By Lewie Procter on July 26th, 2011 at 6:58 pm.
We all loved Terry Cavanagh’s wonderful VVVVVV last year, didn’t we? Well I certainly did, that Kieron bloke did, and a straw poll of my hands unanimously voted in favour it. Universal approval if ever I saw it. Fantastic news: Terry has joined up with programmer Simon Roth to push out a major update to VVVVVV. Here’s the what’s new in VVVVVVersion 2.0:
- Full mod tools included!
- Custom levels by Mojang Specification’s Notch!
- A reworked engine, using native C++ instead of Flash. Should run much faster, and “runs on even utterly rubbish systems and ones with no dedicated gpu”!
- Enhanced resolution support and options!
- Proper save files, so clearing your flash cache won’t delete your saves!
- Bonus Analogue graphics mode!
- !
Isn’t that all just lovely? If you never bothered to play VVVVVV first time around, it’s available for whatever price you see fit, as part of the Humble Indie Bundle 3, right now. The bundle version is 2.0, and the update should be being pushed out across the other download services shortly.
Who’s going to make Veni Vidi Veni Vidi Veni Vidi Veni Vidi Vici? Or as we call it: VeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeee….
Update: Terry has done a big blog post with more juicy details, is going to be posting about it on twitter for the next few weeks, and Simon is posting tech gubbins too. Just a few minutes ago they mentioned that you should keep your old saves, because they might make a save exporter.
26/07/2011 at 19:02 Perrin says:
While I understand Notch’s level pack is more news worthy I’ve got to say the two new worlds by Souleye are absolutely stunning, if a bit mean and evil.
26/07/2011 at 19:12 icupnimpn2 says:
Speaking of Souleye, it would be great if PPPPPP were a bonus unlock
26/07/2011 at 19:33 Vagrant says:
I’m seeing more an irony that Notch’s levels are a big news item, when he made his mark by creating a game where the users create the levels.
26/07/2011 at 20:53 Oozo says:
That would be the perfect opportunity to remind people of VVVV, the 4k demade Notch made of the game:
http://tinyurl.com/ycc6nya
In other words: He’s a proper fanboy, ain’t he?
(Btw, you code-fu guys: is it impressive that this takes up 4k? Can’t ever judge things like this myself.)
26/07/2011 at 21:27 Xocrates says:
It’s perhaps worth noting that the notch levels is VVVV remade into VVVVVV
27/07/2011 at 08:07 Lollerskater says:
@Oozo The magic of cramming stuff in as little a size as possible is often hard to explain. There were times when mentioning that an entire audio-/visual-presentation (referring here to so called “demos” as related to the demoscene) would fit on one floppy would already flabbergast people. Nowadays it seems the concept of how relatively little data a floppy disk can contain is lost to most.
So let’s put it this way: I just saved this particular page of RPS to my harddisk to make a comparison. The HTML alone is already 85kB. (A 4kB game would fit many, MANY times on a floppy disk.)
27/07/2011 at 12:17 Bhaumat says:
@Oozo
As Lollerskater implied, it’s very dependant on the type of content and the medium.
Something like an HTML page is uncompressed plain-text. All that nice whitespace? Completely wasted on your browser. Those nice legible labels? Only required for humans.
The bulk of a game comes from it’s resources. Even a ‘AAA’ game will have gigabytes of textures and sound, but a main executable weighing in at a few megabytes.
Some of the size of that executable comes from including huge external libraries, plaintext etc. The rest being the boiled down logic to handle setup, creating a window, file i/o, game logic and so on.
Anyway. Yes, 4kb is impressive. Not flabbergastingly so, but impressive. That means he’s been careful with how the sprites and map information is stored (If he even used sprites), not included swaths of stuff the game doesn’t need and generally taken some care in it’s construction.
Of course, browser based applications externalise a lot of their resources and functionality. This is from my perspective of making standalone applications.
I want to be sarcastic about Notch and coding efficiency (Oh gods, Minecraft modding…), but I guess that’s a little unfair.
26/07/2011 at 19:09 fiddlesticks says:
VVVVVV is the best game of the past year. Discuss.
26/07/2011 at 19:10 Lewie Procter says:
Well it is over a year old…
26/07/2011 at 19:52 wisnoskij says:
I have played it a little but it does not seem to have anything unique about its gameplay.
26/07/2011 at 20:52 MrTambourineMan says:
I prefer Super Meat boy.
26/07/2011 at 20:57 Oozo says:
Funny. I prefer VVVVVV. (It might be the soundtrack. It might be the fact that I beat Veni Vidi Vici before it beat me. But VVVVVV certainly is one of my most pleasant game-related memories of yesteryear. Whether it’s best game or not – I don’t care.)
26/07/2011 at 22:21 Jason Moyer says:
VVVVVV is phenomenal. I also found bit.trip.runner more enjoyable than SMB, though.
27/07/2011 at 01:57 Giaddon says:
VVVVVV is one of the greatest games of the past few years. It simply can’t get enough love.
27/07/2011 at 02:33 Flit says:
It would be my GOTY 2010 if it wasn’t for Hero Core!
27/07/2011 at 18:21 parm says:
I’m certainly not going to violently disagree with that. Don’t know if it’s the absolute best, but it’s definitely in the best two or three most fun things I did this year on a computer that didn’t involve a google image search and Christina Hendricks.
26/07/2011 at 19:09 Mechanicus_ says:
I did that bit once (you know the one) and am never doing it again.
26/07/2011 at 19:11 hosndosn says:
VVVVVV makes simplicity look so easy.
26/07/2011 at 19:12 SquareWheel says:
“Proper save files, so clearing your flash cache won’t delete your saves!”
Oh thank the dev gods. One of my biggest problems with flash games.
26/07/2011 at 19:14 Lambchops says:
Ooh, more VVVVVV levels? Colour me ready to play.
Of course if they’re pitched even harder than the original ones then I might not be so happy, for me the difficulty balance of that game was perfect and it’s one of the very, very few games that pushed me into the ridiculous feats required to get all the shiny trinkets.
26/07/2011 at 19:27 Xocrates says:
I played through the first level pack (Notch’s) and I found it to have a fair balance between challenging, but not too hard, so that one seems like a good choice to take a quick dip back into the game. I only had a glance at the level pack after that and that one seems designed for folk who found the original game too easy.
Overall there seems to be a lot of new content there (there are a fair amount of new level packs) with a decent range of difficulty.
26/07/2011 at 19:23 Xocrates says:
“Who’s going to make Veni Vidi Veni Vidi Veni Vidi Veni Vidi Vici?”
Curiously enough, one of the bonus levels (not notch’s) has a section that can be described as the hard version of Veni Vidi Vici near the start.
I had a look at it and decided not to play that particular level pack.
26/07/2011 at 19:26 ChainsawCharlie says:
Right, this is 3rd time I am paying (gladly) for this game.
26/07/2011 at 19:27 Javier-de-Ass says:
also from souleye’s site (souleye.se):
“For this release of VVVVVV, We’re calling it VVVVVV version 2.0 (it’s NOT a sequel!), I have made 300+ rooms across two levels that you can play – they’re called “The Dual Challenge” and “A New Dimension”. Check ‘em out! I also supplied Terry with 2 more songs! Note that these are NOT included in “PPPPPP” or “PPPPPPowerup!” since they were created earlier. I’ll probably, eh, “bundle” them with a separate release, non-VVVVVV style.”
26/07/2011 at 19:29 Carl Johan says:
But will it work on my mac? D:
Yeah I guess it will :D
26/07/2011 at 19:37 OptionalJoystick says:
“If you bought VVVVVV directly from me, you should very soon receive an email with a new download link!”
Hooray! I have no recollection of doing so, but my download link suggests I did. Now, I wait.
I’m looking forward to the proper save format!
26/07/2011 at 19:39 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
Thus went my mini review of VVVVVV some time ago. It is one of the most perfect games I’ve played.
26/07/2011 at 22:25 Anthile says:
VVVVVV is Jack’s smirking revenge.
26/07/2011 at 20:30 iainl says:
Is there a demo of this new one, so I can see if ditching Flash makes it run on my netbook? Or do I just pay a cheeky-small price for HIB3 and then pay again if I’m happy?
26/07/2011 at 20:38 Lewie Procter says:
you don’t even have to do it cheekily, they have an option for “top up the amount I paid”, for if you later decide to pay more.
26/07/2011 at 21:35 iainl says:
Really? Thanks Lewie. I’ll give ‘em the fiver I was going to for AYIM, then, and top up if I like the others.
26/07/2011 at 20:55 Vinraith says:
It’s interesting. VVVVVV is the game that taught me that, while I maintain my affection for masochistic intellectual challenge, I’ve lost all taste for/patience with masochistic reflex challenges. It’s kind of sad, really.
26/07/2011 at 20:56 Brosepholis says:
I know you’re reading this, Simon. COME FORTH!
26/07/2011 at 21:19 simoroth says:
Me Gusta.
;)
27/07/2011 at 02:18 Benny says:
Reading Simon’s name on here makes me scared the world may start taking him seriously…
27/07/2011 at 09:19 Noctu says:
Benny, Simon, you both still owe me a pint.
26/07/2011 at 21:10 Scandalon says:
Not that I played more than a few sections of the demo, but I do have to wonder if recoding it changes the feel/feedback of the controls.
26/07/2011 at 21:24 simoroth says:
We spent a lot of time on this. I once added 5ms latency by accident and Terry immediately picked up on it. The controls should feel just right.
The increase in performance means a smoother framerate, so the sections that were a bit choppy now are silky smooth, making gameplay a lot less frustrating.
26/07/2011 at 21:35 PanzerVaughn says:
” The increase in performance means a smoother framerate, so the sections that were a bit choppy now are silky smooth, making gameplay a lot less frustrating.”
You can smooth out water all you want, its still going to be wet. >_o
26/07/2011 at 21:36 RogB says:
i DO love retro screen ‘filter’ thingys, but this one is a bit too hard on the eyes and strained me a bit after only 5 minutes before i had to quit and turn it off.
perhaps some settings wouldnt go amiss. eg:
i’d like the colour seperation to be reduced so thats its less obvious at a higher res (or single ‘ingame pixel’ rather than 2 maybe?), the noise seems fine, but i’d reduce the frequency of the screen roll.
i love the idea of it (and would prefer to play with this on to suit the aesthetic) but the implementation is a bit extreme for me as it currently is.
26/07/2011 at 21:59 Shadrach says:
It looks like it is in 3D? Parallax scrolling with 3d effect would be pretty cool!
I’m getting the bundle anyway, obviously.
26/07/2011 at 22:40 Jason Moyer says:
Is 2.0 going to be dropping as a Steam update?
Edit: N/m, just read the actual dev update. Can’t wait to check out the new stuff.
26/07/2011 at 23:59 Srethron says:
“Proper save files, so clearing your flash cache won’t delete your saves!”
Yay. Twice I got halfway through VVVVVV, and twice my save disappeared, whereupon I learned it was because I had been clearing my flash cache and gave up. Once these changes come through I’ll be happy to take another trip to the finish.
27/07/2011 at 03:09 MD says:
Hooray!
Also, I highly recommend the Line Wrap levels. Great fun, challenging without being crazy hard.
27/07/2011 at 04:59 jokomul says:
has anyone had theirs updated through steam yet? I’ve not yet played, but I grabbed myself the bundle and installed the game, but it’s only v1.2.
27/07/2011 at 09:17 Jams O'Donnell says:
Oh my — if it’ll truly run on my crappy laptop I’ll be a happy camper.
27/07/2011 at 12:32 DeanLearner says:
No game has made me want to hug a developer like VVVVVV has made me want to hug a developer.
Every Christmas at my parents I will play through VVVVVV, I can almost promise myself that.
27/07/2011 at 18:56 emlod says:
So i’m seeing all the love for VVVVVV and I had to mention an old, free, incredible platformer called Jumper. There’s jumper 1, jumper redux, jumper 2, and jumper 3. I think super meat boy took a lot of cues from this game.
Jumper 2 took me a month to beat in college with tens of thousands of deaths. I would start with that one, if you like going crazy. I think it will be right up your alleys…
http://www.mattmakesgames.com/games.php
27/07/2011 at 20:57 jiminitaur says:
Money Sieze is better.
29/07/2011 at 04:25 Terry Cavanagh says:
emlod: Yeah, all of Matt Thorson’s games are bloody great :) I love An Untitled Story in particular.
29/07/2011 at 05:47 MD says:
edit: reply fail (and by that I mean I forgot to click ‘reply’). This was meant to be a reply to emlod.
Thanks for the link — I’ve been playing Jumper: Redux, and it’s great fun. Just finished the third stage and it warned me ‘now for the hard part’, so I’m taking a break :)
I’ll be back though. I don’t think I’ve played any of Matt Thorson’s games before, but I get the feeling he’s a pretty talented game designer. It’s a simple game, but the feel is spot-on and the levels seem to have been created with a fair bit of thought.