Category: Web Development

Whether it’s the PHB or Poptropica.com, these websites get updated from time to time, and these posts are here to document those developments.

Timmy Failure Island, Web Development

World Record Maintenance and Car Crashes

Ultimate iPad Expert

Heyyo Poptropicans! It’s Ultimate iPad Expert here to bring you the latest Poptropican news. Lotsa unrelated stuff has been happening recently, but I’m here to bring it to you in one post anyways. *thumbs up* *ding*

To start off, this past week’s Timmy Failure prize was the release of the island’s common room, called Maury’s Museum of World Records, which contains multiple wacky world records. And Timmy Failure creator, Stephan Pastis, is showing off some of his comedy in the room, in the seemingly missing “Most Delicious Donut”.

Don’t forget you can also redeem the code BURRITO for a Señor Burrito Follower!

Speaking of Timmy Failure wackiness, the Creators recently posted a little sneak peek of the upcoming island, featuring a car crashed into a house:

crash

In other news, Poptropica was recently temporarily down for maintenance starting Thursday afternoon, the Creators seemed to have everything up and running the following day (Friday morning). 😀 Hopefully whatever the problem was is all good now, or perhaps they were just working on adding some new stuff behind the scenes.

PopDown

Lastly, this may not be new news to everyone, but the Creators have finally acknowledged Home Island (or Hub Island or Tutorial, whatever you call it) on their blog, for the first time since releasing it two weeks ago. Black Widow talked a little about the New You shop on the island, and some of the cool features available in the New You shop.

For more info and a walkthrough on this island, check out the PHB’s Hub Island Guide!

NewYouBlackWidow

Well, that’s all from me. Be on the lookout in the next few weeks for a new series of posts we’ll be releasing. 😉 What do you think of the new Timmy Failure common room? Comment below.

• Ultimate iPad Expert •

Membership, Nabooti Island, Web Development

Raise to 150 credits & membership to play Nabooti

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! There’s good news and bad news –

First, the good news: Poptropicans are getting a raise! Instead of the measly 50 credits we usually get for completing an island, the reward is now being bumped up to a whopping 150 credits.

150credits

In earlier years, Poptropica used to give out 100 credits for an island finish, but this is even better! Like before, the reward only applies for the first time you complete each island. Also, the amount of credits you had before this update remains the same, so if you’ve finished every island already, you’ll have to wait for the next one to come along to enjoy the bonus.

Why are the Creators doing this? Perhaps they’ve realized how hard it is to earn enough to save up for the many items available in the Store, and implemented this change out of the goodness of their hearts. Or are there going to be changes made that will make us wish we had more credits to spend?

There’s cause for suspicion, and here comes the bad news: remember how Nabooti Island recently became just a demo version to non-members, with a prompt to get membership to play the full island?

Well, the plan isn’t to make this the next SUI. It’s another ploy to make buying a membership more enticing, because here’s the thing: Nabooti Island, which has been free to play for years, now requires membership – and more changes to membership are to come, according to these tweets:

Will more islands follow the same fate as Nabooti? (Is that why we have the chance to earn more credits – before more islands are locked on us?)

Of course, this isn’t an issue to members, but this could be potentially damaging to the current balance in the offerings between membership and free-to-play: it could mean more members, or it could mean more quitters if there is too much emphasis on membership. Possibly both.

We’ll have to see what’s in store (literally? 😛 ) – but tread carefully, Poptropica.

Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Popstorms, Realms, Web Development

Sandbox acquisition, animation confirmation, & more

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! As you may recall from recent news, Poptropica is no longer owned by Pearson, but for those of you with an even keener eye, you may notice the copyright adorning the bottom of the homepage now being accredited to Sandbox Networks.

sandbox poptropica

You can read more about the Sandbox acquisition in this article. Family Education Network, formerly a division of Pearson, was recently sold to this London, UK-based company, and along with it went Poptropica. Both the leaders of Sandbox and Poptropica seem positive about this change, so here’s hoping this’ll make Poptropica bigger and better in due time! 🙂

In fact, the article mentions a quote from Jeff Kinney revealing that “…we’ll be seeing the stories and characters from FEN brought to life on the big screen.” And this tweet from Poptropica confirms that they are indeed working on an animated show – the question now is “when?”

On a different note, here are a couple of Popstorm illustrations that have recently popped up:

Popstorm #28: Fish!
Popstorm #29: Parading Pigs

Also, Captain Crawfish has posted a new Remarkable Realms video on the official blog, which you can check out below. This one showcases a waterpark made by Fast Lizard – and better yet, a comment made by the Creators on the video assures us that we’ll soon get to share our Realms with each other: “by end of June, we hope to have function that allows users to share on their own”.

And, just in case you haven’t been keeping up with our Twitter timeline (either on the sidebar of the PHB or by following us), here are some tweeted tidbits that may be of interest:

  • Between the site and app, Poptropica gets about 4.5 million different users a month, playing from 100+ different countries. (see tweet)
  • Even Jeff Kinney hasn’t completed every Poptropica island. (see tweet)
  • Arabian Nights Ep. 3 is currently scheduled for late June. (see tweet)
  • The unnamed underground cave island (hinted at in past sneak peeks) has been an idea from the Creators for years, but the storyline is still uncertain. (see tweet)
  • There are plans to offer Poptropica in Spanish in late 2015 or early 2016. (see tweet)
  • There are 31 Creators at Poptropica offices. (see tweet)
  • Among the Poptropica Creators, there are two Jeffs, two Jennifers, and two Jons. (see tweet)

That’s all for this post, but be sure to catch up below for news on the Poptropica Hall of Fame, new Poptropica-comics-based games on the mobile app, and more. Stay popping, Poptropicans! 😉

Wiki

Fanon, Fanon Everywhere

Ultimate iPad Expert

Heyyo Poptropicans, it’s Ultimate iPad Expert here. It’s time to announce some more news!

I’m sure you all know of the Poptropica Wiki and you’ve probably also heard of the Popcorn fan magazine. Well, now we have the best of both worlds in the new Poptropica Fanon Wiki!

Poptropica Fanon Wiki Logo

With the Poptropica Wiki you can learn and help teach others about Poptropica facts, but with the Poptropica Fanon Wiki you get to create your own islands, your own characters, and any more fanon – and share them with everyone to read. You can also check out other people’s ideas and show off your fan art, stories, etc. with everyone.

Along with the new Fanon Wiki, we’d also suggest you check out the We-Love-Poptropica DeviantArt page. Feel free to submit any sort of Poptropica fan art there, and send me a note with a link to it if you’d like it in an upcoming Popcorn fan magazine issue!

Let’s finish this post off with this awesome new logo from HP for the Poptropica Help Chat:

Poptropica Help ChatWhat do you guys think of all this? Feel free to comment your thoughts!

• Ultimate iPad Expert •

Popstorms, PoptropiCon Island, Wiki

P-Con Ep. 3 for all April 16th, Popstorms, & Working on the Wiki!

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! First of all, a reminder that PoptropiCon Ep. 3: Reign of Omegon releases to everyone this coming Thursday, April 16th. This final episode had quite some celebration here last week as the subject of our April Fool’s prank. Plus, check out our Behind-the-Scenes post for some sneak peeks, or Sam’s review for an overview!

There hasn’t been a whole lot of other official news besides Mystery of the Map pages, of which you can read the entire collection thus far on our Comics page. And, if you’ve been keeping up on our Twitter timeline (via the sidebar or by following us on Twitter), you may have seen a few new Popstorms, which are posted from Master Mime’s Pinterest.

Anyway, with the current blogging stalemate, the big thing in the Poptropica community right now is the ongoing community project we’ve mentioned here a few times already as being a new-ish partner site of the Poptropica Help Network, the Poptropica Wiki.

PoptropicaWikiLogoAnyone and everyone is welcome to create a Wikia account and get editing – writing up information, inserting pictures, and more. (Protip: If the ads bother you, just get AdBlock for your browser.)

So, how can you help?

We’re looking to create informative pages for each and every character, item, island (and to a lesser extent, scene – an area of an island). You can find a page simply by using the search bar at the top of the wiki, and if the page does not exist, you can create it!

From there, you can add in information that you think would be relevant and informative (including pictures), or perhaps fix up bad grammar if you spot any. Wiki editing comes with its own markup (notation you can use to produce various effects like bolding or linking to another page) – here’s a quick guide to a few basics that may help.

The Poptropica Wiki currently has 700+ articles, and we invite the community to join us in creating more. Have fun editing, and see you on the wiki! 🙂