Hop Til You Drop PC Edition

I wanted to take some time out today to go over some of the new features I'm planning on implementing for the Windows version of Hop Til You Drop. The main reason that most of these features will be on Windows and not on the XBLIG version is that on the PC I can contact an external server. This allows for easier multiplayer components and storing data such as Global Leaderboards. Without further ado lets get on with the new features:

• Global Leaderboards

  I get to use the term Leaderboards on Windows! XBLIG prevents the use of the term because they don't want users to think they are actually looking at a real Leaderboard. In the Windows version all highscores and daily highscores will be tracked on an external server.

• Online User Counter

  This will show you how many players are currently playing the game. This is important because now players will get ...

• Bombs

  Everyday the server will compute the top 1% and top 3% of the players with the highest daily highscore. The top 1% will get one of each bomb that is currently in the game. The top 3% will get one random bomb. These bombs are used to mess with other players who are online. One example is the invert controls bomb. Whenever a player uses one of these bombs, all the players who are currently online will have their movement keys inverted. So far there are 3 bombs (Scary, Invert Controls, Slow Down Player) but I want to add more. I hope this brings a community feel to the game

So not a huge amount of new features but I'm planning on adding plenty more and some bug fixes along the way. A couple of ideas I'm contemplating is making it so the Hoppers have different attributes such as speed and jump speed. I'm also playing around with the idea of having power ups appear that would give certain things such as a speed boost, surviving one hit, double your score for a limited time, etc. A beta for the Windows edition will start hopefully sometime soon so I can gather more feedback on what to do to improve the game.