Guest Posts, Pop Petitions

Pop Petition: Bring Original Features Back

Slanted Fish

This is a guest post written by Tallmeloniscool, a Poptropica player in the community. In this post he’ll be talking about what features he wants to see returned to Pop Original. Enjoy!

Pop Petition Header

For all the talk of focusing on Poptropica Worlds as the future of Poptropica, the Creators are still updating the original Poptropica. This strikes me as a bad move—once Flash goes away, won’t all these updates not matter anymore?

I’m not sure why they’re still updating Poptropica Original—maybe they don’t have enough Unity coders working on Worlds?—but since they haven’t let it go just yet,  here are the features I’d really like to see return to the original Pop.

#1: Bring back Realms

zrealms-background

Lots of people want Poptropica Realms to return. I see people in YouTube comments, the Poptropica Help Chat, and many other places wishing that Realms was brought back. Comments like this: “I have never been to Poptropica Realms, it looks really fun” or “I really wanted to finish my house.”

What I find even worse is that the Poptropica Creators never told us why Realms is down or when it is going to be fixed. So if fixing Realms is going to take longer than it already has, then the Creators should at least make a blog post on the Creators’ Blog saying what’s wrong with Realms.

#2: Bring back the old visual map

596a4-ghoststorymap

If you’ve been playing Poptropica for a few years, you might remember on the non-SUIs, you had this map where you can see where you were on the island. But when the Poptropica Creators made it so that the SUI (sound-updated island) menu shows on the non-SUI islands, it ended up removing the classic maps and replacing them with the home map where you choose islands.

What I recommend to the Poptropica Creators is to change it so when you click on the map it would show the old visual map. Then add a new button that teleports you to the home map. That way we Poptropicans can have the old map, and a way to instantly go to the home map.

#3: Fix the way the islands are organized on the home map

newmap2

The way the islands are currently organized on the home map needs some fixing. For example, Mission Atlantis (a medium-hard island) is in the easy category, while Early Poptropica and Shark Tooth (two of the easiest islands!) are listed among the challenging islands. Also, the adventure category could definitely list more than four islands.

This “Map Mishaps” PHB post from a year ago covers more of the issues present that are still crying out to be re-done.

#4: Add a way to answer pop quizzes

quiz

When the home screen changed so that it took you straight to Home Island as opposed to the old home screen, Poptropicans could not access the home screen and answer the pop quizzes anymore. What will a new Poptropican do to get these quizzes?

My solution would be to bring the quizzes to the Home Island billboard, so we’d have another reason to log in again!

#5: Bring back old store items & costumes

store4

In my opinion, the Poptropica Creators took a real step backward by removing so many old store items, even though they’re rotating the stock every month. Why? Considering that Poptropica Original won’t be playable after the year 2020, what they should do is add back as many store items as possible—all the limited time items and costumes, and even ones that were forgotten.

This would allow old players to feel nostalgic about these old items in the game, and for the newer players to experience the old and limited time items. Though this may degrade the rarity value of some items/costumes, since Poptropica Original is not going to last forever, I really think this does not matter. What matters more is that we get to enjoy this version of Poptropica while it lasts!

So that’s the end of my guest post on the PHB. I hope that you enjoyed and agreed, and I hope you have a great day. BYE!

Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Tallmeloniscool! If you did, be sure to check out another guest post of his: Pop 5: Ideas for Multiplayer Features.

The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. You can find some tips and guidelines on our Write for the PHB page. We also encourage sharing blog posts on the PHC.

If you have an idea for a PHB post, send it in!

Contests, Poppies

The Poppies 2018: Time to Vote! ☑

Sporty Boa

The voting poll is now closed. Join us at our livestream party to hear the results!

poppies 2018 vote

Come, all you people… The Poppies are in town, and it’s time for the voting round!

Not sure what’s going on? You should probably get caught up on what the Poppies are!

As I was saying, your nominations in the previous round have been tallied up and the 2018 Poppies hype intensifies as we enter the…

VOTING ROUND!

In this round, you, the awesome fans and viewers, will get the opportunity to vote for who or what you think deserves to take home an epic, golden Poppies trophy! How exciting!

Okay, here’s how it goes down: You’ll have 10 categories, each with several of the most popular nominations as options to choose from. Note that a couple categories (Best Poptropica Worlds Island and Best PHB Author) have been automatically set, so you may not have caught them in the Nomination Round.

The Voting Round ends next week, on Wednesday, July 25. So without further hesitation, open up our poll and vote, vote, vote!

Then, start putting together your snazziest outfit and mark you calendars for the party of a lifetime on July 26, 7 p.m. Eastern time, in which we’ll be announcing the winners via livestream while celebrating the PHB’s 10th anniversary on Poptropica and the PHC! (More details about the party here.)

So until then, stay tuned for more Poppies news, and don’t forget…

✨ Vote now for your faves in the Poppies! ✨

See ya on the blue carpet!

Sneak Peeks

Movies, store, pet barn, and more!

LJ

How’s it going, Poptropicans? It’s Lucky Joker and today I share with you an awesome sneak peek and news from Twitter!

Firstly—with the more exciting news—Poptropica posted this sneak peek on the Creators’ Blog (a finalized version of the sketches we’ve seen this past week):

Home Island sneak peek.png

Once a final sketch is decided on, the artists start working in Photoshop to create a version with color and to start to figure out all the details of the design. 🎨

They also place it “in-scene” meaning that it’s in the game frame window. This allows them to see how all the elements fit in the game.

Once the art is done, it’s shared with the developers, who code the final design into the game. This process can take weeks to months from start to finish. It all depends how complex it is. Can any of you guess how long it usually takes to make a Poptropica island?

Disappointingly though, it looks like the update will be for Poptropica Original (Home Island specifically) rather than Worlds, which has been pretty stagnant.

Also, over on Twitter, @OfficialPoptropica let us know that they’ve added the archives back to the sidebar on the Creators’ Blog and thanked us for being part of the Pop community, which was nice. Looks like they read SD’s Pop Petitions post! 😉

Anyway, I’m actually really excited for this storefront update! I’m just hoping it’s not a mere advertisement center like the current movie theater. I think it’d be really cool to see some Poptropica shorts starring our favorite characters, or trailers for updates/new islands.

What are some ideas you have? I’d like to hear them and I’m sure it’d be insightful for the Creators—so leave them down in the comments section below!

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, as always! Pop on!

– Lucky Joker 🍀

Pop Fan Artist Spotlights

Pop Fan Artist Spotlight: SmileyFaceOrg

LJ

Hello, everyone! It’s time for another Pop Fan Artist Spotlight! Today, I’ll be highlighting the works of SmileyFaceOrg (who’s so talented that it should be illegal)!

SmileyFace has been drawing digitally for about 4 years now using Photoshop, and as you’ll see, has just about mastered her craft. Check out this collection of her amazing work (click the images to enlarge them):

“Count Bram portrait with hands”
“Art Trade-Friendly Hopper”
“Art Trade-Forest”
“Art Request-Dust Bunnies”
“Art Request-Cool Palette”
“Art Request-sirens and lights”
“Art Request-adventure”
“Danganronpa-Poptropica Dr. Hare”
“Once again I am mortal”
“Father what are you reading”

Recently though, she’s been drawing traditionally like she used to way back when. Take a look at this comparison of one of her older pieces of art to one of her more recent ones; the improvement is remarkable (but honestly, they’re both so good):

“Comfy carrot couch”
“Art Request-Silly Pelican”

I’m in such awe and I’m sure I’m not the only one. If you’re interested in seeing more of her art, she’s on DeviantArt, so go and check her out!

I hope you enjoyed this look into a Poptropica fan’s artwork. If you’ve created some of your own Poptropica fan art, we’d love for you to share it on our DeviantArt group gallery, We-Love-Poptropica.

On the topic of fanart—don’t forget to nominate your favorite piece of 2018 (along with other categories) in The Poppies this week! And for Community Creations this month, our theme is “Blogs & Fans.”

Thanks for reading as always! Feel free to check out the other artists I’ve featured on the PHB, and I’ll talk to you all soon… pop on!

– Lucky Joker 🍀

Big Nate Island, Sneak Peeks

Storefront sketches and the gate to Big Nate

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans, Slanted Fish here, with two bits of news. 🐠

The first is this: another sneak peek! Yup, soon after the Creators posted a sketch of a pet barn on their blog, we find another view of the same scene posted on their Instagram. This one includes a movie theater (hopefully it’ll be better than the current one), store (which we’re familiar with), and the aforementioned pet barn. Check it out:

barn peek2

The caption on Instagram offers some insight into the island creation process:

Ever wonder how games like Poptropica are made? It all starts with our artists working on lots of concepts like this one! Once a design is chosen, it’s redrawn in Photoshop! Stay tuned for more behind the scenes pics! 🎨

And the comments reveal a little more. A commenter (hiskeyblade) asked, “Do you guys start just random doodles after you figure out a plot of a world?”

To which the Creators replied: “We do! We also create mood boards with photos of real places and other inspiration!”

Pretty cool to hear about — it’d be great to learn more about their creative process, and the prospect of seeing more behind-the-scenes pics is one we can all look forward to!

Now for the second shocker: there’s a good chance that Big Nate Island, which is currently locked for members only, will be unlocked for all to play! See for yourself:

The hundred-plus comments received on the Creators’ proposal on Instagram are overwhelmingly in favor (albeit with some repeat “votes”).

As it should be! Poptropicans who hear about the sponsored islands being made members only are still as salty as Cap’n Salty’s about it as the day the news broke three years ago. With Poptropica Original likely to fade by the end of 2020, perhaps all features should be made free — better that more of us get to enjoy it than not at all, right?

That’s all for this post, but be sure to scroll down the blog for more news. We’ve had a lot going on in the Poptropica sphere lately!

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