Introducing The EVERYTHING UPDATE!

If you've been around the Polytoria Community and our Discord Server, you should know that the staff team has been quiet lately. Well, here we are! We've been working on a massive update for months, and we are proud to present to you our brand new creator and client. The big update has finally arrived!

Before we get into the discussion, fair warning: This is a pretty big blog post, and has a ton of gifs and clips showcasing the new client and creator. Things may take time to load, so if you see gaps that's just the clips trying to load. Thanks, and enjoy reading!

On the surface, it looks like little has changed. However, there is so much more to explore, discuss, and share with you guys! This blog post will be explaining EVERYTHING we added into the update, and we will be starting with the new Polytoria client. Let's discuss what's new!

The "client" just refers to the application that lets you play Polytoria games. It's where the magic happens!

The big client update

We're going to be starting off with the simple things we added, and then going big. On the loading screen when launching directly into a game, you can now see the current loading state.

All right! I know you guys aren't reading this to listen to all the boring stuff. Let's get right into all the exciting stuff you guys want to hear.

The big UI overhaul

We've completely overhauled the user interface, which looks way nicer and performs much better! The chat section has been completely redone, and the entire settings menu has been overhauled! In the settings section, you'll have more options to fully configure Polytoria to your needs. To make things better, there's a player list to see everyone who is directly inside the game with you! No more having to struggle with scrolling down our old tiny player list to see who's playing with you. You can now see how long you have been playing Polytoria as well! (If someone gets above a day, I will give you 500 bricks. That is a challenge.) Did you join a game that has inappropriate things in it or did you deem something in the game inappropriate? You can now directly report the game right from our client! The reports will be sent to our administrators to be directly reviewed.

Note that the screenshots from this menu interface are from a development build of the client. Some of the interfaces here will be slightly tweaked in the production version to look nicer and perform better.

Besides the new settings UI, we have brought in a brand new health bar that is featured right below your screen, showing your exact HP value. At the top right of the screen, you can see a brand new leaderboard that will be featuring everyone who is inside your game as well! Pretty cool, right? In the future, we'll be adding developer support for teams and point scores as well! As mentioned earlier, we also overhauled chat so the window disappears after a period of inactivity, which makes it so you can focus on the gameplay when nobody is around!

Let's get into some more fun things added to our client! We are going to be talking about new animations, a new death animation, sprinting, and more! Keep reading to find out how to use these animations!

Animations / Emotes

We've heard you, and we are going to be responding to you guys by adding what you guys want! You heard that right, we added emotes! There are currently 4 emotes inside the client, three of which are public and one which you will have to try and find. The first emote is /wave, which is a simple wave command to wave at your friends when you see them in-game! Please note that these are the current emotes that were in the client as of 2/22/2022, and there are more emotes being added before the release. Check out our Discord Server for more news on these emotes!

Our next awesome emote that we have added to the client is /dance, which is a cute little bopping animation that you can use to jam with your friends! Head on down to the club and show off those moves!

For our next emote we added, do you ever get scared in Polytoria and feel like you need to express yourself in the game? This emote will let you! Just type into the client /scream and you will be showing everything that you just found something terrifying. There will be an animation that plays too, and you'll run with your hands in the air!

And for the final emote, the command has been added to all your clients but we will not be revealing what the command is. You can try and guess what the command is based on seeing it if you would like! Good luck finding it! Let us know in the Discord Server if you do manage to find it, we would love to see the progress on finding it!

That's all the emotes we have added to the client! Now let's run on into the next thing. We've added a built-in sprinting feature, which allows you to hold shift and increase your moving speed.

And there's one more animation that we have added into the game... Do you think it could be? Yep, you guessed it! We added climbing!

By adding the new truss part, you can climb up pillars, or by making it invisible you can design your own ladders and walls, as shown below:

With all of these new emotes and animations, there was one thing that really needed some love and care on the Polytoria Client. The death animation was not in its best spot before, and it would just make you go flying or make you lay down on the ground. This was not an intended feature, and we finally fixed it! The death animation now puts you in a flimsy ragdoll, and when you die you fall onto the ground and your body parts are just, well, dead! This new death animation is sure to make fighting games a lot more hilarious and engaging.

That's all of the new animations and emotes that have been added to Polytoria's new client, let's check out something people have been waiting a long time on, GEARS!

Gears

You asked for it, and we're here to deliver it! In one of our previous Polytoria Clients, we had a few built-in gears that people could mess around with and make games more interesting on Polytoria. Those gears were later removed for our now current client, but we are bringing them back in a new way! Game developers will now be able to create their own gears with the creator! You can also upload gears you've made to the toolbox (yes, that's new in the creator!) We've had a few gears already uploaded to the toolbox that you will be able to use right away by some fantastic developers of the community. The classic bomb has been put on the toolbox, but there's also new creations like the rocket launcher!

Our friend DevPixels tried the scripted bomb with an autoclicker software, and we had to rethink our lives for a bit:

There are some more things that have been added to the client like meshes, decals, audio, textures, and more! Let's go check out the brand new creator!

The big creator update

I know all you developers are going to be excited for this one because we made your experience for developing games so much better! The creator has added so many new things that I can't wait to see all the new creations you guys will make. Let's get right into the creator with a preview of what we have added!

New client publishing/loading UI

To improve the creator experience, we added a starting menu which allows you to open a previous project and get right back into the action! And when you are ready to publish your game, you can now see the icon, name, and dates of the game to make sure that you are publishing the right one! We have added a few templates that you can choose from, starting with "Baseplate", "Office buildings", and "Empty"! We'll add more templates in the future, and hopefully they inspire creators around the platform to make some incredible things.

Toolbox

From the image above, you can see that. to the right of the screen. we have added a new toolbox window! You can now upload your models directly to the toolbox for other developers to use in their own projects. We are hoping to add some sort of rating system in the future where you can leave a positive review on models made by other people.

The X on the models just means there is no current preview for the model.

In a future update we'll be adding a more detailed way to preview,  insert, and upload models as well as automatic rendering so your models don't show up with a plain ol' X in the workshop. Stay tuned for that update!

Sound/Audio

At the top of the creator, you will notice that there are multiple buttons that have been added. The main things that we are going to be paying attention to are scripts and sounds! When the update drops, you'll be able to upload audio directly to the website, which you can then insert right into your game! Audio can be played automatically in the background, or used by a script to create a truly interactive experience. Please note that there is a small fee for uploading audio directly to the website.

Decals / Materials

On the old version of the client and creator, you couldn't really decorate your games with materials or decals. Everything was made out of plastic, which we have to admit was kinda boring. That is all going to change! In the new version of the creator, there are now decals (user-created textures) and materials that you can add to your game! There are over 20 materials that have been added to the creator that you can now add to your parts to make your parts shine in new ways. Grass, sand, plastic, wood, and so much more! Decals have also been added to the creator.

Decals are free to upload to the website, but just make sure that they are appropriate and follow our community guidelines.

Time of day

It must've been pretty tiring seeing the same blue sky, right?

Imagine wanting to create a haunted house, but you were stuck in the sunlight! That would have completely ruined the atmosphere, wouldn't it?

Well, with a new wide range of sky settings that you can choose from, all games can now express all kinds of events! Choose between a variety of morning, noon, evening, night, and pitch black all at your fingertips. Check it out in the creator when the update releases!

Text / Lighting

Text has finally been added to the creator! You can now add text objects directly into the game.

Gone are the days of painfully writing out text with blocks. This may not be as exciting as the other features, but it is definitely a welcome one. We've already seen some extremely creative uses of the text object as well!

Text also supports rich text mode, allowing you to change its properties like color, size, and more throughout a paragraph

On top of that, we've added customizable lighting to the creator!

You can add "point lights" which illuminate in all directions or a spotlight which allows you to illuminate at certain angle. You can adjust the settings to make the lights do whatever you would like them to do! You can use the light objects to create streetlamps, lighting inside buildings, and so much more!

Scriptable UI

While we made some big changes to our own UI, we know that you guys really want to add your own UI to your games as well.

User-created interfaces has been a big request that we've seen from many many people, and until we can get a true form of user-created UI, we've compensated with this small workaround.

We have added basic scriptable alert boxes, headers, and more!

On the screenshot above, you'll notice that DevPixels made a progress bar in the game.

That was made entirely using our text object with some rich text magic. The possibilities are endless!

Custom meshes

I know so many of you guys have been asking for the ability to add custom models and we are almost here give it to you!

At the moment, meshes are limited to the official hats in the Polytoria store and you can put any asset you would like from the Polytoria Store directly into your game!

You can create a "MeshPart" in the creator, type in the ID of the item you want in your game, and there you go! The mesh has been put into your game!

Meshes are extremely useful for creating scriptable gear, as you can use the ID of a Polytoria item like a bomb, pizza, a juice box, or a luger to create truly immersive weapons or consumables!

Now, for the moment you've all been waiting for... The big feature that is about to change all of Polytoria's games FOREVER... You know exactly what it is, and we're excited to finally release it to you all. Scripting has finally been added to the creator!!

Scripting

Polytoria's Creator is using the LUA programming language to make creating fully-functional games possible on the Polytoria platform.

Scripting allows programmers, from just getting started to insanely experienced, to interact with all kinds of components of the Polytoria client.

If you would like to get started with creating things before the big release of the Everything Update you can check out our scripting documents by pressing the button down below.

The beta testing team has been working hard to make sure that you guys have some games to play when we release the Everything Update! Here's some games being worked on by our beta program, so take a look!

Flood Escape 2 by DevPixels

Flood Escape 2 is a complete rewrite of the old, previous Flood Escape game that was made by CyA. The game currency has 3 maps that get randomly chosen, and all of these maps are using the new features that the creator is offering! There's sound in-game, textures, there are even materials that are being used in every single map!

Flood Escape 2 by DevPixels truly shows every aspect of the Everything Update being used to extremely creative ends. The game is even using some custom GUI that you can see on the screen that tells you what maps get chosen. To make things better, there's an oxygen system so you don't die right away when you fall into the water! Check out this game when the brand new client comes out, it's pretty fun!

PolytoriaHQ by olo

PolytoriaHQ is a game that doesn't feature any scripting but features a bunch of the new things Polytoria has added. This game features decals, which you can find around the map, and the game also features materials that we have recently added!

The HQ is more of a showcase map to demonstrate the insane worldbuilding options of the creator, but if you are looking for a place to hang out with your friends or have a very important staff meeting which everyone must attend, this is your game! Check it out when our new client and creator releases!

Zombie Map by olo

This game features a bunch of zombies that are chasing you around the map, and your goal is to try and escape the zombies before they catch you! If you're running out of options, fight back by equipping weapons from the Gun Shop. Be careful though, the zombies are trying to eat you and will do anything in their power to get to you. Get out there and fight some of the living dead! The game features a lot of the added features to the client, so it's definitely one to check out.

This pretty much sums up all of the new things we've added! This is the biggest update in Polytoria history, and we couldn't have done it without our awesome developers. Thanks to our client developers Brixster, willemsteller, rev, and and the entire beta testing crew for making this possible.

If you missed our premiere, we had a two minute video go live on our YouTube Channel which revealed the update. Check it out at the top of the post!

The Everything Update releases this Friday. We can't wait to see you there!

The Everything Update isn't just a single update, but rather a transition to a new phase in Polytoria's lifecycle. Here are some things we're still working on, but not quite ready to release:

Coming in a later update

• Bubble chat
• Configurable running stamina meter
• Part decals, which can be wrapped into different shapes like spheres and cylinders
• Direct access to Unity's underlying particle engine, allowing creators to implement crazy visuals and effects!
• Advanced custom GUIs including buttons, images, and field placement.
• In-game monetization of store items and clothing
• More advanced physics including the ability to create vehicles