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:
 

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• 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.

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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.