overall.

Thanks again you guys for Playing, also thanks to everyone for the tweet and insta nudges to make a devblog or fix stuff or  just sharing what you are playing. Awesome :)

Today's Deal: Save 25% on Amazing Frog?!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Saturday at 10AM Pacific Time

Phase two Update for Santa’s Swindon Snow Storm Update is available now



I love making Xmas Updates. Its a good chance to play around with some stuff. Also its a great way to say thanks to every one for playing Amazing Frog?



So go grab the presents and unlock a preview of something we are working on. Hopefully its a nice surprise :)



I always seem to be leaving things to the last minute, I think its mainly because we always seem to be able to think of "just one more thing” ***to add in. ***Columbo



yeay...





I hope you all have an awesome xmas! We will come back soon an write a more formal devblog about what the plans for 2019 are, where V3 and multiplayer is. Its all happening still and we very excited about what's coming up



I’m gonna go eat some chocolate.

Its time for the Holiday Update and this time its a real Swindon Snow Storm! Fart propelled sledging is always lovely this time of year



Obviously the Holiday period isn’t for every one, but we tried to make accommodations for them.





driving can be hazardous in these conditions, please be careful not to hit snowy pedestrians.



Grow big Snow Balls!



This is phase 1 of the xmas update, the next bit should be swinging around real soon.



Seasons Greetings !