Hello!

A new patch has been released. It addresses stability issues and incorrectly rendered menus on certain hardware, and introduces small tweaks to some levels.

I'm aware of freezes on old hardware, and I'm already working on fixing these as well.

Changes:

• Updated localizations.
  
• Updated changelog release dates.
  
• Changelog can now be closed by pressing ESC.
  
• Repositioned one of the jump orbs in w2l8.
  
• Pressing B on the gamepad in pause menu will unpause the game too.

Fixes:

• Fixed a lag spike that occurred when sticking to sticky polygons.
  
• Fixed being able to go out of bounds in w2l19.
  
• Fixed most menus appearing incorrectly on other common resolutions.
  
• Fixed world buttons sometimes not getting pressed.

Hi!

Jump Adventures is finally available here on Steam! Thanks for all your support during the development!

As outlined in the previous post, some things will not make it for this release. My current top priority is delivering Linux support for the game, with World 3 coming in one of the future content updates.

The game's source code repository will also be available in coming days, licensed under BSD-3!

Have fun!
Daniel.

Hi!

After so much time, I'm happy to announce that Jump Adventures finally releases on April 24th, 2024!

Unfortunately, some features won't be making it for the release. Namely, World 3 and Linux support. World 3 still needs some ironing out, and I believe delaying it to a post-launch update is a much better choice than shipping an unenjoyable mess. The additional time was spent polishing and improving existing content.

Linux support faced several major last-minute issues due to lack of extensive testing. Despite that, the game is perfectly playable under Proton. The official Linux build will hopefully arrive soon after!

Thank you for your support!

Daniel.

TLDR: Jump Adventures was put on hold with the store release date marked as "Coming Soon". I'm taking a few months break to work on a new game.

Hello!

Two months have passed since the last devlog, and Q4 is steadily coming to an end. Along with that, the game's release date was marked as "Coming Soon". What's going on?

Well, in short: the game is delayed, once again. Only this time, without a vague "Q4 2023" or more concrete "August 31st 2023". The reason for that is, I barely made any progress since that last devlog. World 3 is still nowhere close to be finished, and all bigger features/reworks are to be implemented too.

The longer I work on the game, the harder it becomes for me to stay motivated. I keep reworking and revisiting other parts, while a huge chunk of content (World 3, etc.) is still missing. Ultimately, this leads to more work required to match the rest of the game to that new quality bar.

Additionally, working on World 3 proves to be challenging due to the game's overall philosophy. I don't want it to be boring or rushed, and coming up with new mechanics that could be combined with other ones introduced in previous worlds is extremely difficult. In the end, that led to many failed experiments and attempts without significant progress being made.

I don't want to force myself to work on the game, as it will only make matters worse. A better course of action would be to put it on hold for a few months, and instead work on a different, smaller project. After it will be done, I'll be back working on Jump Adventures with a fresher mind. I love working on games, but when this process becomes unbearable is when I have to take a lengthy creative break.

As it stands, I don't want to share any big plans regarding the new game. I've been working on the prototype for the past few days already, and it proves to be promising and achievable in the short time span that I set. In addition, my intent is to focus more on a story and an interesting fantasy or a game mechanic, so it will be nothing like Jump Adventures.

This is all I wanted to share in regards to Jump Adventures. I understand that the game should've been released a long time ago, but I would much rather release a game in a good shape that I enjoyed developing than force myself to release anything for the sake of releasing.

See you next time,
Daniel.

Hello!

Tomorrow (27th of October, 2023) at 8PM CET I'll be streaming the development for a new World and Level Selection screen!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_de_-qaNzaQ

See you on stream!
Daniel.

Hello, and welcome to the new devlog!

Since the last development update, the game saw numerous behind the scenes changes in its code, as well as improvements to the UI and general user experience. Additionally, there's been a ton of work towards balancing World 2, making it more forgiving and less challenging.

With the removal of Challenge Mode as outlined in the previous post, I've decided to put more focus into polish of existing features as well as improvements to the game feel.

One of the biggest issues the game faced since the start of the first private alpha testing was poor support for high refresh rates. Controls felt sluggish and unresponsive, and the game exhibited stuttering on high FPS. I finally took time to address this, as well as adding an FPS bypass in the settings. Now, no matter what your frame-rate is, the character controls will always feel smooth and reliable.

With the addition of accessibility settings that allow the player to control the amount of screen shake, there was no other way to inform whenever they took damage. I decided to fix this by adding obstacle-specific damage sounds, a reddish vignette, as well as a slight pitch shift effect to the music. The combination of these changes can be seen in the video below.

Moving on to more exciting stuff, I decided to add trail customization into the game. They're unlocked using Fragments: secret collectibles hidden all over the game's levels. Here's how a portion of them looks like in-game.

On the technical side of things, I also slightly changed how the game saves progress, adding backwards compatibility. Previously, small changes to the save format rendered older saves virtually unusable, forcing everyone to reset progress. With this change, I can add new data to the save file, without ruining everyone's day.

This change was a part of the implementation of a new statistics screen that shows your overall progress. I'm also researching the possibility to include Steam leaderboards into the mix.


Finally, the last new addition is the achievements! In reality, they were added a bit over a month ago, but recently I created the icons for them. Let me know what you think!


The game sees swift improvements across the board, and I cannot wait to share more! Right now, my biggest priority is finishing World 3, but there are other things that I won't mention at this time.

I'm slowly starting to like how Jump Adventures shapes up, but its still hard for me to predict the new release date. I aim to enter a private beta stage somewhere in November with a main focus on bugfixing and small improvements, but no promises there.

In other news, I upgraded my audio setup. My aim is to stream more development, and frankly, judging by the last stream, the audio quality was subpar. Expect the next dev stream date announcement in the coming weeks!

Hope you liked the new devlog!

See you next time,
Daniel.

Hello!
It's been a long while since the last devlog. I spend the time polishing up the visuals for the rest of the worlds, implementing small enhancements, but also took a long break from the project to clear my mind after some built up frustration.

Now that I'm back in full swing, I realize that I won't be able to finish the rest of the game by the planned date of August 31st. Therefore, I've decided to postpone the release to an indefinite period in Q4 2023. I want to make sure the game is as polished as possible, alongside giving me time to finish World 3 and other content that was omitted by the cutting board.

Speaking of cutting: unfortunately, I made the decision to cut some of the planned functionality. The Vaults proved to be too much work and are simply not fun, and altered levels for the challenge mode are also hard to work on and properly balance. In addition to that, it also requires extensive testing, which in itself would simply require a lot of time as it's another set of 60 levels, albeit altered to challenge the player.

Simply put, I want to focus on making the game as polished as possible, while retaining the amount of features at a point where I can easily maintain them. For instance, it takes much less time to add a new level, skin or an unlockable than a full blown separate game mode. This change will be also reflected in the game's pricing to set the proper expectations. I believe this change is necessary because at the present state, the game suffers from issues like balancing or bugs, and no amount of new features will counter that.

So, in short:

• The game is delayed to Q4 2023 to give me more time for polish and World 3.
  
• Vaults won't make it into the final release, and challenge mode will face a major overhaul to reduce the amount of time required to implement it, while retaining the "fun" associated with it.
  
• The new priority is to finish World 3, polish the already existing features, and add small content such as more skins, colors, secrets, etc.

I know some of you might be disappointed by the news, but hopefully this will result in an overall better game.

That is all for today's devlog. See you next time!

Daniel.

Tune in tomorrow (June 7th) at 9:30 PM CEST time for a YouTube premiere of the gameplay trailer for Jump Adventures, where I'll be unveiling the release date!

Hello and welcome to another devlog!

It's been a month since the first World 2 preview, and two since the last devlog. During that time, I managed to finalize World 2's gameplay, finished the initial work required for the Challenge Mode, and made some quality of life improvements. Along with that, I begun planning for World 3.

This time, I don't have any shiny new screenshots, but instead I have a ton of news to share!

In the last devlog, I revealed game modes as a temporary substitute for the initially missing level editor, however since then I made some big changes. Let's start with that.

After some consideration, I decided to remove Sandbox from the game as I realized there's no real need for it, and Experience earned in Challenge mode can be utilized in more creative ways than unlocking cheats in a separate game mode.

With this in mind, and the fact that the game's levels are mostly linear with little room for shortcuts, I decided to prioritize Challenge as a game mode focusing on precision, rather than being a speedrunning one.

Originally I planned Challenge to reward Experience based on time and amount of attempts, but I soon realized that this model doesn't fit nicely with the linear design of the levels. Let me present the alternative solution that I implemented.

For start, the amount of health you have is the same as in the default game mode, which is three. The reason for that will be explained further.

Each level now has a set maximum amount of Experience you can earn, and the final reward is calculated based on the remaining health and collectible bonuses. The idea now is, the more precise you are, the more Experience you will earn. Combined with the fact that levels in Challenge Mode will have their harder counterparts, makes up for an overall challenging gameplay, which is, well, the goal of the game mode.

That would be it for Challenge mode, but how about the new way to utilize Experience, you may ask? Well...

In the first ever devlog, I teased the possibility of unlockable level sections: which is precisely what I want to achieve with Vaults.

Vaults are little locked challenges scattered across levels. To get access to them, you need to earn Experience in Challenge Mode. Each vault contains it's own reward that you unlock after completing a small challenge.

I don't want to spoil a lot, so that's all I'm going to share about them. Expect to see them in action in the upcoming trailer!

World 2 is now pretty much complete when it comes to gameplay. The reception by playtesters was positive. The new mechanics were extensively praised, but there were major balancing issues that spoiled some levels. Luckily, using the feedback I received I was able to properly tweak them.

Moving on, let me provide input on the current progress of the game.

Generally speaking, I'm currently pushing for a Beta, which is set to be released somewhere in the next month. It means that I plan to finish all of the features by the end of May, with some additional time for World 3 in early June. The private betatesting will begin around the same time I'll be sharing a gameplay trailer, which will hopefully contain an accurate release date.

To achieve that, I decided to split big features into separate mini-projects and work on them in parallel, with little dependence on other grand features to be completed. This way, I have a better picture of progress as well as making it easier to plan the development.

One of these projects is obviously World 3, which is in a prototyping stage. I'm playing around with different mechanics to see what works best, but overall the goal with this world as well as the rest, is to find an interesting way to utilize polygonal level design. Previous worlds introduce their own spins on that plus new obstacles and elements.

While I have a general idea for the types of obstacles I want to introduce in World 3, I'm currently in progress of creating a new and interesting use of polygons that can contrast with the previous worlds. The final result will be visible in the gameplay trailer.

I'm unhappy with some of the UI in the game, so I'm working towards improving this. While most sections do not need massive changes, I believe there are some that could use some work, such as level selection screen and a pause menu.

One of the complaints of playtesters is the repetitive nature of the soundtracks, and under utilization of the dynamic soundtrack system. My plan is, apart from reworking some of the tracks, is to overhaul a dynamic soundtrack system to account for more parameters.

Initially, I wanted to do full on overhauls to the worlds. However, due to lack of time and resources, I decided to put this off for a future content update. Instead, I want to use the engine's lighting system, as well as enriching existing levels with more detail matching to their setting, and making sure they not only feel, but also look unique. Along with that, I'm going to polish some of the obstacle's visuals.

Luckily, with the already existing systems in place it shouldn't be a huge undertaking to implement, with most work being the art assets for icons and translations.

The footage and the description on the Steam page are severely outdated, and I'm working towards fixing that. This one will probably have to wait after the gameplay trailer.

The devlog is getting quite massive already, so I think it's time to wrap up. Thank you for following the progress for the game!

See you next time,
Daniel.