It Lives
April 27th, 2010 - filed under Development News, Input Requested, Status UpdatesI’ve spent too many hours the last 3 weeks making JetpackHQ sentient. The website is now alive, that is it has a complete user authorization and account management system, and basic user profiles. This is a big step for the online part of the Jetpack project. If you have a blog account, your account has already been imported to JetpackHQ – just login with your email, not your username.
If you don’t have an account, I highly recommend signing up now. Your JetpackHQ account will be how you access exclusive content and share your levels, among other things. Also, the sooner you sign up, the more likely your chosen username will be available – every user now has a profile at www.jetpackhq.com/YourName
By far the hardest part of this project was integrating with Facebook. It was a nightmare, since their API’s are full of bugs and hardly anything seems to do what the docs say it will do. If you have a separate Facebook login, you can merge it with your JetpackHQ account, or remove it – just go to /settings/facebook/
This system is designed to be pretty robust but there may still be some bugs. If you find any, please let me know!
What’s New
- Alas, nothing too exciting yet, unless you find SEO exciting. Most of the work is behind the scenes.
- Sweet new insta-signup system in header, and on comment post
- All blog comments now link to the author’s JetpackHQ profile, which doesn’t contain anything interesting (yet)
- The following features have been tested but could use some additional poking around: verifying email, forgot password, changing email address, Facebook accounts.
Question
Note – subscription management is currently down. I’m trying to decide whether to keep the blog subscription management, or put it into our account settings.
Is the ability to subscribe to certain types of blog posts useful to you? Would you rather get all blog posts via email, or none?
Update: You can now edit your blog subscription under settings.
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April 27th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
My tail is wagging, Adam.
This really is a big step forward! An official place to share your creations, leave feedback, and experience the awesome that is Jetpack! What more could one ask for? (Shy of Jetpack 2, I mean. XD)
Everything that’s working right now seems to be working just fine. The ability to change your personal profile URL seems like it could be abused easily, but I don’t know how much of an issue it would be on the system. Also, I think the ability to subscribe to certain types of blog posts would be very handy for some people! They could subscibe only to, say, development news, or say, new level posts. I myself enjoy new of all things Jetpack, but as I said, I can see how it would be a useful feature to be able to pick and choose which blog posts you want to be notified of.
April 27th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
I have to apologise for this comment before i make it, but where on earth is the new JetPack that everone’s been waiting around for? First, you said on the website, look for a new version in 2000! Then you say it’ll be ready for march this year. But still nothing!! how come? What’s happened? I am in anxious suspense over the waiting period.
Please, please, please let us know when
April 27th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
This is just one small step for a spelunker, but it is one giant leap for spelunker-kind!
April 27th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Since the retrofit turned into more of a remake, we’re looking at a tentative release date of July 2nd.
April 27th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
It’s quite usual for release dates to be pushed back due to either unseen problems or going down a different path for many games.
Regardless, I’m super excited since this is a pretty big step in the release of Jetpack, yay!
April 27th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Haven’t found any bugs. Everything is coming along great!
Playing the Pre-Alpha, phasing of the bricks don’t have enough impact. I thinks it needs a visual clue when the brick has been triggered to fade. Maybe immediately darken the brick. The way it is now feels weak. Everything else seems great. LOVE the 3D look to the level.
Providing community features will make level building and graphic development so much more fun!
Looking forward to July. Take all the time you need to make it amazing!
April 27th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Well I just found a bug that was making every page load take 5-10 seconds instead of 30ms. Doh!
April 28th, 2010 at 10:02 am
I’ve been monitoring the error log and have fixed about 20 bugs in the last 24 hours, if you had trouble commenting or signing up before please try again.
Also, you can now edit your blog subscription under settings.
April 30th, 2010 at 8:07 am
Amorphous here, just testing if this works.
April 30th, 2010 at 8:10 am
Huh. The login screen refused to accept my password, which has always worked before, so I tried resetting it. Now I’m this mutant User1303137 *and* User1311819 (the first in the comments, the second as the profile name).
April 30th, 2010 at 8:19 am
Disregard that, should work now.
April 30th, 2010 at 9:09 am
Hmm that’s weird, what happened?
May 2nd, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Fixed a couple more bugs, and added spammer protection. 10% of our users were spammers, they are now deleted.
May 9th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Please give us some daily information about what’s going on!
On what are you working right at the moment?
Perhaps Twitter is the right thing for these things!
Thanks for your attention.
May 10th, 2010 at 10:02 pm
The top bar layout is broken (or out-of-place) in Chrome and WebKit-based browsers.
May 13th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
I second the above bug. Definitely chrome-based. Makes it rather challenging to log in :p
May 14th, 2010 at 8:54 am
Ahh thanks I missed that one. It should be fixed now.
Well the artist I hired to make the Jetman turned out to be a total flake so Eric F has been working on it and I think it’s looking pretty good. Any comments?
May 19th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
This is so good! I’ve been waiting since 2003 lol. But if you don’t mind taking some constructive criticism Adam, after playing I immediately noticed that you missed an important element. The red, green, and blue bars. They shouldn’t show at all when switched off because this really ruins the surprise of where they could be. If I made a stage with all of them off the user would know exactly what to do because they vaguely show. That’s just my opinion, don’t know if your gonna fix it though…are you?
May 19th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Only 2003, you’re 10 years late!
I find it more annoying to not know where the barriers are, I think that outweighs the value of the surprise. No one has really commented on that yet though. We’ll figure it out in the final phase of testing.
BTW that has to be the most awesome monsterid avatar yet. Unicorn-squid-robot-lobster!
There will be a final pre-alpha demo in a few days, with real gameplay + death on a real level (no enemies yet). This will include the new jetman and other graphics improvements, physics improvements, & most of the ingame UI.
May 20th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Very nice jetman!
Awesome, looking forward to it!
Keep on going, Adam.
May 20th, 2010 at 10:02 pm
you find the red green and blue bars annoying when not seen when switched off? come one, its a puzzle game!!! And its a pretty funny perk when it kills unpredictably lol. Nice work anywayz. I’m still looking forward to it.
Please consider it. I know what I’m talkin’ about here.
May 20th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Oh I forgot to add it would also be pretty nice if jetman’s death had some painfull screams. That would also be pretty funny!
May 21st, 2010 at 5:14 pm
I completely agree with jetmanfan about the barriers.
Ooh I have an idea. Why don’t you make barriers that CAN be seen when they’re down, and barriers that CAN’T be seen when they’re down? So someone making a level will be able to choose if the barriers (and which barriers) can be seen when they’re down. That way, there can be levels were they are meant to always be visible…and other levels where they aren’t always visible. I also hope that you add more colors of barriers; 3 was almost never enough for me when I made a level
…and I think that the switches should control ALL barriers of their color, and that there should be a single type (design or graphic or whatever it’s called) of barrier switch in the finished product (the switch that looks the best. There are two kinds in the demo right now, right?).
May 21st, 2010 at 5:17 pm
And the jetman looks pretty good…but he looks a little fat to me…I think he should look a little more qualified for his job, if you know what I mean, haha. And of course I hope to see him in motion and in action before I fully form my opinion on him. He also looks too hunched over, but I guess I shouldn’t judge a piece of art before it’s finished. Overall, I think the jetman is coming along well by the looks of it.