New News Post: site move

Hey guys, this afternoon Alec will be taking the site down for about an hour or two while we prepare for a move to another host. When it returns, uploading of any sort will be disabled while we transfer the database to the new site. Unfortunately this may take a few days to a week. Sorry to do this again, but I don't foresee a site move anytime afterwards. There was a problem with our current host that kind of brought all the progress we've been making on the site to a halt. If this causes you a buildup of internal rage, please consider unleashing your emotions in some creative manner that is constructive to others.

In other news... I recently put analytics into the game, so I've been able to see the terms people actually search for in the level browser. Yesterday, 956 people searched for the incorrectly spelled "sword trow", which I found very impressive. Even more surprising, it turns out effective shopper is the least popular character in the game. For me, this was very saddening. I would have guessed she was in the top 5. Here's the current list of characters, ranked by the number of times they're chosen on the character select screen.

1. Irresponsible dad
2. Segway guy
3. Helicopter man
4. Pogostick man
5. Wheelchair guy
6. Lawnmower man
7. Santa Claus
8. Moped couple
9. Explorer guy
10. Irresponsible mom
11. Effective shopper

I've been working on the iphone version of the game with Jason in preparation for the launch. I've made new character portrait art for the level selection menus. I think they look pretty ok. THIS IS ALL I HAVE TO SHARE AT THE MOMENT!

New News Post: ...some stuff

Hey...please ignore the over dramatic message in the preloader from Mochi Media. Happy Wheels is NOT provided by Mochi Media, and is in no danger of shutting down. They are one of several ad networks the site uses. The message assumes the owner of the site is not the developer of the game, and is pasted into every game on the internet making use of Mochi ads. I will update my preloader to remove them before the 31st. Besides that I just uploaded this new video to give you some ideas for new level possiblities with the new features...


If you're not aware of what was added, please look at the news post below. While making the video I came across some issues while trying to make examples. As of today I actually added in a couple things: Sounds activated by triggers can now play from the location of the trigger. If the trigger is nowhere near the player's current position, you won't hear the sound. I changed mostly all of my arrays to vectors. Vectors are more efficient Arrays in actionscript. I've wanted to do this for like 18 years. This should improve performance somewhat. Minor bug fixes that would be really boring to describe and hear.

New News Post: NEW SITE, YAY

...I don't want to jinx it, but it appears as though I have a reliable, fully functioning site (THIS SITE YOU ARE ON RIGHT NOW, YOU FOOLS!). We'll see how it goes during full traffic load today, but for me it has remained zippy no matter what I do. I'm just in disbelief that you can actually play Happy Wheels for more than 3 minutes without it hanging and requiring a refresh. All credit goes to Alec, who rebuilt the new java site and database from scratch. Very special thanks to Sean who managed to tape together the broken pile of sticks that was the original site (which was intended for magnitudes less than 500,000 users a day) for the past couple years. Right now we just wanted to match the intended functionality of the old site, but because the foundation has been completely redone, the site can be expanded with new features. Along with the update to the entire backend, I updated and added several things to the game. Here's a list:
 

---

• New, more efficient level and replay browsers
• Level and author search has been reactivated
• Favoriting levels actually works
• An arrow in the featured levels menu lets you see other levels by featured authors
• Publishing levels is now separate from saving
• Deleting levels can now be done in the editor load menu. This may be added back to user pages this week.
• There is a debug draw mode in the level editor. This will allow you to see all physics shapes and joints when testing a level. It must be checked on in the drop down editor menu.
• Triggers can now be triggered by other triggers. The line connecting the triggers will have arrows pointing in the direction of the receiving trigger. This will allow you do apply several trigger actions at once to several object without having all the triggers overlap.
• Triggers can be disabled and enabled through other triggers. This will prevent them from going off until required.
• Triggers now have a repeat setting. Previously triggers would activate once and delete themselves. Now you can, with various options, have a trigger action repeat itself continuously. This will allow you to do things that were previously very complicated or impossible. I can have an old man jumping and yelling about his leg until the end of time.
• Groups now have the same trigger actions as shapes. You can now set groups to fixed, non-fixed, delete group shapes, and delete the entire group with triggers.
• When copying and pasting triggers and shapes, trigger actions will now actually copy over. Previously copied actions would be set to their default values. It was annoying.
• Non-player characters can now be manually posed by double clicking on them and dragging their limbs. I've had to do inverse kinematics for the new game, so I plopped it in here. Dragging the stupid sliders to pose the characters before was such a pain in the ass. Sorry I didn't do this sooner.
• "Hold pose" for non-player characters now works more closely to how I originally intended. It will work how it used to for old levels.
• Various editor bugs have been fixed. There may be more I haven't been aware of. I will make a bugs email address so people can help me find any I've missed.

---

I think that's it. There may be one or two things I've missed. I'll edit the post if I remember. I'm going to make a video for tomorrow showing some ideas for things you can make with the new features. I'm still mad nobody has made a good helicopter man level. Maybe it's because I didn't even mention him in a news post. Or maybe I just missed one. If you know of one, please let me know. I already have to go back and feature like 10 levels over the past few months.

Anyways, I'm very happy to have the site functioning as it is. Thank you for your patience in dealing with the migration. If you were not patient... well, sorry. Now that problems can actually be solved and new news posts don't require me to login to phpmyadmin, I'll be more communicative and less of a recluse. There are still some issues that we are aware of (some deleted levels have been restored, some level data must be retransferred, and some old replays have ratings of zero), but these will hopefully all be ironed out in the next week. After that I will be helping Jason finish up the iPhone version, and then I will finally return to the Happy Wheels sequel.

Comments are now listed most recent first. This was originally confusing me, but it's better.

For now, here's my goodbye in stunning comic sans!

New news post: site stuff

Hello. I'm currently, as of now, in the process of switching over to a new site. Unfortunately I have to disable uploads of any sort while we migrate the old data onto the new site. This will hopefully be only a few days, but there shouldn't be any downtime... just no new uploading. Along with the new site will be some convenient game updates and a soon to be written wonderful news post explaining everything.

Helicopter Man!

The new character has been released today, Helicopter Man. He is the first character capable of flying.I have tested in the Character Selection Screen, that he does in fact fall off the Stonehenge. You can see the video on my channel "grandpa Joe WCG". Jim also made a demonstration video. You may check that on his channel "ImAngryMan".

New news post: Hello

I've started work on a new character for Happy Wheels. With my time spent on the sequel, it's now been over a year since my last update to the game. I'm feeling guilty so I figure I should really go back and add some things. I think the new character will add some fun, stupid gameplay types. The character art is already done. Hopefully it will be finished in a couple of weeks. Next week I'll be recording some vocals for the new character and future/older characters. Along with the character I might try to update a few other little things.

Once the new update is finished I will probably try to help Jason wrap up the iPhone version so we can finally have something ready to release. I'm looking to port it to Android as soon as we have something more complete, so if you are a talented Android programmer in the New York area, or know of one, do let us know.

My good friend Paul K has recently released a book. I missed his release party because I accidentally crushed and ate the veneer off my front tooth while eating pizza on the way over. To make up for it I'd like to link to it here. And Every Day Was Overcast is a photo essay and novel about growing up in the 90s amongst the creepshow of swamps and strip malls of south Florida. It's awesome and unique and makes my New Jersey high school upbringing seem even more forgettable than it was.

I'll make another post when the character is up.

Who needs to anyway?

Who needs updating anyway? Ok i forgot. Well Jim Bonacci is working on Happy Wheels 2. You can check out the sneak peek of it here: Happy Wheels 2 Sneak Peek! Cool huh? That's why Jim never updated Happy Wheels 1. Because he's busy with the new game. It's unknown if it will be Here's some photos.

 Anyway Happy Wheels 2 will have dynamic lighting. Jim has not added any gore yet, meaning he did not make separate body parts/pieces, or any blood. The blood will possibly look way more real and more 3D. He will possibly use the same old character voices and sound FX. If not, he will update voices and sound FX.

TotalDownTime!

Well, the site is down, possibly because Jim might be adding the new forums or fixing the "ABOUT" page. If so, there might be a new layout coming or something! Adura stated, " Performing some maintenance (DB resync). Sorry abourt the downtime.
  --Server Admin Guy". And yes there are typos he made like "abourt", haha!

New news post: Blurb

Hey, so my bastard brother is attempting to do a video project with some funding and has a kickstarter here. If you are feeling at all generous, please check it out.

As for my previous post, I'd just like to clarify a few things. Happy Wheels in its current form will always be free and available as long as I can afford hosting. I'm always going to need a database no matter what I end up doing, so I don't see that changing. I will still update flash Happy Wheels on occasion. The reason I'm working on a game in c++ is because flash is very limiting. I'm not just converting what currently exists. I'm making a new game.

I plan on keeping things 2d, but I'll be using 3d modeling to create the graphics. I've started using sculptris and it is awesome. Textures will still be flat, but the depth of the models will allow me to use normal mapping, which means I can make use of dynamic lighting. I plan on using a similar look to the current art style, but objects will be lit differently as they rotate.

I'll ramble on some more as I progress.

FORUMS UPDATED!....oh.

The Total Jerkface forums as seen on Nov. 27, 2012.

Well I saw that i couldn't get onto Total Jerkface, i was hoping Jim was adding the new forums, but later afterwards i decided to see if the site was back up, clicked on the forums. I see a short message read "Maybe there'll be a forum one day...". Here's the link if you want to see it in person: http://www.totaljerkface.com/forum.php. If you can't get on the site, here's a picture:

New News Post: oh haaay

Hello friends, 

Very sorry for the long absence. Rereading the last post, I was a bit shocked at how miserable that made my situation sound. I shouldn't have left that up there so long. I may have been quite frustrated that day, but I AM IN FACT DOING SPLENDIDLY. I'm currently in Los Angeles, California for two weeks. I've eaten nearly 800 tacos.Yesterday we shot guns. Before that I was in Portland for a week. I've never been to either, and decided to visit when Jason had some obligations over here. 

As for the site... we are actually testing a new version Sean recently completed and will make the transfer once we're done. It looks the same, but the site will now be on a much stabler, more secure framework. Once that is done, it will be much easier to pinpoint inefficiencies in the database...which is the constant source of the site troubles. 

I've been spending my own time creating a new version of Happy Wheels from scratch. At least, I assume it will be Happy Wheels. I'm learning c++ and opengl. It is fun to have something new and challenging, so I'm pumped to have something showable soon. I promise it will be awesome (if you liked Happy Wheels and my judgement hasn't expired). The plan is to sell a version of the game for $5-10. I think this will eliminate a lot of horrible levels from being created. I'd still like everyone to have access to the game though, so I will see about the possibility of releasing a free version eventually that doesn't include the level editor. Perhaps that could be in webgl. This is all very far off and just speculation. 

Probably the most exciting part of this news post for myself is that I will have a booth at PAX East next March in Boston. I actually can't wait, but I suppose I am forced to. I missed my chance to do this several times before due to stupidity. It will be wonderful to leave my mother's locked basement and meet anyone who has played Happy Wheels (as this is actually very rare in real life). Just please, NO DIRECT SKIN CONTACT. Latex gloves will be available.

Null?

Just today, i found out that all usernames in the game (Featured Levels and Browser Levels) were read as "null".I found out that it was just some bug or something that Jim was doing, and i also had trouble logging back into my TJF account because of it. Jim will fix hopefully. The picture on the right shows (in my level browser) a picture of the bug. I'm just letting you all know about some strange thing happening, well at first i thought it was a glitch, but it's just some messed up bug. I don''t know how this happened.

Irresponsible Mom!!!

The new character is out on V1.70! Related to Irresponsible Dad, this character has 3 characters, like Santa Claus! A baby boy in the front in a basket, has Timmy's voice, and the little girl in the back, who has Effective Shopper's voice, but higher pitched. The mom i wouldn't say is the Dad's wife, maybe, the little girl could be a sister of Timmy too, or Timmy's girlfriend! Jim will hopefully add different brand new voices that he will record. The little girls voice might stay because it's its first use. The mom someday might react to the death of her children, like Irresponsible Dad.

New news post: ARG!

Jim said: I have been tremendously frustrated lately with the way things are going. Despite moving to a new hosting setup, the site is still struggling to deal with traffic. There were, and still may be, several new problems that popped up when we went from one database server to two. Data must be replicated from one to the next, and so some new functionality had to be created.



The large problem is that I'm not getting the help I desperately need. I have Sean (Adura) in Canada who has been acting as my systems admin, but it has not been enough. He has no experience with a multi-server setup and is learning as he goes. I was under the impression my new host would be able to put more time into helping with site optimizations, but that does not seem to be the case.


If I were very familiar with these things, I would do this on my own. Unfortunately, I am not a backend programmer/systems admin. I have a decent understanding of things. Several times I've known more about these things than the people I'm trying to hire, which is very disappointing. I do not want to spend the massive amount of time that would be necessary to learn these things when I could be spending that time creating things in the game. It is absurd to me that I can't just find someone willing to accept my money who is capable of fixing this crap.


I do not want to lose massive amounts of daily users just because the site will not function properly.


I'm writing this post just to let everyone know that I'm trying my best to fix these things, and it's seriously stressing me out. Every day I sign into facebook or gmail and see complaint after complaint. It sucks.


I would love more than anything to work on a new character, but I cannot do so while the game is broken. My time has been spent ineffectively reaching out to people for help. I guess I have to keep doing this until I find someone, or get to learning and fixing everything by myself.


PUUUUUKE

V1.69

They added opacity to text tool. It seems pretty useful i guess! Here's a picture of it!

Forgetful blog! V1.68

I forgot the new update on Happy Wheels! There's new options for the trigger tool! There is a trigger by option, where you can activate the trigger by:  only the playable character, all characters including NPC's, and by blocks. Sadly there were no new sounds added.

New news post + V1.67!

Jim said: "Ok, the new update is up (but not entirely finished). With Thailand jail and the length of time this took, it's actually been a long while since my last update to the game. Sorry about that.

The update is a new tool that you can use to trigger events during gameplay. The player rides through a trigger area, and various things are activated. Right now you can either activate an object or play a sound.

In most cases, activating an object is waking it up if it's in a sleeping state. Certain special items have more useful activations. Mines will explode and boosts and fans will turn on. You currently cannot decide what the activation will be; you are given a default action. I will change that with a future update... I ran out of time and only thought of it halfway through developing. It'd be cool if rather than just waking up a shape, you could make it appear, disappear, set it to a fixed or non-fixed state, give it a certain velocity, fade in/out, blah blah blah.

If you choose to play a sound effect instead, you don't attach the trigger to any other objects. You just select the sound, and set the volume and panning. With proper use of delay, you can probably make some horrible songs from various screams. Now you can hear "oh my leg!" until it's unbearable (if it's not already).

I do plan on adding ambient sounds but ran out of time today. I will work on that first thing next week. Going through various sound libraries and setting up loops is longer and more tedious than expected." 

This new tool (picture above) i do not understand how to use it and how it works!

New post: almost done

Jim: Hello pals. 2 weeks ago I said I'd have an update ready for last week on Facebook. I was incorrect. I am a bit famous for underestimating the amount of time something takes me.

This week, I am again incorrect in saying the update would be ready for this week. It's very very close, but there are little things I have to fix... and now it's already Friday. It will (definitely...ignore what I said above about underestimating) be ready early next week, and I think it will be very worth it.

I also know it will be hard to read this post because my stupid servers have been overwhelmed with new traffic. I really should have taken care of this sooner, as I'd really like you all to play the game when you'd like. Today though I sent out my ok to a new host, and the site will soon be moving (possibly this weekend) from 2 to 4 servers. This is the same host collegehumor uses, so they should be able to easily handle my site.

Last but not least please check out a video project my brother worked on HERE.

I'll make another post soon to explain the new tool.

New TJF news post: "We are alive".

Hello everyone (this is Jason). Here's that news post that everyone has been asking about.

First off, we've added Pogostick Man. All of you know this. As you might guess, he rides a pogo stick. Thanks to Nova for providing vocals. Now when he plays Happy Wheels, he can scream with himself. And the internet becomes a bit less lonely of a place. Some of you have asked about having other YouTube gamers record vocals. We're not really planning on doing that. A male voice was needed and Nova, who happens to have a fairly unique voice, mentioned interest. We'll most likely go and record a bunch of new voices soon. The next character vocals are most likely female.

Pressing up/down moves Pogostick Man forward/backward with small jumps. Holding space bar results in a big jump. Pressing shift makes him stand upright on the pogo stick and control makes him crouch. Some of his joints are stronger than other characters which allow him to land big jumps without breaking to pieces. Once ejected, his joints are normal strength.

The response to Pogostick Man has been pretty incredible, but this of course has resulted in a trend of unoriginal wall-jumping levels which has polluted the level browser. Please make original levels.

Second, we have exceeded ONE MILLION Facebook 'likes'. Hitting this mark was never expected. In fact, we originally were hoping for 5000 (Jim: "we did?"). And of course we talked about doing something for this event, but then planned poorly and missed it. So the surprise is that there was no surprise. We will eventually post some awesome pictures of the socks that Jim bought. Or we won't. We know you love the suspense. Thanks to everyone who clicked 'like'.

Third, the development of the forums is on hold. We estimated it would be done by now, but then something came up.

Forth, things are a bit slow right now because Jim is incarcerated in Thailand, but I assure you we're always working on something and there are a lot of things to come.

V1.65, not much.

Jim just added a new feature that allows a level to auto save for 20 seconds, so it won't freeze or load for a long time.