itch.io

It has come to my attention that there is an advert on the landing page of this game that you will be making a sequel to Time Tangled Island called Fast Foward sometime in the near future. How "soon" do you believe this new Island will come to fruition, and what exactly do you have in mind for it? No rush, I'm just curious, since a new Island certainly sounds like a fun, ambitious project.

Hello, I just wanted to check in with you and see how well this project is coming along. I was close to finishing Mystery Train Island, more specifically I was at the part with President Grover who helps you tie all the clues together, but then I realized I had lost a good chunk of my progress when I loaded my save file to make sure I exported the right one (it was neither, by the way). Of course, I not too upset about this ordeal, since the Island is rather fun in my opinion, but I supposed I should ask, is the autosave feature close to being completed? I’d rather not have something like this happen again, since I’m used to my games automatically saving my progress.

It seems you've deleted the list of Islands that can be completed on the description. Maybe you're working on another, but I think it was an accident. Can you put it back up? I need it so I can make a poll to help with the project for you.

Oh. Well, in that case, you've already got Zomberry, so that's one off of my wishlist. If I could make a suggestion, I'd like to see the Islands from the golden age, which, in my opinion, was from either Counterfeit or Mythology to Zomberry or Back Lot. Some of my favorites from that era include Red Dragon, Wild West. Game Show (Hot take, I know), Ghost Story, Reality TV, and Cryptids. I can't really decide on a favorite, but most fans probably can't either. Of course, I'm just one person, and the fan demand might be different from what I want, so I suggest we set up some sort of poll to see what folks want. I could make one if you want; I'm not the most advanced coder, but I'm happy to help out any way I can.

Is anyone in the Poptropica fandom willing to do music composing? This isn’t directed at the creator of this game, but rather the community. If anyone in the fandom is willing to compose music, we could add it to the game, just like the Skylanders Imaginators Destocked and Rebalanced mod. Of course, this fandom is a lot smaller than that, but the passion lives on.

Here's a page containing a bunch of the Poptropica OST, and some of the unused tracks if you need more inspiration: https://poptropi.ca/pop-plus/music/

All islands will be beatable eventually. I'm not one of the devs, but I'm happy to help with explaining things. I don't have any way of knowing which islands are a priority. I thought it was going to be in release order, since Early Pop and Shark Tooth were some of the first ones, but then there was Zomberry, so it's hard to tell. My estimate is that they'll all be finished in a couple of months. In hindsight, maybe he should've given this project a little more time to cook, or at least have called this the beta.

I'm no computer expert, but I believe this glitch has something to do with the game now running at 60 frames per second, while the original game runs at 30 frames per second, causing glitches like the sped up time limit. This is why the physics feel a bit funky. Only a small portion of all the islands can be beaten so far, so just keep patient and things will be fixed in due time.

That happened to me too on when I left Home Island. As for the bug reporting thing, honestly, I do think an in-game bug report feature would do us all some good, because we’re gonna need to crack a lot of eggs to make this omelette.

I think the game just updates automatically whenever a new patch drops. Not sure though, but it did when he fixed the glitch that made the game impossible to open. I’m not the one working on the game, I’m just trying to help, so I could be wrong.

Been there too. I’m no expert, but I have tried to inform him about this. I think he’s trying to get it fixed.

Try typing .json at the end of the file. It should work the same way it did for me.

He told me he was working on getting that fixed. I don’t think you’ll actually have to pay for a membership, so just be patient.

Oui oui, monsieur.

No problem. I’d usually try to avoid the use of artificial intelligence if possible, but I understand what you were trying to do here. It’s not really replacing any jobs in this case, so I’m not personally upset. I’m sure most of the work was done manually with a good old gallon of elbow grease. Besides, I know a former Poptropica Help Blogger wouldn’t betray the community. Stay poppin’.

I loaded in my save file from Flashpoint, which was in ze middle of Counterfeit Island. I got one of ze balloons from ze clown store, but when I jumped in ze air, my character went flying off into space. Now I know how ze Balloon Boy felt when I gave him zat balloon zat made him float away. Poetic justice, is it not? Anyway, zat is not ze point. I think ze balloon physics could use some tweaking, since you need to make jumps with ze balloon to collect certain items to complete ze Island. I suggest you check zat out when you get a chance, si vous plait. Comprende-vous, cordon bleu? Ohh-honh-honh-honh, oui oui, baguette, et cetera.

(In case you couldn’t understand all that, I was trying to type with a French accent, since Counterfeit Island is pretty French.)

No offense, but I was trying not to demonize you. I didn’t even know you were using AI, and I was just sharing my opinion on the situation. It’s not like this project is harming anyone or replacing jobs, you’re a one man band of a game developer, and there’s not really anyone else who cares enough about Poptropica to do something like this. I get it; you’re just a small game developer trying to give nerds like me what they want. All you’re doing is getting some minor assistance from artificial intelligence; it’s not like you’re eating babies or anything. I knew that a former Poptropica Help Blogger like you has more integrity than that. Most of the game was already coded anyway. I’m perfectly fine with this.

(And I just noticed that the guy who was getting onto you deleted the whole rant. Bro straight up retreated 🥀)

Oh, that seems… rough, to say the least. But he isn’t really asking for donations, since itch.io, even on free projects, gives the consumer the option to donate anyway. I don’t think any harm was meant by the use of artificial intelligence, and he’s working to iron out the kinks. It’s a little conflicting, but I don’t think we should be attacking HPuterpop. There’s not that many programmers in the Poptropica community, and there’s not even that many people who care about Poptropica these days in the first place. He probably just wanted to make something fans could enjoy by stitching together what we still have of the game, and the end result is pretty decent. I’m usually against the use of AI, but nothing was completely generated by AI in this case. Maybe I’m going a little too weak on him, but I’d say this is more of a morally grey situation.

Oh, yeah. I downloaded it and nothing went wrong for me.

Sweet. But for some reason, the store isn't working anymore. I didn't save the first time around and now I'm on a different computer. Any ideas?

Happy to hear that, but what do you mean by “music editor”? I don’t think that was part of the original Poptropica. Also, it was interesting to hear that your opinion on the advertisement scenes. I guess they do make the Islands feel bigger, but for gameplay purposes, they just feel like wasted space in my opinion. I’d rather not have them, as when there are advertisements, it feels a bit harder to take the game and story seriously.

So far, the game is pretty decent. The store is phenomenal, minus one thing: The membership items. There's no way to get a membership in this game like there was in OG Pop, and I'm not expecting a fan project like this to include microtransactions (I hope). Still, the items we do have access to in the store are pretty fun. My next criticism would have to be the game's physics. The game's physics feel a lot closer to the AS3 version of the game, and while it's not awful, it lacks the flow and smoothness of the AS2 version. In my opinion, there  should be an option to switch between the two. Something else I found strange about the game was the ad scenes. Between certain parts of Islands, there are small empty spaces that are intended to hold advertisements. I understand why they are there, since I am a media preservationist at heart, but I wish there was an option to turn them off just like in the Flashpoint curation. Another thing, the description says your team has managed to save more than 100 advertisements, but how do you even access them? I doubt I'd be greatly interested, but it's media preservation, which I am all for. My next nitpick would have to be the music selection. On some Islands, like Early Poptropica and Super Power, it's great (though on Super Power, the music is a bit fuzzy-sounding). On other islands, such as S.O.S, I don't know. I've not played that much, and I mostly just hopped from Island to Island to see what the music is like, but I recognize the theme of S.O.S from the trailer, and I'm not sure if I like it that much. I know you are planning to add more music to some Islands, but I just wanted to state my opinion. I think it's pretty cool that you added stuff like Dr. Hare's travels, the store, and the Avatar Studio. I wasn't even playing Pop back then and that stuff makes me nostalgic. I'd say you're doing a good job, even though this project isn't completely finished yet, I appreciate what you're trying to do. But it wasn't clearly explained to me how to import a save file from Flashpoint as it says you can do in the description. Can you explain how to do that? Nonetheless, I think this project is solid, high effort all around. Sorry this comment is so long, but I'm a huge Poptropica nerd. I think it's safe to say I've got some weird interests.

Nice touch using music from Jeff Heim, who originally composed the Poptropica Soundtrack. That's some good attention to detail, making the new soundtrack fit in with the rest.

From what I've read, you can save your progress manually, but auto-save isn't a feature just yet. HPuterpop, the creator, plans to implement that at some point in the future.

I haven’t had a moment to try it out just yet, but I’ll check in when I do. By the way while I’m here, I thought I might ask. Where did you find the music from the showcase video that you posted on YouTube? The one with Early Poptropica Island, I mean. I don’t believe I’ve heard it anywhere before.

Hey, I managed to get the game all downloaded, but I can't seem to get it to fully open. Whenever I open the game, the loading opening goes "Up to Date," and then it closes before the game even opens. I'm on Windows 11, just so you know. Any ideas?