End of Year Update (Where have we been?) | Part 2

Hi again everyone, Gabe here, in our last blog we mentioned that we generally avoid posting updates on here (or in the discord) unless we have actual tangible progress to share, and unfortunately we’ve stuck to that very well this year!

But nothing shared doesn’t mean nothing happened, and in the spirit of maintaining what consistency we can (on the year anniversary since our last post!) we thought we’d share a few brief updates on the status of Super Plexis and our lives in general.

As for the game, there actually has been some work done this year (and content that exists but is not yet implemented) but nothing to the level that would be ready to share. Andrew and I touched based several times planning to carve out a window to do another short content sprint but the timing never quite worked out with how busy we’ve been. All to say Super Plexis remains something we’d love to be able to work on once we can afford to again, but obviously we are not great at predicting when that time may come. In the meantime shoutout to BusterBeachside, Sapphire Bullet Bill, Lava, and other long-timers for holding down the fort on discord. Just saying, we see and appreciate the princess posting 😎 (speaking for myself of course).

As for our lives, alongside my normal job some of you might also be aware that I’ve become very active on social media the past couple years (especially the video-focused platforms! which I will not name here because I am very self-promotion averse but I assume those who want to dig won’t have much trouble finding me). This has been an unexpectedly successful development in my life and one that I think will also be a strong pillar for promoting the game once we’re ready to properly advertise again (ideally once we’re out of early access). And instead of speaking for Andrew - and this I will promote since it doesn’t involve just me - we’ve recently started a video podcast with our friend Ed (you might remember him from our “dev vlogs” back in the day) where we’ve been chatting candidly about our lives, work, video games, and other various things. I’ll link the first episode here if you’re curious (or look up the Super Underground Podcast on Spotify / iTunes). Funny enough it might actually be your best bet for getting breaking news or behind the scenes in regards to the game since it comes up in conversation fairly often!

I’m hopeful 2024 will to continue to bring new opportunities but of course I also know better than to make any promises considering how the last couple years have gone, so! Will just leave it at: thanks again to everyone who’s kept an eye on the game (and us) all these years, we don’t take it for granted. Looking forward to being able to post a “real” blog here when the time finally comes!

- Gabe and The Medley Studios Team

End of Year Dev Update (Where have we been?)

Hey everyone, normally we avoid posting updates unless we have some tangible progress to share, but with the new year right around the corner it felt like the right time to at least say: Hi! We’re all still alive and we still have big plans for Super Plexis.

It’s been exactly a year (and one day) since we pushed our most recent update on Steam. That update - which added characters, skins, and laid the groundwork for our progression systems (XP, unlocks, etc) - was one of only two updates to the game client in all of 2021. Unfortunately, 2022 ended up being an even busier year for us in our work / personal lives, and while we hoped to find time to sync up and sprint on the next set of features (single player modes specifically), that window of opportunity never came.

But there is good news! 2023 is looking to be a much more stable year with the majority of what kept us busy in 2022 (like multiple moves across the country, job changes, etc) now being fully settled. And while its too early to set any dates we’ll be actively seeking out a chance to sprint toward our next set of features (which if its anything like content updates in the past, they move fairly quickly once the appropriate time and space is carved out).

Here’s hoping to a productive 2023 for us and everyone! We’ve been just as eager to get back to work as I’m sure many you have been to see any sliver of progress. For more information about “What’s Next” check out the last section of our last blog post here, our goals remain about the same (though a menu rework might also be on the horizon).

We are both humbled and grateful for everyones continued support through these busy past couple years, thank you all!

- The Medley Studios Team

Super Plexis is coming to Early Access on Steam for PC & Mac!

We recently teased a community beta release in our discord channel and had plans to distribute it “privately” there for testing in January, but ultimately decided that taking the time to set up our Steam presence would be ideal for faster client updates and easy access by the community. It is, after all, an early build focused on community features like online multiplayer (with up to 4 players!), friendlists, custom game lobbies, and the spectator system.

On release day, everyone in our discord will receive a steam key to download the game for free and join us online for the first ever Super Plexis community playtest and launch party! (February 19th, 9 pm EST, more details coming soon!)

We can’t wait to play with everyone as we test our systems under whatever load we can throw at them, specifically: the Medley ID account system, custom game servers, and our rollback netcode model. The more the merrier, so invite your friends to the discord so they can secure their own keys before launch. And act fast, because from launch day onward Super Plexis will be listed with an Early Access price point.

After many discussions about monetization, we’ve agreed on a price range that will support our efforts with multiplayer and further development. Here are a few key points that led us to this decision:

• Medley has its own servers for account data, game lobbies, netcode, and will serve future purposes like matchmaking and progress tracking. The servers have a baseline cost, and as Super Plexis grows in popularity, so will the cost of servers.

• Ads aren’t the way to go for Super Plexis, and we don’t want to put all of the cool gameplay content behind in-app purchases. Fast paced games don’t generally sit well with Ads, and although Super Plexis will have a Shop with skin customizations, we don’t want to over-monetize the Shop, especially given that most items can be unlocked if you play regularly.

• Super Plexis stands on the shoulders of giants: Panel De Pon, Tetris Attack, Pokemon Puzzle League, and we want to lean into the niche instead of trying to make the game something it’s not: “a freemium generic puzzle game”. We would like to avoid the freemium monetization models common in most action puzzlers.

Alright enough beating around the bush - here is the price model we’ve landed on!

First week of Steam Early Access: $5.99

Remaining time on Early Access: $9.99

Official launch price (after Early Access): $14.99

The Medley team is excited to join in on the steam train! You can now add Super Plexis to your wishlist as we prepare for its soon-to-be release! Thank you to everyone again for consistently trusting us to develop this dream project. We have a POP’n video on the steam page you can view showing off gameplay:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/863230/Super_Plexis/

Dev Blog #11 - Super Plexis Gameplay in 2020!

Hello everyone, we’ve made some huge leaps in progress over the past year and are so excited to finally share a first look at gameplay. This is Super Plexis completely rebuilt from the ground up, running in a new engine, on our own game servers, and with a completely refreshed visual style. We’ll cover the major details of all those things in this blog, but for the real deep dive and demonstrations we definitely recommend watching the replay of our live streamed event below (once it’s live!):

Twitch:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/698517791

YouTube:

In making this first build we have been laser focused on the core gameplay mechanics, making something that will feel familiar to fans of the genre but also even more responsive in many ways. If you’ve played our iOS version you may be notice a few things are missing, like characters, abilities, or even vertical swapping. Don’t worry! We plan to implement all of those in future betas, but this time around our goal is to nail down the fundamentals first. We can’t wait to let everyone play it for themselves, and we’ll have more info on when you can expect a public build soon. Let’s dive into the new stuff!

Multiplayer Game Modes

2v2 with player boards colored by team.

4-player game modes will be featured in the upcoming PC beta! 2v2 team matches and free-for-all battles will be live from the start with their own matchmaking pools (with 1v1s too, of course). Due to screen space limitations on phones, this wasn't something we originally planned to support, but with the extra screen real estate on PC and consoles it felt like a natural fit. We were inspired to make these modes even more interesting by introducing Player Targets, a new feature that introduces a whole new level of strategy to 4-player game modes:

The all-new attack queue, player targets, and pressure gauge in action.

Player Target Mechanics:

• Each player has control of a target, marked by their player number, that sits above their opponent's board.

• All player targets are visible to all players, so all players know who is targeting who.

• Incoming attacks populate inside the target, stacking vertically.

• A player cannot change targets during an attack, but they can queue their next target position once the current attack finishes.

Another new mechanic — not exclusive to multiplayer modes — is something we’re calling the Pressure Gauge. This is a visual representation of your board's danger level, split into 3 stages: green, yellow, and red. If garbage or blocks reach the top of your board, the pressure gauge will start increasing. When it fills completely, you take damage (for knockout modes you lose instantly). In this sense it acts like a visual countdown timer, but it has another function too: While all boards start at the green level by default, that pressure floor can change based on how much garbage is currently on top of your board. This effectively shortens the count-down timer based on the level of the gauge, the specific times are listed below.

Pressure Gauge Levels:

• Green:        3 second countdown

• Yellow:        2.25 second countdown

• Red:     1.5 second countdown

• Deep Red: 0.75 second countdown

We’re excited to test these new mechanics with the community and get feedback! At a competitive level, puzzle games in this genre are known to have matches that can stagnate or go on for too long, especially between two highly skilled players. We encountered this in the iOS version of Super Plexis as well, so we’re hoping that features like the pressure gauge (and other unannounced variables) will increase the stakes, making high-level matches more intense, while also making the game rules easier to read visually.

That covers the core gameplay, now let’s open the hood and explore what’s making all this cross-platform networked multiplayer possible!

Netcode

Super Plexis is such a fast-paced game with direct player-to-player interaction that we could never justify the player "feeling" the lag. Here are a few pillars we sought to master with the game's netcode architecture, and have achieved doing so:

Responsiveness: All of the player's inputs trigger an instantaneous response

Performance: The game's runtime performance is not affected by the player's connection strength

Consistency: All network clients are guaranteed to arrive to the same game state

Masterful execution of these three pillars, or any reliable netcode for that matter, is no small feat - and we understand that even AAA games have immense difficulty delivering reliable netcode. We can say with certainty, Super Plexis has reliable netcode, and we're very proud of it.

We took notes from the fighting game community and learned about Rollback Netcode, which delivers on our core netcode pillars (and more). Of course, this is after months of trial and error with other netcode models.

In a nutshell, Super Plexis Netcode is a custom Client Rollback netcode architecture with Input Relay servers at the center of every game network. By employing a custom relay service, we are able to guarantee cross-play and prevent cheating. Additionally, the entire architecture is purely input driven, which makes the whole service very scalable - very important for a small indie team of 4 people.

We commonly run playtests with >250 ping, and have even played games with >350 ping, blissfully unaware of the lag. In a networked game, regardless of your connection strength, your inputs are responsive, animations are smooth, and pops/artifacts are extremely rare, even in the worst conditions. This is showcased live in our gameplay reveal stream, linked at the top of the post.

The Engine

After many iterations, we've landed on Godot as our core game engine. For gameplay, we have our own abstraction layer on top of Godot which allows us to create gameplay features that mesh seamlessly with our custom netcode architecture.

Godot has been so useful to our team. We are able to implement user interfaces, sound effects, animation, and visual effects at a way larger scale, with less work, compared to our time working on the original iOS version. Thanks to Godot, we can easily deploy the game for iOS, Android, PC, Mac, and Linux.

By choosing to invest into Godot as Super Plexis's core game engine, we have accelerated development to a pace that we've never seen before. However, we also had to halt production deployments to re-engineer the game from the ground-up. As seen in the stream video linked above, this has been completely worth it, and we are so excited to deliver this new revamped version of Super Plexis on all major platforms. We cannot share an accurate release date at this time, but we can share major gameplay updates at a way higher flux than previously.

Art Updates

In addition to all these technical overhauls, you may notice the game looks a bit different now too! We announced awhile back that we’d be adjusting the overall resolution scale and redrawing assets to double-down on our “SNES” retro aesthetic. This was our goal even back in the iOS version, and while everything was “technically” pixel art, our scale factor was relatively low compared to the super dense pixels of the retina displays we were rendering on. The result was art that looked really clean and sharp, but was only distinctly noticeable as pixel art in places where we applied additional scaling, like in the character select screen (with sprites rendered at 2x in the preview), and in the adventure mode maps. We’re on a path now that will make the game more visually consistent in all areas, in addition to making asset creation more efficient.

Below are just a few examples of in-game animations that have been redrawn. You can see how the simulated “pixel size” is bigger in the updated versions:

36x36 Block Bounce (iOS Version)

20x20 Block Bounce (PC Beta)

160x160 Block Pop (iOS Version)

50x50 Block Pop (PC Beta)

Check out the stream footage to see these and other differences in-action! As with other areas of the game, the visuals and animations may be subject to change based on play testing and user feedback.

Re-Introducing the World of Len

It’s been a long time since we’ve shared any info in the way of “Super Plexis Lore” but rest assured characters and single-player content are still in the works! We won’t put an estimate on when to expect characters yet, since their implementation will come alongside the development and re-balancing of abilities for multiplayer, but in the meantime we can at least share a taste of the world they inhabit

Artist note: the visuals here are a combination of new, old, and in some cases unfinished backgrounds, consider everything as concept art that could potentially change!

Loftwood

A town tucked away in a lush forest biome that our main character duo, Aria & Cleff, calls home. Loftwood exists far away from modern society and has a naturally preserved traditional culture.

Azure

In contrast, Azure is the star metropolis of Len and a hub for state-of-the-art Lumina technology. A previously shown character, Vulmir, is heavily involved in commerce here (and other shady dealings).

Starport

Starport is a small sea-side town featuring one of the busiest ports in Len. Famous for it’s seafood and raucous environment, it is a place closely associated with Macktooth.

Polymoor

A trencherous, poisonous swamp located not far outside Len’s biggest city, Polymoor is a place best avoided. Covered toxic plants and other bioluminescent life, it is a place with a special connection to an unannounced character.

Redtop

Another region with connections to a character we have yet to announce, Redtop gets its name from the clay present in the region. The canyons are at such high elevation it is common to see their tops covered in snow.

That’s everything for now!

Thanks for checking in for our updates and we can’t wait to show more as development progresses. We hope everyone enjoyed getting an early look at the upcoming beta gameplay and art! We’ll have more updates on when to expect the beta, and everything we plan to include it, in the near future. Don’t forgot to check out the livestream if you want even more info! And as always join us on discord to share feedback and get early updates on new stuff on the way!

— The Medley Studios Team

Dev Blog #10 - Full Backend Overview & First Update of the Decade!

Happy 2020 everyone! We’re kicking off this decade with one final look at all the backend systems for Super Plexis, especially since our next big update will be demoing the game client and backend finally working together! If you haven’t been on our discord recently and are wondering “Why the slow updates?” or “What’s with the focus on technical stuff?” definitely check out our earlier blog here for more detailed info on our status. And with that, let’s jump in!

The Infrastructure

For awhile now you’ve heard us talk about things like Plexnet, MedleyIDs, game servers, databases, etc. But we’ve always revealed and discussed each separately, when really, they’re all pieces of a larger system. In fact, some of the more abstract pieces like “Harmony” and the trio of “Medley Internal Services” we’ve never officially introduced, until today! With this “Super Plexis Infrastructure” nearing its first functioning state — game client included — it’s proper time we share this handy graph of it all working together, created and described by the engineer himself:

Click to view high res

In order to make Super Plexis the best online playing experience possible, we've taken a "decoupled" approach to the backend, and opted to create our own distributed services which support Super Plexis. Medley's infrastructure has been in the works (research + implementation) since 2018. So far all of the systems you see here have been successfully prototyped in-house, with the dedicated server being the current focus of development. We’ve made steady progress and are confident in being able to showcase multiplayer demos by the end of Q2 2020!

All hosting is managed on AWS to provide maximum availability. By decoupling all of these complex systems into their own services, we are preparing ourselves for Super Plexis's userbase and feature set to grow exponentially upon cross-platform launch. Most important, however, is that Super Plexis has very few immediate dependencies: Harmony, and Plexnet. This is a massive win for Medley and all fans of Super Plexis because:

1: You'll never get kicked out of an online game due to a backend update to Conductor (for example)

2: Future titles under Medley can reuse Arbiter, Conductor, Herald, and the data stores (yes, "future titles")

We're so excited to finally be in a place where we can share this progress, and we look forward to showcasing as much Super Plexis progress as possible for 2020!

— Andrew

Bonus UI Update!

But wait there’s more! You might’ve seen our last blog post about designing “The Journal”, and with all this talk about online and databases you can see why we were focused on it. Post-game stats are full of useful information, but fitting everything neatly for different screen sizes can be a design challenge. Even from an engineering perspective it helps to know in advance what exactly we plan to track and log for players (like replays and lifetime stats), and design mock-ups help solidify the vision for that. Previously we shared the simplified “game history” screen, with a truncated view of each game’s stats in a list. But what happens when you select a game entry on that list? Here’s a mocked-up example of the stats you’d see for a “Ranked Versus” game (as always subject to change):

And with that we’ll sign off with one final bonus, a little concept also in the realm of UI that we’ve been playing with:

Might this be considered a teaser / reveal of a new title screen? Who can say!

Thanks for reading and looking forward to sharing more with everyone soon! As always if you guys have questions feel free to reach out to us on our Discord server here.

— The Medley Studios Team

Dev Blog #9 - Designing the "Journal"

Hey everyone, we’re back again with just a small slice of what we’ve been up to the past few months. Much of the recent progress has been in the backend but we thought we’d change gears and share some of visual design progress this time. Introducing a new UI menu: The Journal!

Disclaimer: This is a design mock-up, not rendered in-engine. All visuals subject to change!

While an entire post about something as mundane as a “game history” view might seem excessive, the journal actually represents one of the most complex menu systems in the game. Not just in terms of design but in the under-the-hood mechanics as well. Recording and displaying all the relevant data for all our various game modes and for each player is a tall order! Detailed stat breakdowns are something we value as players ourselves and we wanted to be sure to build it right (it also represents the first big test case for our own servers and Medley ID data management!). It should feel and look nice to browse your own game history, and not just to admire your achievements and earnings, but also to save replays. (Did we mention we’ll have replays?)

Now that you’ve seen the current draft for the journal for the PC build (still just a mock-up, a lot could change in the final), below you’ll see some of the VERY rough drafts that got us here. Everything from sketches to alternate screen sizes (like the mobile view)

The very first draft, before we decided to put replay controls in a separate “expanded” view.

That same first draft but imagined for mobile.

Second draft, adding some basic color, an expand button, and removing the replay controls (look at all that new room for loot!)

Third draft, simplified even further by removing redundant text and truncating the amount of “loot” shown. This gave us more room for “featured stats” in the center of each entry (which change depending on the game mode)

Draft 4: oh hey real graphics! But still many placeholder art pieces.

A quickly-made and very distorted version of the 4th draft for mobile on the smallest screen we’d support.

And here’s the near-final 5th draft, with an added sort button and temp navigation buttons at the top.

So that’s the journal! Something simple in theory that ends up taking many many sessions of discussion and iteration with the team. And you’re probably looking at some icons wondering what they are but I’ll leave that a mystery for now. Also the expanded view, with the full complete stat breakdowns - including things like how many of each type of chain and combo was made per game - is something we’ll share at a later date. Hopefully when we actually have it running in-engine!

Our next update will likely be a technical one, breaking down some of the major developments in the backend, so stay tuned for that! Thanks again for keeping up with us, we know updates have been spaced out pretty far this season but we’re always happy to share updates when we have them. While we still experience busyness in our personal / work lives, we’re still in it for the long haul and appreciate the support thus far.

Can’t put a date on an actual beta release just yet but we’re hitting some big milestones and we’re closer than ever!

Dev Blog #6 - Status Updates & Art!

Another month passed means another dev update! Lots of big stuff to cover in this one, including a big technical update, some new background art, early character concepts (including a tease of new characters??), and our announcement that we’ll be featuring the game at one of Florida’s biggest conventions - Metrocon - this July! 

Normally we’d start things off by reporting where we’re at on the dev roadmap, but oh boy this month was a doozy so we’ll get back to that a bit later. What we described as a “road bump” in our Discord just a couple weeks ago was actually more of a huge Mario Kart-esque boost ramp that shot us airborne and left us not knowing where we’d land for a few days. Thankfully we landed back on track! But unfortunately with a bit of lost momentum. That’s the short of it in non-technical terms, but if you’re curious keep reading below for the technical details (or just scroll straight to the art stuff!):

What started as just a few technical inconveniences with the game engine the past few months grew unexpectedly into full-on barriers (specifically with the shop and other networking features we had planned). We were faced with the choice of halting progress until a solution was found (since creating one from scratch would take too long) or, what we ended up choosing, which was subverting the issue entirely by migrating to a different environment (libGDX, if you’re curious!). Fortunately the core chunks of progress the past year won’t be affected by this shift, like the servers and account system, and it happens to alleviate many other smaller issues that we thought we’d just have to live with in our previous state. While we’re still in the middle of gauging everything fully, all this should mean running into a lot less progress-blockers in the future as well. The only needed rewrites will involve the gameplay / UI  from before, but even there we’d only just scratched the surface content-wise (in that preview build) so it’s not much of a set back. We’re just glad to have caught this now and not later when it could’ve really derailed some important progress. And most of all we’re just excited to be in the clear to focus on gameplay builds again!

Background Art: Expanded

The biggest challenge posed to the art in our game so far has been the newly added support for a wider aspect ratio. With character sprites, UI elements, and even multiple game boards, the art assets remain the same while the position / scale / layout adapts to different screen orientations. But not so for background art! Our prototype on iOS was designed with one screen-size in mind, which allowed us to work quickly, but left us with very “vertical” backgrounds that just won’t work on a 16:9 display format. Stretching horizontally would look awful, cropping / zooming would make for gigantic ugly pixels, meaning the only option was to expand the frame and redraw entire sections for use on larger displays. The idea being: the PC version would see the full background, while smaller screens like phones will simply frame a smaller section of the same background (see the image above).

For a more direct comparison of the old backgrounds VS the new ones, here's a couple examples (the most recent addition being the updated Azure map with a wider view of the city):

Also worth noting is that the new backgrounds are actually a smaller resolution than their original iOS versions. Generally speaking, the less pixels you have to draw, the less time / resources it takes. Both versions are displayed at their true pixel size above, while in game they'll be scaled up to fill the screen while preserving the pixel art qualities (as you've likely seen in other pixel art games you're familiar with). Lastly, the new backgrounds are still in draft form and will likely see some changes / updates over time (with some animated bits as well!).

Concept Art: A First Look Into Emily's Sketchbook!

While our plans for story-based content are still a bit down the roadmap, I couldn't wait to share some of the early concepts of our current (and future!) cast of characters. Emily is our resident illustrator and concept artist, with the majority of our current character sprites being based off her drawings. She recently shared a big batch of scans from her top secret sketchbook, where she was exploring different styles and versions of each character to see what stuck. The only image not from Emily is the Macktooth concepts, which were graciously provided by one of our awesome cousins, Mailiis (taken from a phone camera). I collaged them together, ordered by character, for your viewing pleasure in the gallery below (click to expand each image):

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Some of these concepts were made even after the sprites were created, to better nail-down the look and feel of a character in a higher-detail setting (when the time comes produce more story-driven content, or areas of the game that could use higher detailed sprites, like special abilities, dialogue scenes, etc). I also included that last unmarked image at the end, which is an unedited full page scan from the book in all its chaotic glory (why is there a frog in there? You'll have to ask her!)

And while not everything is ready to share just yet, there are definitely plans for new playable characters you haven't seen before as well...

If you want to send some props Emily's way, she goes by "Babbitz" in the discord! (or on Twitter here) Send some love her way!

Super Plexis will be at Metrocon this July!

If you happen to be in the Tampa area between July 19th-22th, stop by our booth running all weekend at Metrocon! We’ll also be hosting a game dev panel that Friday at 7pm. This will be our second time attending Metrocon featuring the game, the first being back in 2016 before we had even finished the iOS prototype (but wanted to gather a good number of beta testers). You can check out the panel we hosted back then in its entirety on youtube here:

Or check out a shorter vlog of that day, with clips from our first-ever tournament, here:

We’ll have more information as the actual date approaches!

That about covers all the new info for this month. As always you can join us on the Super Plexis discord, where we sometimes have more informal updates / news to share outside these official blog posts. Thanks again for following our progress! We hope to have more big news (and builds!) to share with all of you soon.

Dev Blog #5 - Roadmap Progress Update

April has officially passed us, meaning its time to look back at our road map and deliver a status update! After that first build we were very excited to be finally working on gameplay, and thanks to everyones feedback, we quickly identified what needed to be fixed and which new features we wanted to tackle.

In our most recent vlog you can see some of the progress in action (notably on block mechanics, the matching algorithm, control schemes, and a text overhaul):

And while much more progress on our goals continued off-camera, a few major complications arose as well. To walk through one example: we always do mock-ups of new features and UI before committing things to code. Here are a few of those low-detail black and white menu drafts focused around “Arcade” mode:

In this case, as we were deciding on how best to approach player lobbies and party functionality, we found that accommodating multiple cursors in these multiplayer menus wouldn’t be possible with the way inputs were programmed for last month’s build. Looking further into the issue revealed that a full rewrite of input code would be needed to support this (something that wasn’t originally part of our roadmap). While multiplayer isn’t planned to be finished for the next build, it’s risky to put off such a fundamental system for later, especially when building new gameplay and UI on top of it.

And in case you’re curious what some of those mock-ups looks like with semi-finished assets, here’s a sneak peak! (very much still subject to change):

So while there was substantial time spent attending to these unexpected-but-important overhauls (not even mentioning the content and text renderers which required similar rewrites), progress continued and items were checked off our list. Some items were also bumped to lower priority so that we can get to that second build release faster (even if it means less polish in some areas that aren’t vital to gameplay). With that said, here’s the items from the roadmap finished last last month:

✓ Animated blocks

✓ Animated match explosions 

✓ New control schemes

✓ Early stages of local multiplayer

✓ Arcade interface designs

✓ Block Art Refresh (added new “break” frame)

✓ Grab-and-drag single cursor rework to support touch and mouse input

✓ Detect when a player switches inputs

In addition to these completed items that weren’t initially part of the roadmap:

✓ Polished in-game mechanics related to block timings and pop order

✓ Fixed matching algorithm bug related to certain “T” configurations

✓ Content renderer overhaul

✓ Switching all in-game text to bitmap

✓ Designed new fonts, both for basic system text and textured header fonts.

Which just leaves the remaining items, re-ordered by importance with a few omissions:

• Chain combos (this applies to all game modes)
• Garbage blocks start to arrive after a certain level (garbage blocks apply to most game modes)
• Health bar and damage systems
• Game Mode Selection
• Systems and architecture that allow players to enter and exit games smoothly
• Support for multiple game modes (necessary before working on VS mode)
• Client side prediction and server side correction
• All handled over TCP / IP
• Animated lift
• UI and gameplay sound effects        
• Local storage of user preferences
• Audio settings interface
• Video settings interface
• Polish Background Art
• Converting Music
• Board shake tests
• Controller / keyboard settings interface (not accessible if touch enabled)
• Keyboard / mouse settings interface (not accessible if touch enabled)
• Battle setup, countdown, health bars, and end-game interfaces
• Beginnings of the game replay system

And lastly some new goals that will be necessary sooner than we expected:

• Friend / Lobby System
• Matchmaking Servers 

That about wraps it up! And the list above you could now consider our updated roadmap for the month of May. While it represents everything we want to have finished, there’s no telling what could pop up along the way, so we’ll resist the urge to set any release date estimates just yet. Despite the extra time needed for this, our goal is to get the next release as stable as possible with all foundations locked (for sure this time!) so we can finally start releasing the regular gameplay updates we’d all love to see. Thanks again for everyone’s patience!

As always, you can find us over at our Super Plexis discord here: https://discord.gg/cJXzN4z to stay up to date on the latest info!

Dev Blog #4 - The April Roadmap

Hey everyone! Welcome to the first of many "roadmap" blog posts that outline our goals for the month. This series will give you an in-depth look at our current priorities and what we plan to have released for Super Plexis each month. Let's jump in: 

Battle

Endless mode and battle engine

• Polish the implementation for the first animated battle background

• Chain combos (this applies to all game modes)

• Garbage blocks start to arrive after a certain level (garbage blocks apply to most game modes)

• Animated match explosions and garbage block explosions

• Health bar and damage systems

• Board shake tests

• Animated lift

• Animated blocks

• Beginning development of AI systems / local multiplayer

Andrew's Notes: "These are basic necessities for finishing the bare minimum battle engine and making Endless mode really feel like a real challenge. Remember that Endless mode also comes paired with an “Endless (CLASSIC)” mode which is almost identical to puzzle league style endless / marathon modes."

Design

Music and sound

• Login screen music, title screen music, and battle music

• UI and gameplay sound effects

Andrew's Notes: "I’m hopeful that the major build for April will include music, and if we’re lucky I could even have sound effects implemented."

User interface / experience

• Animated title screen

• Local storage of user preferences

• Audio settings interface

• Video settings interface

• Controller / keyboard settings interface (not accessible if touch enabled)

• Keyboard / mouse settings interface (not accessible if touch enabled)

• Arcade games interface

• Battle setup, countdown, health bars, and end-game interfaces

• In-game notifications

Andrew's Notes: "Most of this won’t be animated, and once it’s all put together we can implement animations very soon after (like notification bounce or achievement glimmers / shines, etc). Please note that achievements and other unlockables will not be implemented in this build because they require online game servers."

Updated UI Designs

• Game Mode Selection

• Misc  

Gabe’s Notes: “As you may have seen in the preview build already, the menus will be quite different than the original iOS prototype. The new designs will allow us to build the same version of the game to all devices, and all elements will automatically scale / re-arrange themselves to fit. Expect to see more examples of this UI as we add new modes to the game (along with more “under development” placeholder buttons!)”

Background Art

• Polish Title Screen background

• Polish Loftwood Battle

• Reformat Azure Background

Gabe’s Notes: “The new 16:9 format means all our old mobile backgrounds will need to be updated accordingly. Just like the Title Screen and Loftwood backgrounds (currently in the preview build), this means drawing in a much wider field of view with new details. And animation too!”

Converting / Updating Music and SFX

• Title Screen

• Loftwood Battle

Gabe’s Notes: “Now that the game is running on more than just mobile devices, its time to get the audio more stereo-ready for PC! The existing songs were written at wildly different times with different sounds/instruments over the past couple years and ill be doing a fresh pass on all of them to unite their styles (and maybe add some new stuff too!)”

New Block Details

• Block art refresh / new frames

Gabe’s Notes: “We’ll be experimenting with different resolutions of blocks depending on the current screen size, but we’ve also been playing with a fresh new idea related to how “expressive” the blocks are in their different states of gameplay. Won’t say any more than that for now!”

Technical

Mouse / touch input 

• Grab-and-drag single cursor rework to support touch and mouse input

• Detect when the player switches from mouse to keyboard and back again

Andrew's Notes: "When players use the mouse the grab-and-drag cursor should activate, and then if the player goes back to using keyboard or controller than whichever cursor they were using for that will reactivate (single cursor or boomerang cursor)."

Local game server testing

• Systems and architecture that allow players to enter and exit games smoothly

• Support for multiple game modes (necessary before working on VS mode)

• Client side prediction and server side correction

• Beginnings of the game replay system

• All handled over TCP / IP

Andrew's Notes: "This is my primary task for April. If I can deliver a successful build by the end of the month with local game servers, we will be extremely close to the first online multiplayer build. The local game server tests simulate what it would be like to play online with extremely low ping. Local game servers are also the backup in case no online game servers are accessible."

That's everything for April! We'll be checking in with smaller updates throughout the month, but to stay up to date with the latest progress join us over on discord: https://discord.gg/cJXzN4z

Dev Blog #3 - Introducing the New Engine!

On the Eve of the First "Preview" Build

Hello again! It's been some time since you've heard from us (unless you frequent our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/cJXzN4z ,which we recommend for regular updates!), but we wanted to be doubly sure our next update was a big one. Of course, that came with the unfortunate side-effect of postponing our first playable build, but we think it'll be much better for it! Anyone still expecting a simple Android port of our iOS prototype is about to be pleasantly surprised...

If there's a central theme of these past few months, it would definitely be: short-term sacrifices for long-term gains!

Over-simplified for sure, but if you want the juicy technical details, read onwards! Or if reading isn't your thing, check out our latest dev vlog to absorb all this new information in video form below:  

The What, When, and Where

"What is in this first build?" 

You'll be able to log in using your Medley ID and play a few variations of Endless mode, for the purposes of testing our account backend and new control options. Players on mobile are limited to touch as usual, but with the new PC / Mac versions of the game, players can use their mouse or gamepad to swap blocks as well!

Multi-directional swapping on a gamepad will be an interesting new challenge, but we'll also include an option to use a more classic method - the horizontal cursor - to swap blocks in the same way we know and love. 

While we'll be testing the new gameplay servers hosting these Endless mode matches, the full implementation of multiplayer / online play will be added in a later build.

"When can we expect the first playable build?"

We're currently on track to release it in the middle of March! (hopefully even earlier) Once we're over this first technical mountain, the foundation will be laid to make future updates / modes / content much faster.

"Where can we download it?"

This part we're excited about: while the first build will be shared directly to our followers via Discord as a simple .exe (on Windows), App (on Mac), or .apk (on Android), all future beta builds will be publicly accessible on all major markets. No fumbling around with Apple's Testflight or the Google Play equivalent, just head to your respective mobile app store (or Steam on PC/Mac) and download nice and easy.

We'll provide more instructions on how to download and run the game leading up to this first "off the grid" release, so stay tuned! Especially on our Discord which is where we'll likely distribute the download links. (here's that invite link once again: https://discord.gg/cJXzN4z )

Under the Hood

In our recently posted vlog, we introduced the game engine we are now using - HaxeFlixel - and its vital role in making Super Plexis truly multi-platform. We also touched on other important milestones achieved in the past few months: the launch of our website, our custom ID / account system, and having all associated database/server structures up and running.

Introducing HaxeFlixel! (...what is it exactly?)

To use very non-professional terminology: HaxeFlixel is our cross-platform magic wand, allowing us to write code once that translates natively to any target platform we choose (if you skip to the end of our last vlog, you'll see a pristine example of how it continues to impress us). This means we don't have to start from scratch each time we put Super Plexis on a new platform. It also means when we update the game, those changes can be easily distributed to all platforms quickly. 

"Haxe" on its own is a high-level cross-platform programming language, while "Flixel" is a 2D game engine built on top of it. Then Open FL gets involved and...well, here, look these charts if you're curious:

...still here? Anyhow, this is a game changer for us (quite literally! Super Plexis is being rebuilt as a new game from the ground up) and all the time, research, and work gone into preparing these foundations are about to pay off for the first time in a playable way!

Also worth noting that the Nintendo Switch remains among the available platforms we can distribute to when the time comes (with a little extra preparation required) despite it not being listed in the charts above.

Thank you all again for sticking with us through this crazy ride of ours. We're just two guys with still so much to learn, and feel hardly worthy of the everyone's kindness and patience up to this point. But because of it, we're as inspired as ever to deliver something we hope everyone will enjoy!

See you at the first build!

- The Medley Studio Team