Hello again,
I must apologise that I have not released any information for a while. As I have said before - I know how important developer blogs are to let you know what we are up to. In this case, I started writing this a few weeks back and then I end up showered in errors( of my own making) :( Mostly I just like to get on with stuff :)   Beyond that, I have said it before … I find writing frustrating at best :P



So, after The Flight School update at Xmas with the Giant Alligator, we kind of threw things up in the air, purposefully of course! I know many of you were expecting a V3 beta update, it didn't happen ( YET! ) and  I shall try to explain why in this post, also I hope to explain what we are working on so you can get an idea of what's happening next in the immediate future and what will follow.

I'll start with what we were going to do. We had intended to follow up the V2 Flight School update with a quick update primarily to help you physically move things around and new toilet overflow system for making unlocked activities like "Giant saddle on Alligator" or "Shark Blimp” or flying "Megladon" much easier to “reactivate” and then we were going to release another V3 beta in the new year. Well, it didn't go as planned and in typical Gaz and Hal style, we changed our minds and decided to smash both those updates into one action… I shall explain why but first:

If you are reading this blog with no idea what V2 and V3 are… Welcome! To be honest I am not sure I know any more. They are terms we use to describe developments, but things have changed so much. So as I write this - this is how we think of V2 and V3 or to be more specific the version of Amazing Frog? that we are actively working on.

V2 describes for us the active version of Amazing Frog? this is defined by being on Steam and also the pocket mode available on IOS this version is built in Unity 4.7.2 and has the downside of being built in older tech but the benefit of having years of content added.

V3 describes the newer version of Amazing Frog? that we have been working on in the latest version of Unity it has a much higher resolution environment a day-night cycle is built on much better architecture and we are actively building online multiplayer for it (but have not released that yet)… the downside is it does not have as much content as V2

V is effectively short for “version”. Version 1 was the version on OUYA back when we started, Version 2 we released on Steam and Version 3 is the "future". But just to confuse things I may well change all that. As V2 is changing. The work we are doing on V2 should allow us to distribute it on more platforms meaning there will be multiple versions of V2 more so than just Steam and pocket mode. But I will talk about that in a bit first why has there not been a V3 Beta Holiday Update?



So why didn't the V3 beta update happen in the new year? A lot of it comes down prioritising out time in line with an overall plan of action. Ultimately, we want to make Amazing Frog? available for more platforms and be able to keep updating it. Last year we made some big steps in this direction, but our methods were slightly flawed and needed change. Basically, in October our intension was for V3 to replace V2 so we would carry on just working on one project - V3. For some time we have felt that V2 was dying, left behind by progressing technology. Our solution to this dilemma was always V3 a new version and also a chance to erase our mistakes and build something cleaner and more professional. Perhaps blinded by pride and ambition we felt the best course of action was for V3 to replace V2. We converted what we felt we needed from V2 to augment what we had created for V3 and throughout 2019 were of the mindset that V3 would replace V2 and during this ongoing process, we spawned the V3 beta of Halloween 2019. Unfortunately, we started to see the error of our ways in that we had approached this process with the wrong mentality. We found ourselves saying things like -  We don’t need X or Y feature from V2 as we can simply “recreate” feature  X or Y as we continue V3 development. This process was going to force us to spend more of our time building and not leave us in a position to release much. One example of this is that I didn't take any of the weapons or pick up mechanics from V2 as I reprogrammed holding items to work with a new character system in V3 (honestly its much better in V3)

V3 started to feel like it should be a sequel and not a successor. In thinking of V3 as the successor to V2 it paled in comparison. It was like going back to the barren Amazing Frog? versions of 2015 before we had added sharks even, but with better models, nicer mechanics and real-time lighting. It was beginning to feel like we were taking leaps backwards for the sake of some more contemporary technology. Obviously, we are not going to stop Developing V3, we want a day-night cycle, we want frog fingers! we want online multiplayer and we want to make “F.A.P.S". a thing… but we are not ready to lose everything else that we have built up over the past few years in V2 and the dilemma is we couldn’t integrate what we have in V2 without rebuilding it all so we changed our philosophy.



I was not happy with how I was rushing V3 to replace V2 - As December 2019 approached, we wanted to deliver a “fun” V3 Beta Update.  I found I was just taking things from V2 to make V3 better and started to feel uncomfortable with this approach. V3 needed more time and careful consideration to be as fun as V2. From a development point of view, for me as the programmer at least -  there is a certain clarity and purity about V3. This is because it allows me to build more complex core systems, like Multiplayer, and integrate them from the ground up.  Rushing content in was breaking the integrity of the project and not what V3 was supposed to be.  Xmas is always a panic month for us, I no longer remember Xmas without an Amazing Frog? Update and honestly, I love it. Throughout 2019 we had planned to replace V2 with V3, but by the time November hit I realised how this was not a possibility in the short term. I distracted myself by making a Xmas V2 mobile version. I didn't think it was possible any more as Unity 4 was so out of date. Nonetheless, for a distraction, I thought I would give it a go and with some weird workarounds I found a way and put the Xmas content onto Apple and I found myself in V2 project again with Xmas knocking at the door for a Steam update...

So I made a giant Alligator, OK?

Initially, I was just experimenting, but after chatting with Hal we decided to go all out on the Flight school Update for a bit. We had kind of shelved Flight School in April or May after the Drone Update in favour of concentrating all our energy and resource on V3. Simply put - I couldn’t bear not having a “Holiday update” So we reactivated it, crunched and launched that at Xmas…




We had been prepping a V3 Beta update… Among other things, Hal made onesies for every outfit from v2 into an actual onesie in the V3 Beta that you can change into (if unlocked in V2)… We were pretty excited.  We made the cars better and more of them, added a film studio, replaced the landscape with a higher detailed Landscape, fixed a bunch of the silly door bugs like when you enter the… Hal made a Xmas light generator… and we hung a few pictures in the Gallery.



Actually we did a bunch of stuff we are always making progress, but for now, we put a pin in V3.






In January Hal and I had a careful think about where we were with development. Subsequently, we took the difficult decision to convert EVERYTHING from the V2 flight school update to Unity 2019.3 (the software we build V3 in). Once we had come to terms with the inevitable fact that V3 was not ready to replace V2 there was only one road we could walk down and we have gone all out on that route.

A complete conversion of V2 with no content left behind opens many new doors too. It's a big change in direction, but one we are both pretty happy with. Some times you have to analyse your actions very critically and break a few things to make progress.  Maybe not in a “Thanos” way… Disclaimer -  We are not advocates of Thanos' philosophies, but more in and eggs and omelette kind of way.



There are still a few outstanding issues from me in the systems conversion, but this has given Hal plenty of time to go nuts on the V2 landscape. So much is now possible in V2 now the project is in 2019.3, trees, rocks, water landscape features would now be available in V2. Making the world feel much more as we originally intended but could not originally achieve. In some tests, it has run better on my older laptop than Flight school. Finally, V2 is taking advantage of newer processors and graphics cards.

More detail does make it easier to get lost in SwindonShire.



Its been a really productive few months and I think we are on the cusp of our best update ever. The oddest thing is its V2 update.. only it doesn’t feel like V2 any more.



I cannot lie converting the ENTIRE project from unity 4.7.2 to Unity 2019.3 has not been without its issues, but...



Grass…



I can’t tell you how long we wanted grass….and lawn.



trees...



and rocks...



rocks and trees...



did I mention trees?



cos we have trees now



and metal trees obviously





And better water… (with wildlife in it)





I hope the images explain what we are doing. I always feel there is so much more to say. I was going to talk about the pitfalls and problems we had with “game design” if you can call it that. Like how the balloon Jet pack, for example, has been a hindrance as much as an advantage in designing what features we add next to the game. Or how we feel about just being 2 developers and should we expand? Or that GDC got postponed, or like how we will make it easier to move big objects around and not take a day to get a saddle on a giant alligator or the Hat app or more practical things like building a Fayju account system so you can save data across platforms and not lose it, or that we will output Flight school to iOS and Android with split-screen, very soon.. Or what platforms we want to take Amazing Frog? to this year...There is so much to talk about and honestly, I never know where to begin or end with these posts...


but I will say this - Thanks for playing Amazing Frog? I can’t say it enough - we love working on it and are so grateful that we can.

It just doesn’t feel like Xmas unless I am rushing an update out for Amazing Frog?  - And So Flight School is now available in SwindonShire.

The doors to flight school can now be opened.  Learn to be a pilot also if you are really committed to the fly, you may be able to earn your wings…

Had a lot of fun making this one and to be honest some of the new stuff is a little experimental and honestly, I am not sure what's going to happen to a lot of if. Riding the Alligators is now more as we wanted, I should have fixed that ages ago. The trouble with Xmas updates, in fact, most updates for Amazing Frog? is there is always something else that can be added or fixed!

Ultimately We are going to need a bigger boat.

We put the grotto back in the town centre if you feel like thrashing around in the snow…Also, it gives us a reason to do another update to move the grotto back to the mountain. Don’t forget to check the changelog

(PS V3 Winter update is also close, I’ll write more about it all when I have had some sleep)

Welcome to The First V3 Beta. You can access it by selecting  " v3_public_betas" You can access Betas by right-clicking the game name and going to properties. There should be a tab to Betas. Select the 'V3_public_betas' option. If you cannot see the beta in the list try restarting Steam.



It's in beta so we expect things to be a bit unstable, please let us know of any problems. Currently, we have only built support for Windows 64 bit. This is only the beginning, there is a long way to go, but there will certainly be a lot more regular updates from here on.



I don’t really have the words to explain just how excited Hal and I are about this milestone. We have been trying to get V3 into your hands for ages, this is just the beginning though and I expect it won't work for everyone, but we are going to resolve that.



Although I will probably start on the from tomorrow ...

First off sorry for the silence. We have been busy with Amazing Frog? development and I never really know when is a good time to share. I want to tell you about what we have been up to since April It's basically all been about getting a V3 update out there. We are pretty close now and the release of our first V3 update feels like a big milestone for us. Before I talk about what's coming up in the next update I feel like its worth a look back at the time Amazing Frog? has spent in Early Access. Since we are really hoping to come out of Early Access very soon.  So we scribbled down some thoughts of our Early Access Journey into a cheap sketchy timeline.



Of course this timeline you can pretty much see in the ChangeLog. This is not an app we intend to abandon in the upcoming Updates (some we will lose). As we move into V3 The Change Logs will persist as will (hopefully) most of the save data. I am looking forward to writing the f0.3.1 entry ( I may skip the letters at the end of the versions moving forward but…)




Well the natural progression for us after the Drone update was to continue with Helicopters and airplanes, it just didn’t work out like that. What it eventually came down to was the real purpose of adding helicopters. They are needed to pick up large objects and move them around, swing giant wrecking balls etc…We wanted players to be able to move things around more easily. It got to the point where we couldn’t see it happening using the "old school physics” of Unity 4, I mean the more recent V2 blimps could have been much better. Basically, we had taken V2 as far as we could. We toyed with the idea of making a definitive V2 “Gold Master” version that we could distribute on other platforms, but, ultimately the natural progression is only forward and on with V3,  to secure Amazing Frog? s ongoing development….So Flight School had to be postponed
As you can see from the timeline entries of V3 attempts, the scary problem was that we had not actually been able to produce the same level of ‘fun’ with the newer versions of Unity. Every route that we had tried to build Amazing Frog? into newer versions of Unity had always resulted in rigid, realistic, but ultimately, unstable physics.  It was great how things look and some of the newer features and capabilities of the more recent versions of Unity are super helpful and have led to so many possibilities for loading and managing content and just simply put all the boring stuff that makes games happen that we don’t often talk about but is insanely important. Yet with every encounter of the newer versions of Unity, It was almost like the physics was forcing us to be too “real world”.
So In March I decided to Start again line by line, system by system and rebuild. I’m not going to lie, it took a while and I often had this nervous feeling that I was taking us down a path that may end up leading nowhere. When we got to summer things started to look much brighter. The project was intact, I could make builds, and most importantly the frog was behaving like “Amazing Frog?” and not generic rag doll biped individual. Now we have a more stable “Amazing Frog?” with a more sustainable future proof environment to continue the development of the Universe. After all, to continue the development of what we think is the most important thing we have ever made is all we really wanted.


I wish there was a magic brush where I could convert every aspect of V2 into V3, but it doesn’t really work like that. Fortunately, much of the stuff since Grapple hooks has been programmed to exist in more recent versions of Unity and is less difficult to keep, but some of the older stuff is difficult to retain. But the benefits of much of the rebuild are now becoming more apparent. For example the water physics, You will have to wait to “see”( or play) that to see how different it is, but it just feels worth it. On the downside, it also means everything in the sea needed reprogramming or restructuring. Or the lighting V2 was dependant on static lightmaps baked into the environment, V3 we have a day-night system… but that means many objects like cars or lamposts and all sorts of ‘other’ things need daytime aware programming. That's just the tip of the iceberg.



Having said that, we are trying not to lose stuff. Even though you will encounter many changes to an already established environment,  we are also taking steps to keep older features active. Take for example the new frog. Just like the sharks and alligators, the water physics-ness had to be rebuilt for the frog, but also the look. The situation with the frog’s new clothes demonstrates some of the wider issues we have been facing in this upgrade process. The new frog has interchangeable clothes with physical rendering, puffa jackets, T-shirts hoodies, etc.. but most of the characterization of V2 worked through a more old school “skins” process. It's going to take a long time to recreate all of those “outfits” with physical (modeled) clothing. ( we will… we will, but not all at once) In the meantime, we came up with a way for the new frog to “wear” the old frog if that makes sense. But since the old outfits that you may have unlocked would not be able to work moving forward in the new Frog wardrobe system we came up with a way to physically archive them and still have access to them.




There are many established activities in Amazing Frog? Getting to The Moon, Unlocking the Magical Mystery Toilet, killing the Megladon, discovering the balloon jetpack, many of which we will have to divert or close off for the first few updates. We have even been debating if the Moon can work or if we even want to keep the Moon at all and if we do in what format. So we may need to lock some things off ...even if just temporarily. There are many things we just don’t know what the deal is yet. Take for example the Magical Mystery Toilet… We have put a few things through in our testing but we can’t be 100% sure what will happen with everything anymore (as if we ever knew)


I don’t really like making promises for an update date as I hate disappointing people if I fail. But October seems as good a month as any to get an update out. Last year I think we launched a Halloween update on the 1st of November which is pretty typical for us… and it was a bit broken :) But I want to get something "playable" for you all within a couple of weeks. I can’t promise what shape that will take. I may close off a lot of the world or features, but if I close off too much I will launch a beta rather than a replacement update... I DON'T KNOW, but it's only in the past few weeks that I have felt capable to commit to saying something like this and so write a "Frog Blog"
Also, for those who read this post on https://amazingfrog.com/amazing-frog-frog-blog-031-october/ I am trying to be a little more organized with posts. I always end up posting something at 3 am on a Friday night when it's just finished. As we move forward will try and post to Steam at better times :) If you want to get ahead of the game follow me on twitter or instagram. @fayju or get on the discord, If I post a premature beta it will appear there then I​ will get the assets together afterwards to make a "post"

Firstly, welcome to the new Drones Update for Amazing Frog?. We have wanted to include drones in the game for some time now. Not just because we wanted to use them to generate fancy cinematic camera angles to make a decent trailer ( …still pending… ), but also because you get to fly around like a maniac and explore Swindon Shire in a whole new way. You can explore areas you might want to be able to go. Part of Amazing Frog? has always been that as a new player it's difficult to escape Swindon. We used to enjoy that there would be an element of surprise when you eventually scaled the wall and realized you were in a larger world.





There are two types of Drones, one is more like a traditional camera drone with stabilization and has simpler controls, the other is more of a freestyle drone with twin stick controls. The freestyle one can be a bit tricky to master, but we have been finding it a lot of fun especially threading the multi story car park.





Obviously, it's an Amazing Frog? update … so there are some other things in there to discover. The pigs have not returned yet, we are working on something that will bring them back to SwindonShire and that will be available soon… In the meantime,  if you need to get somewhere snappy,  you might be able to find something else you can hitch a ride on.



The other main purpose of this update is that it contains some fixes and stabilization, I don’t think the last version was working particularly well. Had I not been so wrapped up in V3 and all the multiplayer code, I might have noticed sooner. Thank you to everyone who reaches out to me from the community to tell me about issues with the game, like leaving out the FrogMilk Coffee Co App Activation… Doh!  Also, genuinely, I’m really sorry I left Santa’s Grotto in the car park until March. (…again…) I think subconsciously, I just want to prolong Xmas because it's my favorite time of year.  Realistically, I just got distracted with development and was spending my time in a completely different environment where frogs actually have fingers.

So what have we been up to? Well, we launched the pocket version of Amazing Frog? on iOS at the beginning of January and then we began working exclusively on the multiplayer side of V3. We have been trying to push to a place when we can release the first alpha of V3 with online multiplayer. I won’t bore you with screenshots of that activity, because it would be mostly of code and a bit of me crying... The cost of V3 dev is that it can be very absorbing and almost grinds V2 progress to a standstill. This might not be a problem if we were done with V2, but we are not.  You will be seeing some more updates in the next few weeks/months.

Ultimately, our goal is to take V2 out of Early Access soon. I guess we could have done that already. Looking forward, I don’t anticipate leaving Early Access will change the way we develop and we are still creating and planning new content for V2..oink. It's just that Early Access is not a label we are totally comfortable with anymore. Mostly, because we have been in Early Access since 2014 and other peoples reactions to the phrase “Early Access” is weird. There were always certain things we wanted to do in Amazing Frog? before we left Early Access, or at least what our definition of Early Access is/was. We need to implement structures in the game design that make the world feel more complete. On the one hand, this is about facilitating the growth of the world, but on the other, it's about reinforcing the underlying narratives that already exist in it.  Also, we want to give a clearer picture of how we feel the world fits together, the companies, the activities etc. I touched on this in some previous dev blogs.



We are also trying to tidying some/many of the "rough edges" and refine the overall product of Amazing Frog? You may have noticed that we changed the capsule Artwork on the Store page. This is the first time we have done this since launch ...mainly because any time we had, we would spend on adding weird stuff to the actual game. I will also need to rewrite the description so it's more up to date.

Next week we head to San Francisco with the rest of the Game Dev world for GDC. GDC is a big event in the Game dev calendar where devs learn, meet and I dunno be a massive group of Game Developers, So hopefully we can find some stuff that helps Amazing Frog? overall.

Thanks again you guys for Playing, also thanks to everyone for the tweet and insta nudges to make a devblog or fix stuff or  just sharing what you are playing. Awesome :)

Phase two Update for Santa’s Swindon Snow Storm Update is available now



I love making Xmas Updates. Its a good chance to play around with some stuff. Also its a great way to say thanks to every one for playing Amazing Frog?



So go grab the presents and unlock a preview of something we are working on. Hopefully its a nice surprise :)



I always seem to be leaving things to the last minute, I think its mainly because we always seem to be able to think of "just one more thing” ***to add in. ***Columbo



yeay...





I hope you all have an awesome xmas! We will come back soon an write a more formal devblog about what the plans for 2019 are, where V3 and multiplayer is. Its all happening still and we very excited about what's coming up



I’m gonna go eat some chocolate.

Its time for the Holiday Update and this time its a real Swindon Snow Storm! Fart propelled sledging is always lovely this time of year



Obviously the Holiday period isn’t for every one, but we tried to make accommodations for them.





driving can be hazardous in these conditions, please be careful not to hit snowy pedestrians.



Grow big Snow Balls!



This is phase 1 of the xmas update, the next bit should be swinging around real soon.



Seasons Greetings !

Ok, so maybe it was a bit harsh banning jetpacks and balloon packs from the blood covered streets of Swindon…



I mean you can actually have a lot of fun with a jetpack when the streets are filled with blood and you guys worked so hard to get the backpacks you may as well get some fun out of it. We were just a bit too worried that having them would make it too easy to unlock Satun.



SO here is a Hot fixes Update to the Mystery Halloween Box. Among other things, we added a few more pumpkins to make a nice round number of 300. And added a few more things to the blood world.



We've been enjoying it so it's likely we will add more to it in the future. Please check the in-game changelog. For now Happy Halloween!

Here’s a bloody Update. Perhaps I should have called it that, “Another Bloody Update”

And there I go mentioning the blood and ruining the mystery, I feel like such a muppet



Currently my favorite outfit… well perhaps with exception of the fireproof one you can unlock in the mystery box.



To be Honest, I don’t really know what to say about this update, it's pretty late here and I've spent too much time playing around in it that I haven’t found the time to write much, so this time I think I will just let the update speak for itself.



we’ll be back pretty soon with more updates and then I’ll write something more Game Devilish stuff.

You know what ? it feels really good to be putting updates out again. I mean over the past few months we’ve been dealing with some pretty complex stuff with V3 and V2 and iOS… getting our ducks in a row, as it were. But, today looking through recent screenshots for the new stuff makes me super happy. Also just messing around with content again is so much more fun that underlying systems and junk. I mean you can’t Instagram a feckin’ serialization process or a new design pattern that I created by accident while dreaming. I love my work, truly I do.



There is an element if chaos to how we go about developing things, but we are heading somewhere so don't worry. That somewhere is V3.

So, what was I saying? ... I’m really sorry about the mouse not locking and hiding thing, please let me know if you are still having problems after this update. This is the second of our October updates for V2. “The Other Blimps". Was going to call it A Blimp with more bite not sure why :) .







So be sure to check the in-game changelog… (I think I updated that …) there's some more stuff to find do and play with.

I’ll keep this post short, I did want to say thanks to everyone for pointing any issues in the last build. There are some which I Have not got around to resolving like the horizontal split screen I will get that one in the next update. So any outstanding issues please fire them at us.