Category: World 4

I haven’t released anything online in forever, and now seems like a pretty good time to do that, with everyone stuck inside…

So! I’m finally releasing Super Fancy Pants online as World 4, in pieces (it’s a pretty big game, after all), part 1 will be the Basement Spire, part 2 (not to be confused with SFPA ch.2!) Squiggleville Plains, etc.

Enjoy some good ol’ fashion Fancy Pants and stay safe (and fancy)!

Part 1:

Oh man has it been awhile. I absolutely love keeping everyone a behind the scenes view while I’m working on a game, but World 4 is just a huge game. Since new info has been pretty scarce lately, I wanted to give you guys a nice big unfiltered view of World 4, so I enlisted my 4-year-old and Fancy Pants testing enthusiast Seth to run though a few of the earlier levels.

We run and stomp and attack through 3 full levels, and hey, if this was World 1, that would be the entire game already! Like I said, World 4 is going to be HUGE, so I hope that at least makes up for the lack of development updates in the end. Let me know if you enjoy this type of video, it’s still quicker than planning something specific (I do way too many re-takes), and I’ve worked the bugs out of the recording processes.

I think it was getting passed Seth’s bedtime near the end there, he was going nuts O.O

Since Fairly’s taken over the social media site places, new images and info tend to show up on those quicker than on the site, since I’ve been pretty much animating all day. Here’s some catchup, if you haven’t seen them!

Playing around with some new styles for World 4, what do you think?

Been working on a few new animations for World 4’s story. Want to see? 😀

…what could be out there?

Three years since my last video, six since the 1st World 3 Report. Yikes!

Still can’t upload a video on time to save my life, but man am I out of practice. Tried to put my dumb face on video to say hi and start the new series out but that just wasn’t working out, maybe once I’m back in the swing of things again.

Now go, watch, FEED IT VIEWS, BEG FOR MORE VIDEOS 😉

Last image I posted showed off the crazy amount of backgrounds I have for the cave level, with the bit of ground in there being closer to the earlier sketchy FPA style. This time around, different styles will actually be of some importance, rather than whatever I can scratch into the computer at the time. Since it’s Dr. Seuss’s birthday, it seemed like a good time to show of a later part of the level, which uses a more solid, physical style that’s partly inspired by Ted Geisel’s amazing, twisty landscapes.

The question, of course, is what happened to cause landscape to change, but I’ll leave that up to speculation for now 😎

We still haven’t been updating as much as we had hoped (totally my fault), but maybe this will make it up to you guys.

I’d like to present, the first ever official World 4 screenshot:

What can I say, caves and The Fancy Pants Adventures go pretty hand in hand. I think World 4 will be much better at contextualizing level locations, though (I love the reason you end up there, but that’s a secret for now :X )

I’m still playing around with the style, I’ve always loved the old scribbly style of World 1 (hence the Remix), but you’ll be seeing more diversity this time around. I look forward to running some new styles by you guys, so stay tuned!

– Brad

Wanted to share this earlier, but the whole house somehow managed to get runny noses (except me… somehow…).

Now I know if looks like a simple animation, but-

ACK, I’ve already said too much! *runs away*

😎

Just one more art update until we get to the good stuff, promise!

Fancy Pants Adventures has always been most personal to me, it’s always a reflection of my skills at the time, and I’ve always made them as simply the games that I want to play. One aspect of the game, however, that’s been heavily influenced by player feedback has been the parkour influence. Even from the beginning, I’ve seen players excited about playing a ‘parkour platformer’ (which there seems to be criminally few of), and since the style certainly goes well with FPA, I’ve let more and more moves creep throughout the series (remind me to go over the original influences one day… And no it’s not just Sonic :P).

So, figured I should just ask you wonderful people. Would you like to see more obviously parkour influenced moves in World 4, or push the series to be more unique?

Either way, parkour makes for some great poses to draw Fancy Pants Man in :woot:

– Brad

Hey guys, Brad finally here! Been wanting to post some art for awhile, there was supposed to be something for New Years but I ended up liking it more than I thought I would and spent too much time on it, heh (though part of it ended up as a cover photo).

I picked up an iPad Pro and have been able to finally draw and work on the game away from my desk, which is far better for the more creative stage of the project. Took a bit of time to adjust to a new workflow, but it definitely helps when I want to, say, drop new images with hints and such for you guys 😉

Got a lot more coming soon, so stay tuned!

Combat is going to have a much larger role in World 4, so it has to be really, really good!

What do you think of the new up swing attack?

Now you can do a golf swing wherever you want, not just at the beginning of World 2!

But I’m sure you want to try it out for yourself, so stay tuned!

I’ve been working on some crazy things since the last update, and I have a cool surprise coming up, but I wanted to make another summary post about all the things I’ve been adding to the engine in the meantime.

Parse

From Googling around, I seem to be the only person who’s actually gotten Parse working in Flash ever, which is just nuts because it’s exactly what every Flash developer needs: an easy way to save player data online. If it would be worth it for anyone for me to make a post solely on how to get that working, shoot me an email or leave a comment.

To test this out, I have a handful of hats in the build online and a race level (you must be registered and logged in to this site for it to work, I’ve added a Facebook login to make this even easier. And no I’ll never spam your Facebook wall, yuck). There’s also scoreboards for the fastest times there and the highest juggling combos. Which leads me to the next thing…

Hats

Yep! Future FPA online games will have collectible hats (and maybe other accessories?), and with Parse, all unlockables will carry over to all future games! Load up the alpha, click anywhere on the screen, and select a hat to check out the networked saving and loading.

ScaleForm

I’m still baffled by how incredible ScaleForm is, and how few people seem to know about it. Plays Flash games on mobile, hardware accelerated, ridiculously fast, with full touch support, it’s nuts. ‘Flash doesn’t play on mobile so it’s clearly teh doomed!’ is an even sillier thing to say now.

This is the main reason this update is so late, I’ve been getting the current build running on my phone (no Adobe Air, no nasty spritesheets, no piles of external level bitmaps), and get the Flash game running at 60fps with some trickery.

This is actually a pretty huge thing for the online game also, it’ll run at 60 fps if your computer is fast enough, 15 fps if it’s too slow, and anywhere in between. Even if the game stutters, the code will take that into account and updates properly, so it’ll control more smoothly than before.

Changing the movement system introduced a bunch of new bugs (of course, ugh), but I think most of them are taken care of now. Let me know if you find anything, though!

We’ll see if this means I can actually launch future FPA games on mobile myself (the core FPA games are really demanding and uses Flash in ways that it usually isn’t). In the very least, I’ll be able to make smaller mobile games myself in the future.

That’s it for now! Stay tuned, though, I’m working on a cool surprise for the Level 1 from World 1 that’s in the engine right now, and I’ll have some more info on future plans!

– Brad

It’s a new year and The Fancy Pants Adventures has an entirely new engine! I spent most of last year learning AS3 and building some Fancy Pants with it, which is the main reason I had even less to post about than usual.

I tried to start that year off with a video, but then everyone in the house got sick and I only got halfway through recording it. Until I can get back to that, though, I wanted to make a summary post of what’s going on at the moment.

New engine, new feel

Moving to AS3 lets me do some pretty cool new stuff, but my first priority is to make sure FPA feels and controls better than ever before. I worked on having a weightier jump and more consistent acceleration, as well as better control over steep slopes. Nearly everything has been rewritten and rethought from the ground up, though, so I hope you can feel the difference!

New features for future FPA

Now for the cool stuff! I’ve expanded moving platforms to moving walls and moving ground pieces. Organic, hand drawn ground are a big part of FPA’s identity, so now parts of that ground can move, rotate, rock, stretch, and spring.

Enough talk, give us something to play!

Yes, yes, here it is!

Fancy Pants Moving Grounds Test

And One More!

I’ve also been working on some crazy networking stuff (crazy for me, at least). It’s in there if you want to register on BorneGames.com to check it out, but I’ll save most of that for its own post.