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
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Friday, July 27, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
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.
Friday, July 6, 2012
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!
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."
Saturday, June 30, 2012
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
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.
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