Guild Wars 2

I built that side tunnel as an alternate path up to the top layer, also as a way to get to the end without touching the water if you’re stuck on the bottom layer. The music change is a bug.

Farzo.8410:

Shadowlancer.7102:

@ Farzo.8410

Would you mind posting a video or screen shots on how you were able to jump to the frogs?

I know about the check point one but I was unable to find any ledges to get any closer.

It’s actually all the way up in the tree trunk where you jump on the mushrooms, if you know what place I mean.

Can you world-out this way?

That’s a bug. Haven’t seen it before.

I would love to have this work. It’s on my list of things to investigate. I want to see a walk-through vid of 5 girls in princess gowns rescuing the the princess.

How did you defeat the big rabbit?! I can’t get past the first round of carrots.

I don’t think Lord Vanquish is a girl…

https://twitter.com/Lord_Vanquish

We are looking into ways to make this maneuver consistent and not hardware dependent. I love the idea of having something that is like a wall-jump, in that there is a tier of players who master it and do better as a result. But ultimately, if we can’t ensure that we’re not excluding anyone based on hardware or connections speed then I won’t be making any gaps that require dodge-jump.

Not yet……….

Team score will have a much higher (as in ANY amount higher) impact on rewards next time.

Good list, folks. A lot of these are planned. But of course we’ll have to do a lot of testing to see what feels right. It will definitely be way too hard for me. And I personally promise to bow down to any characters who have the title.

That is totally weird. I haven’t heard about anything like this. Did you /bug it?

Pifil.5193:

Now who’s name should I be cursing when a monkey knocks me off a leaf into poison water miles from dry land? At the moment I’m just cursing the monkey but it’s not the monkeys fault.

Curse me for making a swamp with poison water. Curse Lisa for spawning the monkey there. Curse Jeff for building the Monkey. Curse Trevor for animating him. Curse Jerry for giving him such an annoying/cute scream. Curse Byron for not making a “this monkey is too annoying” bug.

1. Yes you can solo.
2. You get Baubles that you can use in SAB to buy SAB weapons and items like a shovel or slingshot that you use IN SAB. You can also get Bauble Bubbles (which are worth 250 Baubles) if you play on normal mode from the chests at the end of each zone. Those BBs are what you trade in for skins. The only Engi skin right now is a shield. You can also get a back pack.
3. You can play through and get 90% of the fun out of it in several hours. It depends on how much of a completionist you are. If you feel like you have to get every achievement and find every secret it will be quite a bit longer. I’d say jump in for an hour and see how you like it. You’ll have a pretty good idea if it’s your cup of tea in that amount of time.

How long do they stay active? Can you count in seconds? They should be there for at least 2 or 3 seconds, which should be enough time to use them to get up to the top.

Irena.1062:

How about how after you start the game, there is a cave in the waterfall behind you and in the cave are places where water shoots up. For some reason unlike in previous similiar games we can’t use them to go higher like we should. And for doing this there should be a puzzle up there with some 50 bauble treasures in it if you can figure out the puzzle.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you. Are you saying you can not jump on the water spouts?

Here is the core team:

The Super Adventure Box team, from left to right:

Daniel White is our programming magician. He gave us the power to swap out the UI, upgraded the missile code and combat system to get us that old school combat mechanic feel, and got our physics to work with wacky things like bounce mushrooms.

Lisa Davis is the one who brought everything together and made it go. She scripted all the creatures, skills, secrets, and figured out how to make it all work in one coherent whole. A truly magnificent feat!

Jeff Weber was our primary prop and creature artist. He built most of the walls, rocks, clouds, critters, and pretty much everything you see in SAB.

James Smith is our producer extraordinaire who somehow managed to heard all us cats in the same direction. Apparently we wore him out so he couldn’t make it for the picture. Photoshop to the rescue!

Josh Foreman built the maps and coordinated the project.

Trevor Howell brought all our boxy creatures to life with style. He also had to learn to breakdance before animating the spiders.

Jason Wiggin built the Super Adventure Box that sits in Rata Sum, made our weapon skins and the in-game items like the candle, bomb, pointy stick, etc., and the beautiful dancing flowers.

Byron Miller is our principal QA guy (or Secretsfindah) but most importantly, came up with the idea of the bee dog.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151445441444209&set=a.10151445441349209.1073741826.114036714208&type=1&theater

But we had a LOT of help from Maclaine Diemer and Leif Chappelle for music (Lief contributed weekends and evenings because he’s a designer here, not a musician) Jerry Schroeder and Drew Cady making our sound effects and environment sounds. Our effects team: Jens Hauch, Paul Whitehead, Patrick Axlen, Daniel Henley, James Showecker, Lee Bledsoe (Our whole FX department wanted in on the action!) Dave Beetlestone is our environment art lead and helped up navigate the fine line between retro and ugly.
And Peter Fries did our editing and wrote the best shopkeeper line: “I see now that all my hording has brought me only sadness.”

Thedenofsin.7340:

Josh Foreman, the Sausage King of Chicago![/quote]

Wow. That’s what my friends in high school used to call me. Seriously. Because one of them had an older brother named Josh. So I Abe. For Abe Froman: Sausage King of Chicago.

It’s totally meant as an “oh god I’m surrounded!” button, like Golden Ax and Final Fight… or was it Streets of Rage?… Anyway, yeah, it needs work. It’ll have a make-over for next release. I’ll look into knocking things off cliffs, as that is one of the most viscerally fun things to do in a game.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I did however notice several jumping puzzles that make their jumps impossible to do due to this mechanic, probably unintentionally. For example, Griffonrook Run relies entirely on avoiding the griffons and not getting hit. But sometimes the game still assumes you are in combat, thus decreasing how far you jump, and making the jump impossible. I have died so many times because of this.

I don’t think I made any combat-speed impossible jumps in Griffonrook. Though I did make finding and using the speed boost eggs an important part of the strategy.

DouBLe.6084:

Have you considered having the player always be in combat inside SAB and just having the speed boost be permanent?

Yeah, I think we looked into that. IIRC it was more problematic due to the animation set switch. But I’m not sure. I think we also did it before we got our programmer. So we might revisit the solution for our next release. I’ve got it on my list.

No more content in April. More worlds will be coming out in the future.

AusEidolon.1539:

I show alot of people through for achievements and dieing 1-3 times per running others is making a huge number on my deaths count (think sab has added about 150-200deaths now to my main char)

Hm. I never even thought about this. I’ll see. I kind of doubt we can do anything about it, but then Lisa and Dan have amazed me several times so far with stuff I thought we couldn’t do.

Dingle.2743:

As the glitch is inherently a part of the boss camera mode, I doubt Josh’s team has any members which are actively able to fix it, and the most they can do is bring it up as an issue with the guys that designed the camera in the first place (same as the issue with the camera going crazy when forced into a tight spot, etc)

Yeah, I know the bug was filed. It’s somewhere in the stack.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The Amiga version of Jurassic Park (completely different game), also had a sweet raft section. But this time with a top view.

:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xky46PgH4yk#t=2m51s

Haha… that totally reminds me of Toobin!

Kojiden.8405:

Are there going to be achievements for completing hard mode?

Of course!

Preacher.9018:

shawn.6793:

I found this on SAB when I fell through the map lol don’t recall seeing it up top at any time

Is that a tool Josh uses to measure jump lengths when designing levels?

You got it. I made that prop extra happy since I use it all day so I can’t help but smile all the time and then the fun gets infused into the level.

Demeron.5423:

well can you make these Bauble Stacks bigger? and Give us a slot in collectables for them then? because stocking up on all this crap to not even need it for months is a waste of space..

I don’t control that stuff. I’ll look into the collectible slot but I honestly have no idea how likely that is.

We need to make it useful. We just got that in at the last minute. Also, the Moto upgrades will be way better.

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

Strange, I cleared that jump the first time (with the 3 baubles over the gap in zone1) but haven’t managed to do it again so far. I definitely didn’t dodgejump, but I may have gotten combat speed boost just at the right time.

Isn’t that the craziest, most frustrating thing? That happens to me ALL THE TIME. I think last time I played Super Ghouls ’n Ghosts I breezed through the water level my first try, but died on the boss. Then took about 20 more lives just to get back to him again.

Demeron.5423:

ok but there is a post on here from u i belive stateing that SAB is only for this month..? so im alittle lost

World 1 is only for this month. At a later date we will release World 2 (along with World 1 again) for a month. And so on until all 4 Worlds are done and the SAB is complete. I don’t know what will happen at that point.

It was part of hard mode. But we had to pull hard mode until next time. It’s just sitting there… waiting.

SlaYer.2138:

My comments/suggestions:

1. I don’t like the cost of keys. Trade 25 baubles for 40? I better just go kill random mobs for the key or just not bother with the chest at all, since buying a key from a store and carrying it over to the chest aren’t much convenient anyway, especially for zone 3. Also, for zone 1, it’s 25 baubles for 20, totally not worth the deal. My ideal cost for a key is 15 baubles.

2. In Rapids, sometimes I can’t hit those alligators with my stick (I have to switch to bomb), and it happens several times that I get pushed off from the rock in the moving water for no reason while standing on it. Please move the alligators closer to you and make the rock a little bigger.

3. It’s unfair that a player can receive another 2 bauble bubbles by playing a different toon. It strongly encourages farming SAB. For example, I have 8 toons. Basically, I just play all of them and get a skin within 2 days. Comparing to my friend, she plays only one toon, so she can earn only 7 baubles per day unless she farms baubles. And because she hates farming, she just buys her favorite skin from TP. My suggestion is to make those drops from chest account bound and increase the reward of bauble bubbles to 5 per chest AND per account, not per toon.

Anyway, thanks for creating such a cool game, Josh.

1. Shop keys are there just for cases where there’s a group and someone holding a key falls in a pit. We didn’t want the whole team to lose out because someone made a mistake. They are not meant to economically profitable.

2. By the time you’re to World 2 you should really have a whip or slingshot. It’s a lot easier if you come prepared.

3. We will be changing quite a lot about how SAB works in future installments.

rtommaso.3120:

Josh Foreman.8250:

IBut in order to make each release somewhat special I’m pretty sure we are going to retire the current set after April.

Does that include chest drops or only the Moto skins? Will we still be able to get the “old” skins from chest drops?

I don’t know. I’m not in charge of the rewards.

Demeron.5423:

ok u say only this month and its already the 12th.. sitll no more been Released?? for this zone? whats deal with that? are we going to get the rest of the world yet or no? before this event ends…

No. The other Worlds and skins will be released in future installments of SAB. April is only World 1 and the current skins.

Preacher.9018:

Adding group puzzles that cant be solved solo would be as frustrating as in the end of Personal story having group dungeon.

Josh Foreman.8250:

It’s certainly tricky to design group puzzles for anywhere from 1-5 players!

Please note the “1”.

Kojiden.8405:

When I first got on the raft at the end of the final level in SAB I was expecting it to be something like the battletoads tunnel where you had to like jump over stuff or move or something or else you would lose a heart.

That’s what it was originally. But it had to many bugs to figure out in the last couple days of production so we pulled the rocks that flipped the individual logs and added ninjas instead. But once we start on World 2 full time I’m sure we’ll figure out how to make it work as designed.

Those are some sweet raft rides. The FF one looks amazing too. Jeff showed me a video of the Genesis Jurassic Park game rapids section when I first started doing rapids. That’s another cool one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsgOS8jCVjo

I said that I think they will and that I’m personally counting on it. BUT, and this is a big, fat but… The parts of SAB that come into contact with the rest of GW2 are not in my control. There are stakeholders who run the various systems like TP, Commerce, Crafting, etc. and they all rightly have a say in how SAB will be affecting their systems. We haven’t sat down with all those people to run our future plans past them yet. So the final answer is that there is no final answer.

Oenomaus.6413:

You said it wouldnt be out in the next month, or even after that, but you mentioned it would accompany the next release, will it accompany the next release; Frost and flame, retribution you just announced?? Or are you still months away? :O

We are not tied to F&F. We have our own release schedule. We are still at least several months away from the next release.

KaptK.9608:

Only one request of more group puzzles.

I’ve got several sketches for group mechanic puzzles just waiting to be implemented. It’s certainly tricky to design group puzzles for anywhere from 1-5 players! But I think we’ve got some decent plans in place.

Akaji.1296:

Pedantic comment: a median is a type of average, as are mean (what most people mean by ‘average’) and mode.

haha… as a fellow sequeptidalion I approve of pedantic comments.

roamzero.9486:

I think the biggest design flaw of the SAB is that it came across as a demo for a bigger game, which would be fine but the other aspect of it is that the encourages farming/grinding.

I agree. Being part of a larger game means serving many masters. Being a very … unique addition to the ecosystem means we have to find our niche and how we relate to all the pre-existing systems. We’ll be tweaking a lot of those parameters for our next release based on what we learned with World 1.

Nintendo hard only appeals to a niche within a niche. The ping thing is certainly an issue that 8-bit games didn’t have to deal with, so I don’t think normal mode SAB will get Nintendo hard even in the last world because we want as many people as possible to be able to do it. (It’s going to be a tricky balance to not make it too easy in order to accommodate those with bad ping.) But future Worlds will be much much harder than World 1. And hard mode will be there for that niche within a niche who have good ping and want to punish themselves.

The cool thing about our team is that we’ve got ages ranging from over 40 to mid-twenties. And that collaboration gives us a huge range of memories and great classic game experiences to draw from. I know I’ve learned about a ton of old games I had never played and some I had forgotten about.

Slyder.9215:

-Engineer Appreciation Day

But why do I feel like that’s probably gonna be near the bottom on the list of priorities.

Oh, I want to do that. That’s my favorite class!

mginn.4502:

Battletoads Level 3: Turbo Tunnel ;_;

Mwa-ha-ha-haaa!

Azure Prower.8701:

Good thing you can’t drown in GW2 or SAB.

… yet.

Lane.3410:

So we’re never going to see “Super” versions of the weapons that didn’t receive skins? It’s going to be a whole new set next time?

I don’t know how you got that out of what I said. We will certainly (as much certainty as the continuation of SAB) be making at least one Super Skin for every weapon in the game. But in order to make each release somewhat special I’m pretty sure we are going to retire the current set after April. I don’t think we will have the same set of Super Skins at our next release. Does that make sense? Overall, we have a very solid plan for everything we’re doing INSIDE the SAB, but haven’t planned out everything surrounding it, the rewards, and all that kind of stuff yet. One thing we learned in this release is to make sure we schedule more time for planning and building the reward side of things.

Zaxares.5419:

Josh, could you clarify this a bit more?

Not really. I’m not at work this week, and I didn’t make the plans for rewards and how and when they are distributed. I’m going off a memory of a conversation we had during the last week of production which was very hectic. Someone knows all the details, but I don’t.

There will be more dark areas in further worlds and other uses as well. We planned out the entire 4 worlds and all the skills and upgrades at the very beginning of the project so while some things might seem kinda pointless or under-powered now, they won’t always be.

Nothing is certain, but I’m pretty sure these ones will only be around for this month.

Devildoc.6721:

Josh you think in future worlds we’ll get a better primary weapon than the stick?

Yes. Every skill slot has 3. So there will be two more primary weapons.

I think a lot of it has to do with how large your thumb knuckle is. The split second it needs to happen will come sooner or later depending on the size of the knuckle or angle of the thumb. The skill comes down to replicating the perfect angle every time. And it’s important to be able to make your regular jump even if you miss the dodge part of it. When I was first learning, if I missed the dodge part I also failed to jump and kept dying.

CryxTryx.9208:

What are the stats on the average ping? I get that some content is harder if you have a poor ping but if you are the minority I’m sorry but asking for content geared for those with a poor ping is quite selfish.

I’ll have to do some research. I’m sure there’s a bell curve and we can aim for the lump in the middle.

Lane.3410:

At any rate, this is why I asked if the tooltips were correct.

It’s quite possible the too tip didn’t get updated after the last revision. I’ll look into it.

World 1 cages are meant to be a cake-walk. The problem comes with grinding and feeling the need to fight them 20 times a day. That’s a problem I hope to address next release. Also the cages in future worlds will have more interesting attack patterns that will require some level of strategy. Also I fully endorse finding secret spots where bosses can’t hit you. That’s part of classic platform game strategy.

Oldbugga.7029:

All I am saying is when designing content, please do not assume all timing mechanics are uniform, because the very nature of the game’s operating environment means that this is not necessarily the case. Therefore you can do something to lessen the impact of lag.

There is no assuming happening. I’m very well aware that this variable exists. As stated above, the more we accommodate bad lag, the less of a challenge we are providing to those without it. That is a huge part of the reason we made easy mode.

The larger issue here is the fact that we are building a particular KIND of game on a platform that is not optimized for it. To me, the question is: Does the experience given outweigh the quirks of being on a less-than-ideal platform? The answer is that it varies depending on your lag. Overall the feedback has been very positive, so I think the answer for most is that the experience given does outweigh the quirks. I understand that forum response is not a perfect gauge, but it’s all we have to go on. I absolutely would LOVE to widen the net, to include as many as possible in that positive experience category, and as stated above, I’m happy to look into tweaking some values if that will do so.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Josh, I’m sorry, I really like SAB but you are dead wrong here.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

Eurhetemec.9052:

What you can do is making anything involving very tight timing more generous.

Well I like being generous. But I worry that I won’t be able to reproduce the difficulty of classic platform games if we end up putting in enough wiggle room to account for X lag. Whatever we decide that ought to be I would assume it will never be enough for everyone. Finding the right balance could be tricky. But I’m not averse to pulling off tricky things.

Eurhetemec.9052:

What I am saying is, testing in a zero-lag scenario, as you admit to doing, and balancing accordingly, is a very bad idea when you are designing a game around timing and jumping.

Fair point. Though I may be wrong about zero lag here. I’m not sure where the servers for our dev build lives. I think it might be in Texas. But I’ll have to look into this.

Eurhetemec.9052:

You may want to speak to the network team and get them to find a way so you can test this stuff by going outside your network (not via a VPN or the like) and testing it on the EU servers from the US. That should give you a more clear picture of what you are doing.

I’ll have to see what options are available to us. We did have beta testers all over the world, so it’s not like we were totally in a vacuum, but it’s true that our direct experience is with low lag.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Again though, you can do something about it, and it is not a case of “don’t make jumping puzzles” or “no timing elements”, that’s overdramatic and wrong,

hahaha… rebuke accepted. I get really annoyed when people do that to me. I wasn’t sure how extreme your position was and I ended up speaking to the assumption that you wanted a 100% solution rather than investigating and asking you what you meant.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Ultimately, if you balance solely for the players who have perfect ping, you will find fewer and fewer people enjoying SAB, especially if it gets harder as things go on.

This is a great point, and I’ll definitely see if we can find a workable solution that continues to challenge those with low ping while providing the wiggle room to those without. I don’t know if there will be a good solution, but I’ll look into it.

Generally, we’ve made a catch-all bucket with easy mode for those with bad lag, disabilities, crappy computers, low tolerance for spatial/timing challenges, etc. But I understand the frustration of being lumped in a category that you don’t want to be in.