Web Development – Page 3 – 🏝 Poptropica Help Blog 🗺

Howdy, Poptropicans! It’s Lucky Joker here, and today I’m sharing with you some modernized features and new additions to Poptropica. Let’s see what it’s all about. (Note: the following updates are for the Haxe version of Poptropica only!) This post has been updated with more content since it was published!

The friends profile, which was first introduced to the game back in 2012, has been altered to receive an “upgrade” – as the creators put it. Seems borderline plain to me, but what do you think? Take a look for yourself:

So how it functions… The left button at the top right corner with a house icon directs you to your clubhouse. To visit a friend’s place, click on the “visit” button next to the person whose house you wish to drop in on. (Note: The decorations in any of the clubhouses I go to don’t match the ones I see on my Flash account. Maybe Haxe clubhouse furniture arrangements aren’t compatible with their Flash versions?)

Regarding actual friends, there seems to be a limit on the number you can have. I don’t know what the amount is exactly, but when I tried to add more by clicking the + button, it informed me that my limit was already exceeded. I guess in all fairness, this new friends page is still in its beta mode, so it’s not a surprise it’s a little faulty. We’ll see how, or if, these features get updated in the future.

UPDATE: The Poptropica Creators made a quick video walkthrough on the friends beta, showing the current features, which are (the long awaited) changing of your character’s display name, adding friends by username (so you aren’t just friending strangers, as this narrator put it), and visiting their clubhouses. Check it out:

They also shared on the official blog that “In the official release, you’ll be able to remove friends AND you’ll be able to hang out in clubhouses together!” If all goes well, we can look forward to future Poptropica parties in clubhouses! 🥳

Next, we have a follow-up on a post from yesterday. Our favorite droid, Quippy, has finally arrived (better late than never!) to Mythology Island’s (Haxe) common room – and even came appropriately attired in an ancient Greek chiton and laurel wreath.

There are 4 item cards including a Lightning Staff and Icarus costume (which are both members only), along with a Cyclops costume and Mythology Surfer outfit (available to everyone!).

Also, a new limited time bundle for the island is available for 1000 credits in the Pop store, which appears as a pop-up if you access the store through Mythology Island. The bundle includes a Greek God Growing Power, as well as Wings of the Gods and a Pet Leaf Crown. I’m quite a fan of these items, I must say – especially those wings!

UPDATE: The store itself also has an individual Greek Goddess Outfit and an Aphrodite Love Power. (Thanks PercyJackson1010!) With the special vanity mirror, when you press space bar, all the characters around you will be struck with hearts for eyes. 😍

UPDATE: Check out the related video the Pop Creators made, which introduces the limited time bundle and the Quippy on Mythology Island!

So what do you think about the updates? Do you like them, is it a hard pass, or are you some where in between? I’m pretty so-so about it in whole, but I’m willing to cut the creators some slack. At least they’re listening to us more these days!

Well, that about wraps up the coverage for today. I thank you once again for reading and I’ll talk to you all in the next one. Pop on!

– Lucky Joker 🍀

Clubhouse, Creators, Fan Art Features, Haxe Javascript, Member Gifts, Membership, Pets, Social Media, Store

Colorful and warm assortments hit Poptropica’s stores and social media 🌈

November 3, 2020June 6, 2021 LJ

Howdy, Poptropicans! How are ya? It’s Lucky Joker here, and today we’ll be taking a look at this month’s member gifts, the latest updates in all of Poptropica’s stores, some social media shenanigans, and more. It’s a lot to go through, so let’s pop into it!

The three items for the paying members are: a Walkman (which is a modified, black version of the 80s Walkman from American Girl: Courtney’s Island), a slaying Rainbow Furry Jacket, and an adorable Llama Follower.

Considering the creators completely skipped over October and missed the opportunity to give us some cool, spooky-themed goodies (*ahem*), I think these items act as a bit of a payoff — because this is a pretty cool bunch in my opinion. 😁

Remember, if you buy a membership at any point within November, you’ll receive these awesome exclusives automatically!

Another month means another rotation of the Poptropica store selection. The current stock is made up of 15 costumes, 7 followers, 5 powers, 5 pranks, and 14 miscellaneous items (for a grand total of 46 items) — 17 of which are exclusive to members. Not bad this time for the non-members! (Items marked with a * are members only; all items listed below.)

Costumes: Stylin’ Outfit*, Cool Outfit*, Glam Gamer Girl, Sweater Weather, Comfy Vibes, Warm Vibes, Day of the Dead (girl [designed by yours truly]), Day of the Dead (boy), Lightning Knight, Soccer Player (boy), Soccer Player (girl), Karate Master (girl), Karate Master (boy), Sky Hawk Warrior, and Xenon Trooper
Followers: Elephant Follower, Noodle Guy Follower*, Dolphin Follower*, Deer Follower, Charlie the Chocomonkey*, Atlantis Drone, and Mini Dr. Hare*
Powers: Binary Rain*, POPGUM (Cinnamon Fire Flavor), Meteor Shower*, Bobblehead*, and Electrify
Pranks: Sticky Notes, Sneezing Power, 8-Bit Birthday Pixel Pig Power, Inside-Out Power*, and Love Potion*
Miscellaneous: Party Popper* (which was a member gift back in August), Flamingo Floatie*, Watermelon Purse*, Drone Flying Follower*, Popsicles*, Hover Scooter*, Fox Mug, Unicorn Mug, Autumn Scarves, School Backpack, Notebooks, Marshmallow Roaster, Hiking Shoes, and Silly Streams

In addition, some new items (1 face and 4 body) have been dealt in the pet barn shop. They are: Round Glasses, Red Scarf, Magic Cloak, Pearl Necklace*, and Green Cloak. Only 1 (marked with *) of the 5 new items are members only, so that still leaves a good selection of cuteness, once again, to players who don’t have a membership.

Very adorable, am I right? (Of course I am.) My bunny, Clover, will totally be rocking the oversized spectacles and green cloak — and I think my lizard, Ivy, will love those pearls.

If all that wasn’t enough, we’ve also been given a different array of clubhouse décor including an armoire, a funky bookcase, and a diverse variety of appealing wallpapers. Neato!

On the topic of stores, it’s been found that the new release of Mythology Island doesn’t have a Quippy store, making it the only island on the Haxe version of Poptropica to not feature the little common room droid. It may show up later though, like how it did on Time Tangled Island. I guess we’ll wait and see.

(UPDATE: Quippy has made an appearance on Haxe’s Mythology! Stay tuned for a follow-up post soon here on the PHB.)

In other news, the Poptropica Creators featured some more awesome community works of art on their Instagram story yesterday. Check ’em out below!

Also, on the Creators’ Blog, Poptropica has (hopefully) finally satisfied the fandom’s curiosity by addressing some of the questions people had regarding the game’s fate post the shutdown of Flash at the end of this year. Here’s a snippet of what they had to say (Check out their post to see the full responses):

Once Flash is no longer supported, your account will still be accessible. Your existing account will work in the Haxe version of the game too. You’ll keep your stuff and we’ll give you a mega credit bonus so you can get to shopping for anything available that wasn’t in the Flash game. For those of you who started playing Poptropica in March 2020 or later you’re already in the Haxe version!

We’re also working on how to make sure you can play all the classic islands in their original format. We know our long-term fans love the classic Poptropica they grew up with and we want to keep that going forever.
Poptropica Creators’ Blog, “⚡Oh How Time Flashes By⚡”

Another thing — Short Glove, over on the Poptropica Help Chat (PHC), shared a short video demonstrating how to costumize your character on the Haxe version of Poptropica in case you wanted to know how. I know I’ve been wanting to! It’s kind of ingenious, really.

Whew, that was a lot, wasn’t it? Well that concludes this post. I thank you all for reading and I’ll talk to you in the next one. Pop on!

– Lucky Joker 🍀

(By the way, we’ll be releasing the Q&A we (and you) did with current Poptropica CEO, Abhi Arya, soon, so stay tuned for that! He had a lot of promising responses I think many of you will be pleased to hear. 😉 )

Haxe Javascript, Mythology Island

Mythology Island remastered for Haxe with some challenges axed ⚡️💪

November 1, 2020November 2, 2020 Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans, big Pop drop this weekend: a remastered version of Mythology Island is now on Haxe for all players (not just members)!

The new version has some differences compared with the classic—we’ll get into more details below—but for now, if you need a refresher, our old Mythology Island Guide can still help you through the puzzles!

If your account isn’t on Haxe, you can use idk’s Format Loader and select “HTML5 (Haxe JS)” to switch over, or you can simply make a new account on Poptropica to play on Haxe. If you’re confused about it, read here about the differences between Flash and Haxe.

The key differences with the new Mythology are that it’s been made easier, with various challenges from the old version removed, and some dialogue altered to nudge players on what to do. Since there have been some drastic changes, the PHB plans to release a separate guide for the new Mythology Island — so stay tuned for that!

Where is the Mythology Island we so idolized?

For the curious, here are the major changes (spoilers ahead):

The Museum of Olympus is optional (the room with the statues of Greek deities).
Main Street and the base of the Tree of Immortality are combined into one scene.
Hercules is away on a lunch break, and a queue has formed outside Herc’s Hero Hut, which is no longer a space we can enter at any point in the island.
The reed pipe is given to you at the Grove of Temples (outside a facade of Apollo’s temple, which can’t be entered), and so is the pipe tune, without having to first master the tune.
For cleaning Hades’ temple, the boy gives you the starfish (used for Poseidon’s temple offering) instead of the now-removed drachma.
The beach is gone, and with it, Aphrodite’s hangman challenge of Greek deity names. Instead, she’ll be in front of the common room, Midas’ Gym, ready to give you her teleportation mirror.
The entrance to the Minotaur’s maze is already open — no reed pipe puzzle here. The snake challenge comes first, not last. And there’s no magical thread for the maze.
The mini-game to cross the River Styx in the underworld? Gone.
Aeolus’ wind boost is free — no drachmas here!

Even with many elements removed from the original, and changes that aren’t quite additions, the new Mythology can still be considered a full island much more than Reality TV: Wild Safari was, and took me at least an hour to complete (though part of that can be attributed to some lag I encountered while playing).

However, initial feedback from the Poptropica community has not been positive. Players have been sharing on spaces like the PHC Discord that the changes to the classic island feel like a dumbing down that offers no challenge, which might be okay for younger players, except that fandom activity seems to indicate that there aren’t so many children playing the game anymore as there are teens and older.

Here’s one video from Isaac of the Dimension Bros voicing out such a perspective, lamenting that the remake feels spoon-fed and doesn’t take the opportunity to add new challenges (skip to 2:48 to get to Mythology commentary). He mentions full screen ads ruining the experience, although other players have reported not seeing ads.

And here’s another one with similar concerns from Jia (Magniventris), also an older player who has loved the game since childhood and has stuck around for the nostalgia:

Whatever you make of the new version, though, the Creators’ Blog assures that these changes were made with player feedback in mind. Here’s what they said:

We collected feedback from players and looked closely at the island data to see what players loved and didn’t love about the original Mythology Island that came out in 2010. The Pop Creators then revised some of the gameplay and scripts to make it more fun!

Are the Poptropica Creators pulling a Hercules on us?

Have you played the remastered Mythology Island on Haxe yet? What did you think of the changes? Or if it’s your first time playing Mythology, what are your impressions? Let us know in the comments below and on our PHC Discord server! ⚡️💪

Contests, Fan Art Features, Haxe Javascript, Social Media, Zomberry Island

Not gone in a Flash: bring on the bevy of blimps, Beevs, and berries 🫐

October 18, 2020June 6, 2021 Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! We’ve got a bunch going on in the Poptropica fandom this week: news of what’s to come beyond Flash, Instagram story highlights, and contests past, present, and future. Let’s pop right in!

In the comments of their latest Instagram post about the Zomberry Hero special event, the Poptropica Creators confirmed a couple of salient details: 1) that “nothing will get lost” regarding the old islands currently on Flash, and 2) old (Flash) accounts will be transferable to Haxe, with more details coming “towards the end of the year.”

That’s certainly something to look forward to! In the meantime, if you’re not yet caught up on Poptropica’s preparations for the end of Flash by the end of 2020, check out the following PHB articles:

And if you have more questions, shoot them at Poptropica’s CEO here — we’ll be sending some of your questions for the Poptropica team to answer in an upcoming Q&A here on the PHB!

That’s not all that’s new on Poptropica’s Instagram. On their profile, the Creators added two new story highlights, Fan Art and Zomberry, so you can view some of their past stories even after the initial 24 hours.

New story highlights on Instagram: Fan Art & Zomberry

Check out the fan art they shared this week, including a few from PHB staffers Gentle Dolphin and Lucky Joker, and several blimps!

Speaking of Poptropica fan art on Instagram, remember all the fantastic features of Dr. Beev creations? The Poptropica Creators posted several more on the official blog, and announced that they decided to “give a bunch of artists 10,000 credits”!

Gentle Dolphin was among those whose Dr. Beev art was featured, and she confirmed that the Creators sent a DM on Instagram to ask artists to send their usernames in order to receive the 10,000 credits prize.

And there’s more from the Creators’ Blog post:

Also, if you’re under 13 and not on the gram, we’ve got you covered. We’re working on an all-new submission system so everyone can participate!
Poptropica Creators’ Blog, “Paging Dr. Beev”

Sounds like we can look forward to more contests in the future that aren’t limited to Instagram, so people of all ages can participate!

On the subject of contests, the Creators have unveiled the first 30 winners of the Zomberry Hero event who beat the game without restarting. They’ve each won a free one-month Poptropica membership! For tips on the game, check out our Zomberry Hero Guide.

There are still more chances to win a free Poptropica membership! Enter our Halloween Costume Contest as a hero, villain, and/or with a group costume — there are just two weeks until the deadline, and already plenty of entries you can browse through for inspiration! 🎃

We’re also loving all the Poptober art you all have been sharing on the PHC, our Discord server. If you’re not already on, join the server to meet other Poptropicans, discuss Poptropica, and more! See you there. 😄

~🐠

Fan Art Features, Social Media, Web Development

Mocktropica strikes back: #DrBeev features and video ad in-betweeners

October 3, 2020June 6, 2021 Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! We’ve got a couple of Mocktropica-adjacent updates to share this weekend. Let’s start with the fun one…

With the end of September comes the conclusion of Poptropica’s #DrBeev mini art contest to draw the beloved furry doctor of Mocktropica Island in one’s own style. Check out the beev-tiful creations they featured on their Instagram story on Thursday:

Although they mentioned a prize of 10,000 credits in their original post about the drawing challenge, we haven’t heard any word yet about anyone receiving the prize. We’ll let you know if we get an update!

Dr. Beev isn’t the only thing Poptropicans are drawing! Have you seen the Poptober drawing challenge yet? It’ll give you plenty of ideas for Poptropica inspired creations throughout the month of October!

Check out this artwork from the PHB’s own Lucky Joker for the first Poptober prompt, “Island.” In this case, he went with Ghost Story Island and the love triangle of the tale. Learn more about Poptober here!

“Triade D’amour (Poptober Day 1: Island)” by Lucky Joker

And for more Poptropica fan art, check out Community Creations! This month’s theme is “Monsters.” 🐲

In other not-so-fun news, an unwelcome surprise may now greet you as you travel from scene to scene in Poptropica: full game screen video ads.

With sidebar ads, footer ads including a video ad already, and now the full game screen video ad, the Poptropica browser is literally all ads.

The ads so far have been for kids’ products like Nerf guns, Minecraft Dungeons, and LEGO Mario. (Thanks to Dangerous Icicle and Gentle Dolphin for their reporting.)

The ads are about 15 seconds long and are not skippable. So far, these ads only appear in the Haxe version of the game. They don’t show up every time, but they do appear every now and then, and a regular loading screen will come up after the ad itself ends.

And yes, they’re rather annoying.

This isn’t the first time Poptropica has tried to do this, either. Back in 2014, video ads also appeared in between scenes to advertise for Galactic Hot Dogs, a book series owned by Poptropica’s parent company StoryArc Media which also has its own Poptropica island. After receiving much backlash from players, the video ads disappeared within a month.

Plus, doesn’t this bear some resemblance to yet another aspect of Mocktropica Island? Mocktropica has turned out to be something of a prophecy for Poptropica’s current state for quite some time now…

A scene from Mocktropica Island where the player is charged for simply trying to leave a scene in the game.

With this stunt, Poptropica seems more desperate than ever to make money from and for the game. We don’t know what their financial situation looks like, but can only make guesses from moves like this one that it seems, more than ever, that things aren’t going well.

Video ads you’re forced to view are an easy way for Poptropica to make a buck, and definitely much quicker than creating a whole island for advertising, but it comes at a great cost in a different way: the players’ user experience. Who wants to play a game where the screen is all ads? And ultimately, there is no Poptropica without the players.

So for Poptropica to be willing to sacrifice that, despite their long track record of creating actual non-intrusive engaging ads in the past, is a big sign that either they care more about lining their pockets than their players’ experiences, or they’ve hit a low enough point they’ll do whatever it takes to make enough to keep Poptropica afloat.

We may love Dr. Beev but we certainly don’t love the other elements Poptropica is borrowing from Mocktropica Island! Do you agree? What do you think? Share with us in the comments and on the PHC!

“Poptober Day 2: Carnival” by Magniventris

On a lighter note, we hope you’ll join us for Poptober and Community Creations this month! And there’s at least one more big event to look out for this spooky season: the PHB’s Halloween costume contest! Details dropping very soon, so stay tuned… 🎃

~🐠