TOONBLR! HELLO! I'm Joey Ziolkowski, one of the designers over at @toontown-rewritten. Leading up to Christmas, I'm celebrating the wintery weather with a Backstage Toontown look at the design & development of my FAVORITE minigame in all of Toontown: Cold Caller Cubicles!
how it started how it's going
Today we'll take a look at the Ice Skating mechanic.
To any designers thinking about including ice skating in your game: It's a heck of a slippery slope. If you have the time to get it right, though, it can be incredibly fun!
We spent hundreds of hours and hosted dozens of playtests to tune these ice skating mechanics to be just right for Toontown. In our early tests, the results weren't very promising. It was sort of fun if you could reach top speed, but it was difficult to move the way that you wanted to and extremely punishing if you made a wrong move.
We quickly realized that to make skating fun for thiis minigame, we had to live up to these expectations:
The controls need to be simple and intuitive enough for Toons to grasp them within 10 seconds.
Reaching top speed should be easy and satisfying - the skill should come from maintaining it.
Skating should be the primary focus of the game, rather than bogging it down with other actions to juggle.
In the end, we settled on the following rules for Ice Skating:
1. There are two states: Slipping and Skating. When the game begins, Toons are in the Slipping state until they pick up some speed.
2. Pressing the SKATE button (tied to the Toon's jump key) will switch them into the Skating state, and give them a temporary boost in the direction they were facing.
3. Holding the BACK button will put on a break that slows your Toon's skating speed. Toons have greater control over the direction they are facing at slower speeds.
4. If a Toon bumps into a Cog or breaks to a full stop, they will return to the Slipping state. If a Toon is ever back in the Slipping state, they can immediately use their skate boost again without waiting for the cooldown.
It took a lot of hard work, but I love where we ended up. I have bias, of course, but I believe they're some of the most satisfying ice skating controls in any game I've played!
What Backstage Toontown details about Cold Caller Cubicles would you all like to hear about next?
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Welcome to Toontown! Join the discussion, have some fun, and let the pies fly on the unofficial subreddit of the cartoon MMO for everyone,...
The Toontown Rewritten team is working with community leaders to make Toontown a better place for everyone, and the first place we're starting is reddit.
We just helped launch /r/ToontownRewritten, a new community geared towards teens, young adults, and parents. The Toontown Rewritten team is helping this community start off, and then we'll be turning it over to the community leaders to control so that we can stay focused on the game. Head over there and make some new friends!
NOTE: This is NOT an officially controlled Toontown Rewritten social media outlet.
Imagine an event all about Toontown. An event full of games and prizes where you could meet players, developers, and hear about what's coming to Toontown before anyone else. Are you interested yet?
ToonFest is coming to Replay FX in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this July for the most TOONTASTIC event of the year! Book your tickets now, and stay TOONed for more sneak peeks of the event in the coming weeks.
Toontown Needs YOU! Brand new applications have been released for Game Programmers, Concept Artists, Web Developers, and a whole host of other positions that you can join as part of the Toontown Rewritten Team.
Moving our game out of Beta this year will be big, and we need YOUR help to make it happen.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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It's Christmastime in Toontown! From now until December 26th, check out the blog for daily updates on our winter celebration. We have a few surprises in store for you this year!
Soon, Toontown is going to be getting more animated than ever. We showed you a sneak peek earlier this month, now check out the full details on our blog of how we've managed to create new animation for future updates!
Riggy Marole is BACK, and he's got answers to YOUR questions! If you read carefully you'll find some hints towards the rigmarole to expect at ToonFest 2016.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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This just in: Thanks to our awesome 3D modeler, all Toons are finally and entirely rerigged. That means you can expect new and awesome animations coming soon to Toontown Rewritten. Talk about a thumbs up!
The answers are IN! Earlier today, we asked our Twitter users to send in questions for a new segment on our blog called "Ask Toontown" -- today's questions were directed towards Sir Max, who was more than happy to answer.
This is all part of an effort to stay better in touch with our community, and you can bet that Toonblr is one of the ways we're going to do that.
We know you have burning questions about Toontown - and what Toon can answer them better than Sir Max? (Alright, maybe there are better Toons...) For the next half hour on Twitter, tweet your questions using "#AskToontown" and they may be answered by the dog himself in a brand new segment for our blog!
Questions can range anything from "Where are the doodles?" to "What's your favorite jellybean?" -- but keep in mind who you're asking... Sir Max isn't known for his sanity!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Our current game update will fix remaining issues for Mac and Linux players who are unable to get into the game. We're also fixing a crash with the C.E.O. battle, estate teleportation, and several other widely requested bugfixes!
Give us some time to finish cleaning up our mess, and then you'll be able to play Toontown again as normal. We'll keep you posted as the update continues.