After only one day, Happy Wheels is ranked as the #1 free app in the iOS app store! Why? I don't know. I'm guessing a lot of you must have tried it out. It sure is exciting. Forget those apps that help you navigate home or communicate with your significant others. They have always been worthless. Repeated failure and human dismemberment are what's important in life. Thanks so very much to all the new and long term fans for putting the game where it currently is. I have no idea how long it will stay there.

I wanted to address a few things regarding the mobile game that some of you may be wondering about. As you may have noticed, there is no user level browser. There is also only one character available for the 15 levels we provided. The game was released this way because the most important thing was just to initially get Happy Wheels accepted into the Apple App Store. Segway guy is probably the most tame and easy to control of all the initial characters. Seeing irresponsible dad and his son explode as they are crushed under a van isn't the first thing I wanted the people responsible for judging the game to see. User levels introduce a huge risk where someone could release a level that violates some of Apple's guidelines and immediately get us taken down. This has never been a problem on the internet, where I can apparently put whatever the hell I want into the game.

Now that the game is in the store, and things like Mortal Kombat X exist, I think it's safe for us to slowly introduce the rest of the game. I know there are a lot of new casual players who have never seen the game before, and I'd like them all to know, preferably as soon as possible, that there is a lot more that they haven't seen. There will be a user level browser, and we will release "featured" levels for other characters as soon as we have some quality stuff.

As for the android version, we're very aware, especially after these last 24 hours, that there is a high demand. We're working on it. I can't even play the mobile game on my own phone until this happens, so I'm looking forward to it as well.

You can now download Happy Wheels for iOS. The approval came sooner than we expected. If you search for "happy wheels", we're currently the 22nd result, so you'll have to do some scrolling. It's exhausting, but possibly worth it.

I'll try and keep this short. Happy Wheels for iOS has been submitted to the App Store. The average wait time is 8 days. If it's approved, it should be available next week. Most of the info in this post is still accurate except for two big details. First, we're starting small and launching with just the first chapter featuring 15 levels for Segway Guy (known as "Business Guy" in iOS). We'll add more later. Second, the download will be free with ad support. For $1.99 you can remove ads (and this will also unlock future chapters as they become available). Here's the video I promised you about 100 years ago. Watch it at 720p for 60 frames per second.

If you hadn't guessed by the title of this post, there's going to be a Happy Wheels cartoon! I'm actually pretty excited about it now that it appears to be happening. Bunim-Murray, creators of the educational Kardashian series and the Real World, contacted me with interest in creating a digital series, and we eventually worked something out. The series will be part of Machinima's new programming slate.

Yesterday I attended Machinima's newfronts event where they announced Happy Wheels along with several other new series. There was free pizza. I met RoboCop, and I discovered we had a lot in common. As far as work is concerned, it's very rare for me to be involved in anything with other people, so it was a nice change to be networking with other living individuals in my field.

In case you were worried, the vast majority of my time will still be spent on video game development as that is still what I enjoy most. I will only be participating in this series in an advisory, creative role. However, based on early discussions, it seems like they are very much on board with creating something true to the game and have already shown me they are very capable. I've already had to come up with a lot of character information Happy Wheels history that I had never even thought of before. I'll keep everyone updated on how things progress.

** Update 5/7/15 **

I added in a collision value 7 for shapes, which will only collide with characters. I also fixed collision values 5 and 6 to work how they were originally intended. Old published levels will be unaffected, but may perform differently for you if loaded in the level editor.

Oh god....just looked at my last news post date, and I can't believe I've been fixing my last broken update for multiple weeks now. It involved so much reworking of old code, and is all the more evidence that starting from scratch is a much more effective process. I think it's finally stable though, and I added in a few additional things...

1. polygon shapes can now scale
2. you can easily revert art and polygon shapes back to their original scale
3. you can flip art and polygon shapes on their horizontal axis
4. art and shape counts have been greatly increased. If it runs terribly, it's your fault, JERK!

Most likely I will be updating this post again after discovering my failings, or with a few new minor feature updates.

Besides that, it seems official that I'm going to be working with some people on some non-game related Happy Wheels stuff. I'll be less vague when stuff starts happening.

And with a random plug... a friend of mine recently released a music video and needs some views... please check it out here.


** OK... I just uploaded a video of me drawing something with the new stuff RIGHT HERE.

 

In an update that took a lot longer than expected, I've just now added in a new art tool which should be very helpful for drawing complicated shapes. Originally polygon shapes could be interactive or non-interactive. Instead, all polygons must now be interactive, and previous art polygons are now art shapes. Art shapes are superior as they will allow you to draw using bezier curves, and are completely scalable. Each vertex of each shape will have its own handles which control the curve of the line. When placing vertices and creating your shape, click, hold and drag your mouse to adjust the handles.

I've also put the whole drawing of shapes process into the undo chain, so you can undo and redo the drawing of your shape like everything else in the editor. Once created, you can now double click on polygon or art shapes (using the arrow tool) to manually edit their vertices. You can delete vertices with delete, and create new vertices by selecting a vertex and hitting enter. Double click on vertices in art shapes to show their bezier handles if they are hidden. Drag them back into the vertex to remove them and use straight lines.

Artshapes, unlike polygon shapes, are scaleable with a,s,d,w.

I think that's it. I originally put a version of this into a developmental version of the game to assist in building levels for the iphone game. It then seemed like a waste not to reuse the code in the full game, so here it is. I will now go back to my work on the sequel. uhhhh... SEEYA!

So I've been making more small changes that are at least worth mentioning in a new post.

• A fullscreen option is now available in the options menu or level editor drop down menu. This will make the level editor easier to use. It may perform much worse if your computer is old. I would set blood setting to 2, as that is the only vector blood setting and will scale up nicely. Press escape at any time to exit fullscreen. Because I can't change the escape key functionality, it no longer brings up the in-game menu. You must now hit Tab, R to restart levels. IT FEELS TERRIBLE RIGHT NOW, but I am confident that everyone can adapt over time.
• Groups can now  have their collision values changed with triggers. This will only affect regular shapes in the group, not special items.
• Trigger delay has been extended to 30 seconds
• fixed some more bugs maybe 5 people knew about
• I really really have to go eat some lunch right now.

*** added two more things

• groups can now be set to fixed angle, which will prevent them from rotating. This would be good for something like a ferris wheel, where the whole thing rotates, but the carts attached to it remain upright.
• a fullscreen button has been added to the mid-game popup menu. If you accidentally hit esc and lose fullscreen, you can now restore it without having to go all the way back to the options menu.