Hello,

I should have written a few news posts since the last one, but I didn't. Since then a few things have been added to the game.

Polygon shapes have been available for a while now. There has been a lot of confusion with there usage so I will try to clarify things in a nice list:

- There is a big difference in functionality when changing the polygon tool from interactive and non-interactive. If you're telling me the polygon tool is broken, you probably didn't uncheck interactive when attempting to draw.

- Interactive polygons are limited in their shape. Shapes can only be convex polygons. This means no inner angle of any vertex can be over 180 degrees, and no edges can overlap each other. Shapes must also be drawn in a clockwise manner and have 10 vertices max. This is done in order to not break the physics of the game.

- Non-interactive shapes have nothing to do with physics, so they have no limitations other than the number of vertices (50). Click while holding shift to end the non-interactive shape early without filling it. You can use this to draw lines.

- Use ctrl+click to remove the last vertex you placed with the polygon tool.

- You cannot change the interactive value once a polygon shape is placed. This was an easier solution than checking if your random art piece obeyed the physics rules, which it probably did not. (also, slight laziness)

- Polygons can't be scaled. There were too many things to consider in order for me to allow it. However, there's no size restriction on them... they just have to fit on stage.


That's the end of the list.

There's now a much improved color selector in the editor. When you choose a certain color, a brightness and saturation spectrum is displayed. Left to right is saturation, and up and down determine brightness. The brightest, most saturated version of that hue will be always be at the top right. You can save and delete custom colors with the plus and minus buttons. Additionally, when dragging colors on the spectrum, you can drag off of the color selector and grab colors from anything in the background.

And finally, there is the new vehicle feature. When selecting a group containing that contains at least one interactive shape, you now have the option of converting that group into a controllable vehicle. Any character you eject can control this vehicle once they've grabbed onto it. I think I will start a new list:

- When first creating a vehicle, you'll notice all of the interactive shapes inside will glow blue. These shapes will act as the handles for the vehicle. If you'd only like for one particular shape (such as a steering wheel) to act as the handle, double click into the group and disable the handle property for the other shapes.

- Leaning is set to zero by default, so be sure to raise this if you'd like the user to be able to lean left and right on the vehicle.

- Pressing up and down while operating the vehicle will operate attached joints. So for example, a wheel is placed on stage (not inside the vehicle), and then attached to the vehicle with a joint. The wheel's top speed and direction are determined by the joint's properties, not the vehicle's.

- Joints attached to a vehicle can be set so they are not controlled by the vehicle.

- Jets and arrowguns that are jointed to the vehicle can be controlled. Set spacebar, shift, and ctrl abilities in the vehicle properties.

- If you'd like to limit the rotation of a jet attached to the vehicle, it's best to set the joint limits to 0 and 0. This will allow the jet to rotate, but it will stay in the correct angle relative to the vehicle.

- You can actually attach vehicles to each other with joints, and they will be controlled by each other. I haven't done anything too crazy with this, but I imagine you can do some very cool stuff. I might also make it so any joint connected to a vehicle indirectly (a joint connected to a shape that is joined to a vehicle elsewhere) could be controlled by the vehicle. With this you could make a whole chain of joints flex or retract upon keypresses. That would have to be cool... I think.



OK! I think that's the end of it. This may be my longest post. Vehicles have been cool, but I definitely think I have to add some better sounds in there. Perhaps adding a sound property to running joints, and possibly selectable impact sounds for shapes. In any case, I'm seeing a lot of very cool stuff being made with the new tools. On Saturday, the top 50 for the day were all pretty great. I don't know if I've ever seen that before. Thanks so much to everyone participating. A higher quality community will definitely inspire others and lead to even better submissions.

I'll probably make another post soon with a bunch of other crap I forgot.

Today I set it so users can only submit one public level per 24 hours.

I was looking through top rated levels yesterday. I can't keep playing the one where you are lawnmower man and you drop through glass with the little child. I've seen it 800 times and it doesn't warrant its apparent popularity. I went to the author's page, and I noticed he had submitted 20 other levels that day and nothing else. All of them were copied. I checked another author and it was the same thing.

There's not reason for anyone to be submitting more than one level per day. Those who do are more often than not spamming unoriginal crap. If you happen to have actually made 2 quality levels in one sitting, then save that one for tomorrow.

People have also mentioned a problem with Santa. If you hold spacebar and up, you cannot press left and lean backwards. Unfortunately this problem has always existed because of stupid keyboards. The same thing happens with wheelchair guy. For some reason, spacebar, up, and right is completely fine.

The only solution would be to put in an option to change your key setup, so I'll do that soon.

Now lunch.

...also, I was supposed to mention a few other things. User Mystic is now a mod.

A lot of crap is clogging up the user levels, and I'd really like to change that.

Please, no more "signing" levels. This is basically reposting a level which is identical to someone else's original, but putting your name or some message into it. The level browser shouldn't be used as some retarded message board. It sucks to see 3 or more levels in the top rated which are nearly identical.

No more "rate 5 and restart" bullshit. Or "rate 5 and restart to see my shitty made up glitch". There will never be anything fancy occurring due to you voting a certain way. Don't vote this stuff up.

Signed levels, restart levels, and all other crap of that nature will now be deleted. Obvious clones will be deleted. I just had to state this here before doing so, so people know what's going on.

I think that's all, but I'm probably forgetting something again.

Happy New Year!

Hey guys,

I've been meaning to make a post about the Santa update. WHAT YOU ARE READING RIGHT NOW WILL BE THAT POST.

If you didn't notice, Santa Claus is now the eighth playable character in Happy Wheels. He's the first character to consist of 3 people. He also has no wheels. That's ok, I made this game and I will do whatever the hell I want! Understand? The next couple characters will probably be a bit simpler.

At this pace, all 25 slots will be filled in only 4 years! I hope flash still exists by then. I will try to go faster I guess.

I am still up in the air about what the I'd like to keep doing. The month of December was absurdly amazing in terms of traffic. Thanks to some very popular youtube channels, traffic has tripled from the previous high. Also, thanks very much to Adura, we've made some great backend optimizations, and the site can actually handle the traffic. All of that seems to clearly be telling me to continue working on the flash version of the game. I'll most likely end up dividing my time between this and continuing to learn c++/opengl (I think I've rambled on about this before, but got sidelined by Santa). I've got so many stupid, smaller, simpler ideas for other games I'd like to make. In any case, thanks so much to everyone for playing Happy Wheels this past year and allowing me to continue doing what I think I'm supposed to be doing.

By the way, 1.52 was just a few Santa bug fixes as well as error handling stuff Jason did that should eliminate blue loading screens.

The next thing I do in the game might be a simple drawing tool, or zombies that attack your character. The next thing I will do in real life is plan my dinner.

Happy New year in a few days.

******** it seems the blue screen is currently occurring most in chrome. Things seem to be ok for me in Firefox. Chrome's built in flash plugin has also been the culprit in changing replay accuracy. Until we know exactly what's up, use Firefox **********

Hello friends,

It's Friday at 1:30 pm, possibly our busiest time, and the site seems to be working pretty well. That hasn't happened in a while. It is most likely due to Adura fixing some level caching bug that was broken at some point in time by someone (very possibly me). We HAVE noticed this blue screen bug occasionally when loading levels, so we are trying to fix that now.

Yesterday I gathered a group of friends and we did some voice recording. Mine came out terrible, but that's ok as I'm already wheelchair guy and irresponsible dad (so I still feel cool). We have several new sets of screams and grunts now, so reused character voices can be replaced. The new character will also have it's own set.

We are in a new office space, so I have to find all new lunch spots. I will make an attempt now.

Hi. Jason here. Version 1.50 is now up. We've added blade weapons. You can join them to NPCs or group them and make more complex hazards. They're similar to the spike panels in that they can stab the torso or head, the latter being fatal.

Thanks to those of you who reported bugs. Several of them have now been fixed. First, when editing a level, zooming out once again increases the movement of selected shapes when presssing the arrow keys. This feature was accidentally disabled with a previous update. Second, the trash can appearing above the cannon was fixed. Third, you can now filter levels with the explorer guy. And finally, when lawnmower man runs over rail objects, it no longer causes issues. We're still looking into a problem with the joints. Continue sending bugs to fancyforce[at]gmail[dot]com.

We haven't posted in a while, but we are in fact working on Happy Wheels (well, at the moment Jim is playing a way intense video game that was released today, so I'm not sure how much will get done at the moment).

The was a setback with the forums, so there is no ETA on when they'll be back. We know it's very important for everyone to have a place to troll, so we'll have them up eventually. If you have a bug to report, please email fancyforce[at]gmail[dot]com and put "bug" in the subject. Please explain your bug as best you can and include links to examples, if possible.

If you haven't noticed, update 1.49 added the cannon object as well as food items. A mute button was added to the gameplay menu. This also fixed the jet noise bug. Also, when testing a level, pressing the "f" key now adds a temporary red dot at your characters' location. This is helpful for cannon levels or any time your character is airborn and you want to know where it will land. This tutorial explains it pretty well: >http://goo.gl/G8CIT

We should have a small update by the end of next week. We're moving offices as well.

Jim is working on a new character and it should be ready by mid-December. Begin your wild speculation now.