Category: Haxe Javascript

Bonus Items, Haxe Javascript, Member Gifts, Membership, Store

Classic Islands are back, but not forever

Slanted Fish

Hey, Poptropicans! From the (temporary) return of classic islands (!!) to hot new summer items, there’s a lot to cover in this post. Let’s get started.

Players have been requesting the return of the classic, old school islands since they vanished from the map last July. Although there’s a backdoor way to access them, the popular demand ever since their disappearance has always been to officially reinstate them into the game itself. And now, they’re back!

Four monochromatic, nostalgic pages of glorious classic islands await.

The Creators have been listening, and this week they finally decided to bring back the classic islands. Though the team is still busy porting the islands to the Haxe Javascript build of Poptropica, they figured they would let us play the old islands while Flash is still available. To get started, find Early Poptropica Island on your map in Poptropica. Either the Flash or Haxe version will do…

…But as you can see, there is one major catch: it’s for members only. (Non-members, fear not: we’ll get to how you can join in on the fun, too.)

If you are a member, though, you’ll get a screen inviting you into Early Poptropica Island. Clicking “Play” will redirect you to the old Flash login page, where you’ll need to enter your login again to be brought to Early Pop.

From there, you can hop onto the blimp to travel across the various classic islands, as pictured earlier in this post. (And if you need them, we’ve still got guides for every island.) Keep in mind, however, that since this is old technology (Action Script 2), these islands can sometimes be buggy.

Why members only? Reddit user theodoor03 reached out to Poptropica support to ask this question, and shared the following response he received: in short, “Because of the islands’ age, they require a good deal of extra maintenance per player. [Poptropica] simply would not be able to support every player trying to access them right now.”

If you’re a non-member, don’t worry. You can still play the classic islands with the aforementioned backdoor method, which is to use idk’s Old Island Directory (also listed on our Glitching page). There are just a few more steps you’ll have to follow compared with before Poptropica’s members-only update, which are all outlined in the notes of the teleporter tool.

Happy exploring—while you can! Since Flash will be gone at the end of 2020, there’s only about half a year left before these islands are no longer playable, membership or not. Make the most of this moment!

Some players have reported seeing a new cinematic trailer video for Poptropica when logging into the Haxe build. The 30-second clip animates a sea of familiar islands, from iconic ones like Mythology and Arabian Nights (where Scheherezade is summoning… herself?) to classic ones like Twisted Thicket and Zomberry Island. You can watch the epic video here.

Could this be reassurance that some of these older islands will return in the future after Flash? (Hopefully for all players, too.)

Another week, another store update! Here’s what’s in on the first week of June. In total, we have 21 items in stock, 9 of which are for members only. Most notably, the Graduate costume is free for all! (And while you’re flapping about in these robes, take a moment to read the PHB’s 2020 commencement address as a note of encouragement for all Poptropicans!)

This week’s costumes are: Graduate, Spring Fling, Unicorn Girl*, Clover Kid, Lilac Star, Hiker Cutie*, and Wild Child*. (Lilac Star and Clover Kid are relatively cheap at 75 credits.) For followers, we have the Deer*, Chick, F.R.E.D. (from Galactic Hot Dogs), and Classic Pack*. Just two powers this week: Snow Fall and Flower Planting*. In pranks, there’s Hypno-Powder*, Silly Streams, Squirrel Prank*, and Bunny Wand. Finally, in miscellaneous: Marshmallow Roaster, Hiking Shoes, Classic PopGum*, and Balloons. (* = members only)

According to the Home Island billboard, store items will continue to rotate weekly, just as they have for the past couple of months. Huzzah!

And finally — it’s not only a new week but a new month, which means member gifts! June kicks off summer in the northern hemisphere, so the three flavors of Popsicles are quite fitting here. Members can also throw it back to 2015 with the Hover Scooter and Drone Flying Follower.

Like its real-life counterpart, the Hover Scooter (also known as a hoverboard) doesn’t actually hover, but simply glides, as shown in the gif below. Your Poptropican also suddenly puts on shoes to ride it.

The Hover Scooter and other June member gifts in action.

That’s it for this post! Share your thoughts in the comments—what islands do you want to see return in post-Flash Poptropica? what stands out to you in the new cinematic trailer? why is Poptropica bringing back a dead trend?—and we’ll see you next time. Stay safe, Poptropicans. ✊

Gentle Dolphin contributed reporting to this post. Thanks also to Purple Claw (former PHB staff) for tipping us off on several news items.

24 Carrot Island, Haxe Javascript, PoptropiCon Island, Store, Survival Island, Timmy Failure Island

Get equipped with Quippy’s common room stores 👽

Gentle Dolphin

Hey Poptropicans, have we got a lot to look at this time!

In addition to the monthly rotation of store items, four new shops have popped up around Poptropica, each with their own themed items. Plus, the game’s showing signs of progress on the friends feature, and for the first time in a long time, we even get to see some official concept art. Let’s explore!

First, let’s take a tour of the new shops, which are all located in various common rooms on different islands. These common room stores feature themed items for those islands—some new, some we’ve seen before. However, these stores are only available in Poptropica’s Haxe Javascript build, and are unlikely to be made for Flash, which will soon be obsolete.

These common room stores are available on four islands so far: 24 Carrot, PoptropiCon: Episode 1, Survival: Episode 1, and Timmy Failure.

Our first stop is the cinema on 24 Carrot Island. You will find Quippy hovering by the entrance. They’re offering Dr. Hare-themed goodies for sale: Hare Hotshot (which was the former BETA Carrotene bonus for members who helped beta-test the sound-updated 24 Carrot Island), Dr. Hare Plush Toy, Light & Shadow Hare*, and the Rabbit Ear Prank*. (* = members only)

While waiting in line to get into PoptropiCon (Episode 1), you can stop by the Facili-Tee store to buy cool costumes such as the Tinfoil Robot and the Supernova (basically recolored from a Tron ad). You can also show your love of Old School Islands by wearing the Lunar Colony Cosplay* and Game Show Cosplay*. Quippy is ready for the convention with their own adorable cardboard cosplay!

While traveling in our blimp, we get caught in a storm and become stranded in the snowy forest of Survival Island (Episode 1). Thankfully, we’re not alone. A wooden Quippy can be found at the frozen pond under the big tree to the right. They’ll offer feathery friends like the Blue Woodpecker follower and the Owl Head Rider, as well as a Ghillie Suit* and a Frozen Body power*.

Our final stop is Timmy Failure Island. The bad news is that Timmy Failure Island is only available to members. The worse news is that you need to have a membership on an account in Haxe Javascript, as Flash-made accounts are separate from ones made in the newer Haxe build.

If you have an active membership on a Haxe Javascript account, you can access the island and its common room. Though Quippy looks as if they came out of a garbage truck, the store items are anything but trash. We have a Total costume, a Señor Burrito follower, Timmy’s iconic red Scarf*, and a mighty “GREATNESS” banner*. (Strange to list some items as for non-members when the whole island and its store are for members only!)

You can do more than shop in common rooms, of course. The Creators are hard at work implementing the friends feature to the new Poptropica, and new Haxe players now have a fourth dialogue with Amelia when they first land on Home Island: to meet new friends!

In common rooms such as the Blast-off Arcade, you can befriend other players by selecting “Want to be friends?” from the chat menu. If they say yes, you’ll even get a pop-up message saying the friend was added successfully! (It might also say the user isn’t registered, if that’s the case.)

Despite this, the player profile and friends page aren’t ready just yet, so there’s no way to view your friends on Haxe at the moment. But the signs are there that this popular feature is being worked on!

Over on the Creators’ Blog, the Creators shared an inside look on how they created the adorable Quippy. Early concepts show the artists figuring out how to show players the common room stores — did they want a droid, a kiosk, or something else? Once they settled on a droid, they chose some of their favorite designs and explored them further…

All this hard work and creativity culminated into one of the most unique and adorable faces in Poptropica. A friendly droid equipped with a luminous smile and a keen fashion sense. The magnificent Quippy.

The Creators ended their post with a word of encouragement for budding artists and avid gamers:

If you love games and art, consider learning more about becoming a games artist! There are a lot of ways to get involved in the making of video games outside of coding, and game artists are a critical piece of the team. After all, what’s a game without the art!?

That wraps up this post! What do you think of Quippy and the presence of all these new stores? Thoughts on Poptropica’s Haxe build so far? Share in the comments, and if you haven’t yet, catch up to our other posts below!

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

—Gentle Dolphin 🐬

24 Carrot Island, Haxe Javascript, Store

May store arranges, 24 Carrot changes

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! Store items for the month of May are here, and unlike last month, there’s no sign that they’ll change weekly this time.

The items are all ones we’ve seen before in Poptropica, though their availability on the Haxe Javascript build is a good sign of the Creators’ progress in porting over some of the older items to the game’s future.

For this month, the store costumes are: Soccer Player (boy and girl), Rainbow Storm, Rebel Beach, Mythology Surfer (boy and girl), Pop Star, and Rock Star. Miscellaneous brings us the Cinnamon Fire PopGum and Balloons, and in pranks we have Sticky Notes, Fart Gun, and the 8-Bit Birthday Pixel Pig Power.

As for the real powers, there’s Binary Rain, Bobblehead, Flower Planting Power, and Atom Power. Finally, in followers, we have the adorable Chick, Classic Pack, Charlie the Chocomonkey, and Atlantis Drone.

In other news, the Haxe Javascript version of 24 Carrot Island has had a few updates! (But not as drastic as the remastered version on Poptropica Worlds… Haxe hasn’t given us wild-haired Maynard or the Carrot Museum.)

You’ll see the first change right when you start the island, which now plays a short video showing a kid pulling carrots and getting whisked underground by a mechanical claw that drags him into the carrot factory, where Dr. Hare awaits. You can see this teaser video in our previous post.

The next change is a nostalgic one: you can mix a drink at the Carrot King Diner to change your hair color! This hidden trick was in the original 24 Carrot that released in 2008, but had disappeared when 24 Carrot was re-released in 2013 as a sound-updated island. Seven years later, it’s back!

Characters on this island also now come with small speech bubbles with just an ellipsis (the three dots) to indicate they have something to say. Perhaps this will extend to other islands in Haxe?

Speaking of, well, speaking, some of the dialogue on this flagship Poptropica island has been altered. Overall, the new lines flow well and give the player a better sense of what’s going on. Even the homeless man gets to explain his circumstances: the closure of the carrot cake factory has put him out of work.

And, at least one store in Poptropica still has toilet paper. 😉

Anyway, that’s all for this post, but these aren’t the only updates from Poptropica this week! Stay tuned for our next post, where we’ll talk more on the new common room stores and the funky little droid powering them…

Stay awesome, Poptropicans! 😄

Haxe Javascript

The adventures begin in Haxe Javascript

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! Remember back in February when the Creators mentioned their Haxe Javascript project, which they’ve been working on since last year, and which would allow Poptropica to survive post-Flash?

So far, there hasn’t been much to see—but recent developments are showing signs of progress, or at least, experimentation. Let’s take a look!

Poptropica’s Haxe Javascript build so far includes a limited Home Island, with some features like the Pet Barn, but missing others like the Arcade. It’s covered in fall leaves like the look we’ve seen in regular Poptropica, but this version is a bit emptier.

For some time now, the Haxe build has been accessible at a link that’s not too hard to guess: poptropica.com/haxe. Now, clicking on the “Play For Free” link on Poptropica’s homepage goes directly to this link, and players have been reporting some interesting features they’ve seen.

For starters, here’s a screenshot from Perfect Fish, showing daily login rewards of credits that increase as you keep up your login streak.

There’s also a new character selection screen, with about seven pre-designed characters you can pick from to hop into the game right away — no customization of name or appearance. (Thanks to Quick Fang for the tip.)

This “Pick a Character” screen used to be more similar to the one we’ve had since late 2018, but with different (one might say less appealing) colors of bright orange and purple. (Thanks goes to Scrooge200 for these screenshots.)

As seen above in the Home Island screenshots, your player clubhouse is among the features not yet ready in Poptropica’s Haxe. Still, a new clubhouse icon has popped up in the menu, replacing the friends icon. It might be a while before the friends feature is ready in this new Poptropica… 😢

If you visit the Haxe build at the link above, you’ll find that the map is looking even more sparse than usual: there are literally only 6 islands so far. (But don’t panic just yet—you can still find a more populated map by logging into the regular Poptropica, at poptropica.com/game.)

Along with Home Island, Snagglemast and 24 Carrot are counted as beginner islands, while “Adventures of Mystery” offers Survival 1, PoptropiCon 1, and just recently added for members only, Timmy Failure. (This is probably why they used the phrase “early access” when you click into it.)

But there is still one more page: the “Adventures of Deception,” which shows (unlabeled) Escape From Pelican Rock as coming soon. Silhouettes of two more islands can be seen on this page: Mythology up top and Shrink Ray on the right, by the looks of it. All these missing islands seem to suggest the Creators still have a long way to go with rendering AS3 (newer) islands into Haxe.

Survival 1 had me stuck in a never-ending loading loop over my character as soon as I’d crash-landed onto the island, and with this being the early stages, these few Haxe islands may still be working out bugs. Proceed with caution!

Poptropica in Haxe also brings in a couple of subtle changes to the iconography of in-game movement. When hovering over an entrance, the text that tells you what room you’re entering is now wrapped in a white bar, as opposed to the white outline on the text as before. Also, the movement arrow loses part of its white outline on the side facing your character.

  • Entering a room in Haxe.
  • Movement arrow in Haxe.

That about wraps up what’s up in Poptropica’s Haxe so far. Not much, but not nothing, and with new features on the way, it seems!

Have you noticed anything else new in Poptropica’s Haxe Javascript build? What islands do you hope will return next on the map? Share with us in the comments or contact us by email, Twitter, or Discord. Keep on popping on!

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