Super Cloudbuilt Publishing Changes and Updates
Hi everyone,
There might be some good news, and bad news here at the same time.
As some of you’ve probably already seen, there will be some changes around Super Cloudbuilt.
Coilworks’ publishing agreement with Double Eleven has come to an end, and due to some technicalities, that means there are some changes coming to SCB on PC.
The console version of Super Cloudbuilt will sadly not be updated and even more regrettably, the sales of the console versions will sadly come to a close very shortly. Owners of the current game will still be able to access the game on consoles and download it again freely, but no one will be able to buy new copies of the game. (We wanted to give everyone a longer heads up here, but this is sadly how it turned out)
On PC, things will be a bit different. The PC version will still be around, but it will be temporarily taken down from sales, and that is already in effect. We aim to get the game back on sale as soon as we can, but we will need to update the game a bit first.
First of all, we want to be clear that we hope this to be an as smooth process as possible for everyone, and we will do absolutely everything we can to ensure that.
Before we clear up questions, let’s just set the stage for the scope of what we are working on.
We are internally calling this update “Super Cloudbuilt Remastered”. Some of the changes needed were best resolved by moving SCB to our latest engine branch, which led to most of these things. It might sound big, and in some ways it is, as there will be a few important updates to the game. We don’t want to promise anything for sure yet, but we are working on the following key updates:
Ghost Replays & Replay Playback
Graphical updates like cast shadows, enhanced lighting and color treatment
Accessibility options (optional settings to customize the game experience)
A rebalance of story mode, with a significant overhaul of the item/powerup system
So, firstly, the question probably everyone has is:
Why?
And to that we sadly can’t say anything, except that it’s necessary due to the circumstances as the publishing agreement ends.
What will happen to save data with the update?
The save data will not change much. We will make sure that all single player progress is in some way translated to the new rebalanced version, and we will make sure that no leaderboards are impacted.
As the new version has ghost data and replays, will it be available through the leaderboards, and if so, what will happen to old records that don’t have this data?
We will do what we can to enable players to race other players' record times, and view their runs through the leaderboards, but it’s not yet 100% sure how everything will be solved, so we want to leave some reservations here. But, we can talk about what we are aiming for right now.
We plan to mark leaderboard entries without the ghost data with an icon, and if we can verify their legitimacy, we will add another icon to them and potentially link to a youtube link of the run when available. But adding this will be manual work, so it’s likely only something we will do for the absolute top runs.
We will also make it so if you have a leaderboard entry that is without the data, and get a new time with ghost data, you will have the option to upload and replace your previous score with this new one containing the ghost data, even if your score was worse. It will be up to you at that point. If you value showing your run to everyone, or value keeping your hard earned score.
Why change anything, and what will change?
This new Super Cloudbuilt will be built 100% with Coilworks code and libraries, and not leverage some of Double Eleven’s code that was used in the previous version. But as an absolute majority of the games code already were ours, the changes this brings will actually be very small.
The biggest loss will be some specific optimizations that were done towards the end of development and only fully implemented in connection with their code.
To make up for this, we have moved over the whole game code to the latest version of the Coilworks engine. Meaning that this version of Super Cloudbuilt will see some enhancements that were made to the engine from Sky Tracers and Rift Branded. That is why we are now able to quickly add this ghost and replay system, as well as some of the new enhanced graphics. We are also working on optimizations to make up for what we might have lost. But optimization is a slow process. It takes a lot of effort and time, and as we don’t have an active development team, please be patient with us if the game initially runs a bit worse than the previous version. (Our goal is for the game to look better, have more features and still run better than the old version. But it might not be fully there at release of the update).
As you mention changes, will you change the levels? If so, what happens to our leader boards?
We will be very careful to only do minimal tweaks to levels used in Ranked Mode. Most changes to those levels will be purely visual changes. There might be a few places where we make minor adjustments, but if we do so, we will be careful to check all record runs on those levels, and not change any level geometry that could affect the leaderboards. So everyone's records should be safe for all modes.
The biggest plans for changes in levels are really just with the opening + tutorial of the game, and we will keep the current unchanged versions of those levels for ranked mode, and no leaderboards will be impacted.
What and why are you changing the story mode?
When it comes to the story mode we are making a few more/bigger changes. As it will not impact anyones leaderboard entries, we are taking a few more liberties here. We will first of all change some key features. Things we’ve been wanting to change for a long time, but have been unable to till now.
This includes how items and power ups work in the game, it includes changes to the fog core, and it includes some changes to the first two levels of the game to improve the first time experience. This means that these levels might come to be a bit different between ranked mode and story mode. But, we believe that still is the best option for everyone.
We will also add accessibility options. Items and upgrades in the game now will be tweaked and made permanent instead of consumable. That alone will let people customize their experience more, but we are also adding options to change fundamental features of the game. Intended for those that find the default experience too difficult, or just not liking some aspects of it. That includes options to turn off the life system in the game (which we know some players have been asking for), to tone down the game speed a little, to make items stronger, and alter the power of wall run abilities. The exact options are not locked down yet.
Don’t expect any real new content in the game, but if possible, we want to add just something at least. But, that is still unclear. We will talk more about this possibility closer to the release.
Why are you not continuing the console versions?
We wish we could shoulder the task of updating and keeping the console versions around too, but it’s too much for us to handle right now, and patching the console versions sadly doesn't make economical sense with the current state of things. It would only entail big losses and expenses on our part, as everything involving consoles costs a lot more money directly, and indirectly, while being difficult to recoup. We are sorry to disappoint console players, but there is no way around this for us right now. We hope you can continue to enjoy the game as it is, and we of course wish things were different here
Finally, when will this new version be released? And why the delay?
We have a working version of the game running right now. But, we feel like some aspects are not working quite as well as we would like, and, when adding some of these new graphical features, like cast shadows, it means we have to rework lighting manually on all levels in the game. Doing this and adding the other new features, like ghosts and replays will take some time. Especially since we don’t have an active development team at the studio. With only a two man team operating on a weekend and evening basis, things sadly move a bit slow.
As we feel like there is only one chance for making a good new impression here, we don’t want to release this version of the game with half implemented features and be a bother to everyone. We want to implement these new features, test them and polish them a bit beforehand.
Most of the game is already working, but there are still plenty of the new things left to fix, and a bunch of polish left.
We can’t know for sure about a release date, but we are aiming for some time in Spring 2022.
That is all we can think of right now.
If you have questions or requests, feel free to let us know. We are quite busy as it is, so we can’t add too many things to this, but if there is enough interest, we would be happy to at least consider it.
We also want to take this moment to express our gratitude to all fans and players who’ve played the game over the years, and thank you for your support and understanding. We will do what we can to make everyone happy.
The Coilworks Team
