itch.io

Just wanted to post an update letting you know about a number of bugs I've run into over the last week or so.

1) I'll start with the most gamebreaking bug I've found, which is on Reality TV Island. Everything's fine up until you get on the show, and at that point, it becomes really difficult to beat, if not impossible. To start with, several of the challenges have messed-up framing, where the original square aspect ratio hasn't been correctly adapted to the wider, more rectangular format. (This is a recurring theme in several of the bugs I've run into.) Sometimes that's just an aesthetic issue, but other times it actually seems to be affecting the functionality of the game. In particular (although this may be unrelated to the aspect ratio issue), the Turtle Toss challenge stops working after the second person makes their throw. As in, no one else makes any throws, so you just sit there with nothing happening until you decide to quit out of the game.

2) The messed-up aspect ratio also causes an issue with the final boss fight on Counterfeit Island, making it super hard to catch the falling artwork. It's technically completable, but it's about twice as hard to beat as it's supposed to be, because the movement controls don't work if you click in certain spots.

3) Earlier on Counterfeit Island, when I was looking through the security footage and my character says, "there are hours and hours of footage, I need to go find the security guard to know which timestamp to check," I was unable to close out of the security footage; there wasn't even an "x" to click in the corner. I had to quit out. Not gamebreaking, just annoying. Similarly, I had trouble closing out of the computer game in the Internet cafe after losing.

4) Not sure what caused this, but on Astro-Knights Island, I lost all my progress on the island when I saved and quit, after playing all the way to the ice planet. I had to do it all over again. The game had repeatedly given me the autosave notification in the corner while I had been playing up to that point, and I clicked "save and quit" when I left the game, so I don't know why that happened. It was just one time, so it could have been a fluke, but I thought it worth mentioning.

5) Similar to the earlier bugs mentioned on Counterfeit Island, I wasn't able to close out of the newspaper on Big Nate Island that shows up when you find the time capsule; the "x" didn't work. I closed the game and replayed that part, and it worked the second time for some reason. But that type of thing does seem to be a recurring bug throughout the game.

6) Also on Big Nate Island, if you lose the paper football game, you get the spinning blue wheel of death and can't do anything.

7) Finally, when you defeat Director D on Spy Island, you get the spinning blue wheel of death and can't progress. If you save and quit and then reopen the game, your progress is saved, so the island is technically completable, but it's still irritating.

There are a variety of other bugs, too, but I didn't bother mentioning them because they're mostly just aesthetic issues (framing errors that don't affect the gameplay, lack of music or sound effects in certain scenes, etc.).

Hm. Okay, well, I guess it's just behaving differently for you than it did for me.

Could be wrong, because it's been years since I played that island on the original Poptropica, but I don't think that's a glitch — I think it's just how the game is designed. It's just hard. I struggled with it too on my recent playthrough. You just really have to get the timing right.

Update on Super Power Island: The rock glitch has been patched and Sir Rebral is now beatable. However, when I defeat Betty Jetty and we both fall out of the sky, my character gets stuck infinitely bouncing up and down in the air in front of her while the cursor shows the spinning blue wheel of death. So, the island is still non-completable.

Yeah this happened to me too. I didn't bother submitting a bug request or anything because it's pretty easy to work around — just turn on caps lock to type "S" rather than using shift — but I guess it still might be worth getting fixed at some point once the more gamebreaking bugs are dealt with. (I guess it's not technically a bug, because it is meant to do that, but it can definitely be a little annoying.)

For the most part, yeah! There was a weird glitch one time where I lost all my progress on Early Poptropica, but otherwise the saves have worked. The only thing I did differently the time I lost all my progress was that when I got the island medallion, I clicked the option in the pop-up box that said something like "Explore other islands." I don't know for a fact that that's what caused it, but to be on the safe side, I've since been closing out of the pop-up and manually walking back to the blimp whenever I finish an island. And I haven't had any save issues since the time I started doing that.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that message pops up any time you try to open an app that hasn't been specifically approved by Apple. If you go into "Privacy and Security" in your Mac settings and scroll down to the "Security" section, you should see a field that says "Allow applications from," which I'm assuming is set to "App Store & Known Developers." That means any app that isn't sold in the App Store and isn't from a "known" developer to Apple — which is the case for the vast majority of indie apps like this one — is blocked by your security settings, prompting the message you saw.

I got the same message when I first installed it, and yeah, the wording makes it sound really ominous. But I feel pretty confident there's no malware in it, particularly now that I've been using it for several days without any issue, so I'm not worried about it. You can override the Apple message by going to the "Security" section of your Mac settings that I mentioned above. If you've recently tried to open the app, you should see it listed there, with a button that says "Open Anyway." Click that and you're good to go.

If you still don't feel comfortable opening the app, that's obviously fine, and I'm not pushing you to do anything you feel unsafe doing. That said, this isn't really something the developer can do anything about (as far as I'm aware), so I think your options here are 1) to trust that the app doesn't have malware, or 2) to opt not to use it.

Just wanted to let you know about a few island-specific bugs I've run into:

1) On Time Tangled Island, the stopwatch appears in the bottom corner of the screen for easy access, but it's not clickable. You can still use it by navigating to it in your items, so this isn't game-breaking or anything, but I thought I'd mention it.

2) On Super Power Island, every time I defeat a villain and go to handcuff them (with the exception of Copy Cat), I get a spinning wheel of death and the game refuses to progress. I have to quit out and restart each time it happens. Thankfully, it at least saves my progress and counts the villains as defeated, so it's not technically game-breaking, but it's still very frustrating.

3) Also on Super Power Island, I'm not able to complete the fight against Sir Rebral. That's because the second phase of the fight requires you to push a large rock across the ground, but the rock isn't currently moveable; my character strains to move it but can't get it to budge. This issue is game-breaking — or island-breaking, rather — because it prevents me from finishing the island.

I may keep posting more island-specific glitches in this thread as I run across them, or I could create new threads for each if you'd prefer. Thanks!

Saving seems to be working fine now! (Still seeing the random unfamiliar profile showing up as an option for some reason, but it's not like that's causing any problems, so it's probably not even worth the effort to patch that.) Thanks so much!

Seconding this! I might be having the same issue — it certainly sounds the same as what I'm experiencing. I left a comment about it on the "Save Issues" thread, although I neglected to mention the part about the unrecognized profile randomly showing up; glad you pointed that part out, because it's happening to me as well.

Here's a link to my original comment in the other thread:

https://itch.io/post/14985967

Let me know if this is the same thing you're experiencing (or if it's something different)!

Hi! Firstly, let me second what TideSlayer said about the incredible work on this game. After years of thinking I'd never get to play islands like my beloved Astro-Knights again, it's great that I have that option restored to me.

Secondly, though, I'm having a similar issue to the one described here (similar enough that I opted to post about it in the same thread, but I apologize if I should have started a new one instead). Unlike for TideSlayer, however, hitting "Save & Quit" doesn't resolve the issue for me.

The problem I'm having is that when I create a new profile, it doesn't ever seem to save it. I'll create the character, customize the name and appearance to what I want, and then click "Enter Poptropica," at which point I start the game. I can play it fine, but then when I'm done, I'll click "Save & Quit" in the menu, and the game will close. If I then open it back up and click "Returning Player," there's no trace of the character I created previously.

I guess that's not actually surprising, though, because at no point while creating that character did the game prompt me to create a username or password, so of course there's no way for me to log in to that character again; it was never saved as a profile in the first place. So basically, I'm creating a character, but not a profile. I've tried it several times and haven't noticed any option to input the profile info. It's possible I'm just blind, but as far as I can tell, it's not there. Which means anytime I make a new character and then quit out of the game (regardless of whether I hit "Save" or not), the character is lost forever.

Notably, this issue doesn't happen for imported profiles. But I want to start from scratch with a new one, which I'm not currently able to do. I guess I could technically create a new profile on the CoolMath version of Poptropica, save it, and then use that (I've tested it and it does work), but I don't want to do that because the CoolMath version of the game doesn't seem to give you the option to customize your name and appearance while creating your character.

I know you've probably got a million bugs and updates to work through on this, so no rush! But I just wanted to let you know it's happening so you can get to it in your own time (and just in case I'm missing an obvious fix you could point me to.)

And finally, apologies again if this should have been its own thread.