New Emote and Chat System

Exciting news! 

This week's update will have our new emote and chat system so that when you play online with friends, you'll be able to communicate! This was something that we had been thinking about but didn't prioritize until the community got back to us and asked for it. Once we played around online with strangers (fans, I hope?), we saw clearly that it was necessary to feel that couch co-op feeling while playing online. 

We knew we wanted to have something that was quick to access, had short messages, and wouldn't get too confusing or bothersome. We took some inspiration from Rocket League and their system where pressing a direction on the D-pad would open a list of 4 categories, and then pressing one of those would open 4 emotes to choose from. The yellow box on the left of the screenshot shows the emotes.

"But I want to control my character with the D-pad!" This is something we had to consider as well, and we decided that holding the left trigger (not currently being used) will open the emote system and allow you to choose a category. We didn't want the player to lose control of the character, so when the emote system is up, players can use the right joystick to get their message across.

This system gives us 16 options, in 4 different categories. We decided to start with the four following categories:

  • Information
  • Reactions
  • Compliments
  • Apologies

These categories might still change, but I think we'll see how people react to the emotes that we have and we can change them accordingly. We think they're fairly intuitive though and cover a wide range of emotions. 

Another big difference in how we made our system was that the words originate from the character themselves. This means that the player doesn't have to look away from themselves to communicate, and it's clear which player is saying what. Those emotes will show up on the corner of the screen so that other players can see it.

We're keen to see how the community is going to use this and what people react well (and badly) to, so please give us any feedback you have!

We've also fixed a bunch of other stuff in the newer update, which you can see in the update log.

Short Development Update

Hey friends!

Short update this week, just wanted to let you know what we're up to in our work on Ultimate Chicken Horse. First and foremost, we want to make sure that we're squashing all of the bugs in the online multiplayer. We're working toward bringing the online beta out of beta, so the first step is to address the obvious problems. Then we'll do some serious testing, and launch it officially. 

Right now we're working on a few things. The sudden death mode (when two players tie at the end of the game) hasn't been networked until now (until soon, we should say). We also fixed the character outfits that weren't appearing in-game; when someone else wore an outfit it appear in the lobby but would disappear once you started your match. Another thing we're working on, more hastily than otherwise due to popular demand, is a chat system and emotes. We'll talk more about those next week, and our next update should have a bunch of fixes as well as the emotes.

Beyond that we've worked a bit on the stability of the online play, and random disconnects should be happening less often. Let us know if you're still experiencing these!

Updates coming soon! :)

PAX East Numbers & Pictures!

Last weekend, the whole Clever Endeavour team went down to Boston to show our game, Ultimate Chicken Horse, at PAX East. We had a great time, everyone who played seemed to love the game, and we met some great people. 

We wanted to give some quick insights on how much is costs to go to PAX, and talk about the benefits we got from being in Boston at this year's expo. Below you can see our booth setup, nothing too fancy but that's part of how we kept the costs low.

This is our third PAX now (having been to PAX Prime in 2015 and PAX South in January 2016), and it's getting much easier. The game is pretty much able to show itself, as players figure it out while watching and waiting for their turn. Once they're on, we rarely have to explain anything because one of the other players will have figured it out, and we let the players interact with each other without much intervention. 

The booth filled up pretty quick...

The show was a great way to meet fans (and future fans, we hope!) and to reinforce our presence on the global stage. Being part of the Megabooth of course was amazing, and gave us a great amount of visibility. While we didn't have any specific goals of getting press or new YouTubers, simply the fact that we were there and people saw us means that we'll continue to be talked about when multiplayer party games comes up in conversation.

Some fun numbers!

  • 240 copies of UCH sold
  • 36 people at the booth at once (max that Rich counted)
  • 5 interviews conducted
  • 25 hours of booth showing
  • 3 of us manning the booth, making it quite easy to manage
  • 18 studios from Quebec (not just about us, but still cool)

Some less fun, more useful numbers: how much does it cost to go to PAX East from Montreal?

The only uncertain number here is the cost of meals, because we haven't yet sorted through all of our bills, but this was a high estimate either way. If you're driving, the trip is cheaper of course, but if flying you could add another $200-$400 per person depending.

Let us know if you have any questions about this... but see? It can be quite cheap to go to PAX! And fun :D