Today, Trombone Champ has been updated to 1.27E! Mainly, this update adds support for 21:9 ultrawide resolutions, but it tweaks some other stuff as well...

[h5]Note: mod compatibility[/h5]

As usual, we've had this update available as a beta for a few weeks so that the community can get a head start on updating their stuff. However, this update adjusts the GUI in almost every screen, so it's more likely to break mods than previous ones. If you rely on mods that are broken by this update, you can load the previous version of the game by right-clicking the game in Steam, going to Properties, choosing Betas, and then choosing the "last_update" beta branch. But please hop on the newest version as soon as you can!

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Firstly, We've added support for 21:9 resolutions! This was more work than you might think because most of Trombone Champ's user interface is made of tons of 2D artwork that was arranged to fit a 16:9 window. If you widened the screen before this update, there was usually nothing at all in the extra space to the left and right!

During gameplay, backgrounds are currently letterboxed to the middle of the screen. In the future, we might add options to stretch or zoom the backgrounds (although it will look bad). But there are lots of other tweaks: the GUI fits nicely into the corners, the tromboner is shifted to the right, etc.


As we adjusted the GUI for 21:9, we usually ended up breaking the 16:10 display. So, when we were done with 21:9, we went through the screens a second time to make 16:10 work again. In a lot of cases, 16:10 should actually look a bit nicer than it did previously!

Do we plan to support 32:9? Probably not, sorry! We'd need to add a ton of artwork to each scene in order to fill the screen, which is a lot of overhead to benefit a very very small number of players.

---

The game now displays error messages if custom tracks fail to load. If you have any problems with custom tracks — such as duplicate tracks, tracks that are missing required files, etc — this should help you troubleshoot them!

(Ideally you shouldn't have any errors at all. But now that Steam Workshop is online, it's definitely easier to bump into some of these problems...)

If any of your custom tracks can't be loaded, error messages should appear as soon as the game starts. You can also review these errors in Settings -> Customs.

---

There are a handful of other tweaks and improvements in this version:

• Some storyline cinematics have been tweaked to make stuff look better & to make the sequence of events easier to follow.
  
• The mute button in the Track Select screen has been expanded to provide additional Amazing Muting Options.
  
• Default track collection has been changed to "All" for users with custom tracks (only if the user has never clicked the track collection button).
  
• Added support for difficulties over 10 (although we don't recommend giving tracks difficulties over 10).
  
• The game now prevents tracks with duplicate "track tags" from being loaded.
  
• When packaging a custom track in the Tootmaker, the game now checks to see if the track tag is a duplicate and throws an error message if it is.
  
• Bugfix: fixed issue where the Help & View Waveform buttons were hidden in Tootmaker.

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We've starting working on our next game (unannounced), but we have more Trombone Champ stuff in the pipeline. In addition to a handful of new tracks we plan to release later this year, our biggest priorities at the moment are patching the Nintendo Switch version and improving controller support on the Steam version so the game plays better on Steam Deck.

Here's where we are:

We hope you enjoy this update... Stay tuned for more!

Forever in your service,

Holy Wow Studios

Today, we're pushing a tiny update for Trombone Champ, which updates it to 1.26G!

Mod compatibility with 1.26G
This is a very small update, so we don't expect it to break anything that wasn't broken in 1.26F. But, if you rely on mods that are broken by this update, you can load the previous version of the game by right-clicking the game in Steam, going to Properties, choosing Betas, and then choosing the "last_update" beta branch. But please hop on the newest version as soon as you can!

Fixes:

• Fixed issue where "The Trombone Champ Collection" tooltip would appear in the Track Select screen when starting a new game and forced to play "Warm-Up."
  
• Added some additional code to the Steam Workshop uploader that should attempt to auto-delete a Workshop item if the upload fails. Previously, failed uploads could result in a blank item being added to the Workshop.
  
• Added a tiny arrow to the Collections button in Track Select to make it appear more clickable.
  
• Fixed metadata for "Taps" to display the correct song length.

Look forward to more updates soon!

Holy Wow Studios

Trombone Champ has been updated to 1.26! This update mainly adds support for custom tracks via Steam Workshop.

[h5]Mod compatibility with 1.26[/h5]

As usual, we've had this update available as a beta for a few weeks so that the community can get a head start on updating their tools. But if you rely on mods that are broken by this update, you can load the previous version of the game by right-clicking the game in Steam, going to Properties, choosing Betas, and then choosing the "last_update" beta branch. But please hop on the newest version as soon as you can!

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You can now browse and subscribe to custom tracks via Steam Workshop! For Steam users, this is probably the easiest way to get started with custom maps. You can view the workshop page here:

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/workshop/browse/?appid=1059990

After subscribing to items, they should appear in a new "Steam Workshop" collection in the "Track Select" screen. You may need to restart the game, or click the "reload" button in the Custom Tracks section of Settings, to make newly-subscribed tracks show up.

We've personally made two tracks to celebrate the launch of the Workshop, with more to come soon. Vogons is a really fun Max Tundra track, and Item Shopping is a remix of a track from one of our old albums!

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3480593643
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3480589806

The community has already uploaded a bunch of tracks to the game's Workshop... and now that the Workshop is public, we anticipate lots of new content soon!

Are you musically inclined?... if so, why not contribute yourself?...



We've written a guide on how to upload your incredible tracks to Steam Workshop here:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3484303312
To summarize, there's a new button in the Tootmaker level editor:

... and when you click the button, you get a popup that should be self-explanatory. All you really need to do is point to a folder, attach a thumbnail image, and click "submit!"

We plan to hold some sort Workshop contest soon, so if you're interested, check it out!


At the moment, you can only upload custom tracks to Steam Workshop. However, we plan to continue experimenting with additional workshop functionality. For example, it would be great if users could upload and download gameplay mods in the workshop! However, this will be a bit trickier to implement since it will involve a lot more tracking and file management than custom tracks do.

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We've been pretty busy over here... in addition to Trombone Champ stuff, we've started prototyping our Next Game (unannounced). Gotta make sure it's actually fun to play before diving in! But, in terms of Trombone Champ, here's what we plan to do next:

1. We need to update the Nintendo Switch version of the game to address a few (very minor, visual only) issues with the Switch 2 version. It works great, but a few animations run too quickly!
   
   
2. For PC / Mac, we've started going through a bunch of screens and making them look better in ultrawidescreen resolutions. People have been complaining about this forever and it will be nice to get it done!
   
   
3. We'd like to revisit input. We'd love to have nice controller support, mainly so we can get the game working as smoothly as possible on the Steam Deck. Trombone Champ does work on the Steam Deck, but it doesn't control nearly as nicely as it could. (The game was released at a time when the Steam Deck was heavily backordered — we weren't able to get one until much later!)
   
   
4. We're working on some cool secret stuff that we can't share yet! At the moment, we're not even sure how much of this stuff will pan out!
   
   
5. After that, we're probably done in terms of significant updates, but we'll still continue to support the game, fix bugs, and add new tracks.

Thank you for your continued support!!

Forever in your service,

Holy Wow Studios

Hi everyone,

When we put v1.25 live, we expected to find a few bugs after launch. Patch 1.25G fixes a handful of pretty significant ones!

(edit: Whoops! We had another bug pointed out to us, so now the game should be 1.25H instead of 1.25G)

Here's what it does:

• (Fix in 1.25H) Fixed issue where newly-created save slots don't save stuff correctly.
  
• Fixed several small bugs / weird behaviors that can pop up while favoriting & un-favoriting tracks.
  
• Fixed a bug where quitting a custom track before it was finished & and then switching to a default track would cause the track to load incorrectly.
  
• Fixed a condition where the final storyline event could potentially glitch out if the last track played was a custom track.

To see what we're working on next (e.g., right now), check out the roadmap at the end of our 1.25 announcement post:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1059990/view/519707981834616835

Enjoy!

Holy Wow Studios


P.S.
We've also disabled the "1.25" beta branch in Steam - there's no need for it now that 1.25 is actually out! It looks like 0.14% of users had this branch active, so if you're one of those, please switch to the default branch 🙏

Today, Trombone Champ has been updated to 1.25E, one of the biggest updates in a long time! Mainly, this update adds the ability to play custom tracks without any mods & officially adds an in-game level editor.

[h5]Note: mod compatibility with 1.25[/h5]

As always, we've had this update available as a beta for a few weeks so that the community can get a head start on updating their tools. However, this update is much bigger than most: to natively support custom maps, we had to rewrite a lot of the code that handles how songs are loaded, how high scores are saved, how song data is managed, etc. There are a lot of changes under the hood! So, a lot of community-made tools are likely to be broken, and others may not be fully updated on day one.

[h5]"My game is busted, what do I do?"[/h5]

If you rely on mods that are broken by this update, you can load the previous version of the game by right-clicking the game in Steam, going to Properties, choosing Betas, and then choosing the "last_update" beta branch.

However, each update after this one will require the changes that 1.25 implements, so please check your mods for updates and hop on the newest version as soon as you can!

[h5]"I already play custom tracks... do I need this update at all?..."[/h5]

If you're already using community-made tools to load custom maps, this update probably won't help you out much! You'll probably want to continue using the game the way you already have been; or, maybe, temporarily rolling back to the previous update (see the note above).

But if you're a new player, have never installed mods, or only lightly dabbled in them, then this update should make playing with custom content much easier and we highly recommend sticking with 1.25.

Anyways, let's walk through all of the new stuff that 1.25 brings...

---

The biggest change is that the game now natively supports custom maps, which you can manage through "collections." Simply drop custom tracks into the specified folders and they'll appear as collections in the Track Select screen!

If you put your tracks into subfolders, each subfolder of tracks will appear as a separate collection. You can even add jpg thumbnails and edit the collection names and descriptions with json!

We've made a video explaining how to load custom tracks here:
https://youtu.be/MoK1du9WPpw

"What types of custom maps are supported?"

• Any custom track with a png, jpg, or mp4 background should work.
  
• At the moment, custom tracks with 3D backgrounds built in Unity are not supported. The track should still load, but without the background. We MAY support these in the future, but at the moment, you'll need mods to get them working.

"Where do I get custom tracks?"

• The next major update will add Steam Workshop, which will probably be the easiest way to upload & browse community-made custom tracks. Until then we really can't recommend a specific resource!! You're free to search for and share tracks on your own, but make sure you're using music files that you have legal rights to use (public domain, royalty free, music you make yourself, etc).

With the addition of collections, we're guessing that users will be interacting with many many more tracks than the number that comes with the base game. Therefore, we've added the ability to "favorite" tracks! Every track has a little heart button that you can click to add the track to your favorites. Then, you can play them all in your Favorites collection!


The built in track editor, which we call "The Tootmaker," has officially been released! It's been added right to the home screen. We're thrilled to finally have this as an official part of the game. Taking a song you love and turning it into a custom track — for any rhythm game, not just Trombone Champ — is a spiritually-enriching experience. Give it a shot!

It's easy to export and play tracks you make with the Tootmaker! When you're finished working on a track, simply click the "Package" button. The Tootmaker will copy all of your track files into a new folder, renaming them if necessary.

If you "package" your track into the default folder, your track will immediately appear in the "My Tootmaker Tracks" collection. But you can also package your track into another folder, like one on your desktop, so you can easily share it with your friends (if, of course, you have legal rights to use the music)!

Also, you can also use the Tootmaker to make tracks for Trombone Champ: Unflattened, the VR port of the game!.



This update also adds one new track: "Rhapsody in Blue!" We're beyond excited to have this song in the game. Trombone Champ is made in NY, and somehow there's never been a song that more perfectly captures "new york energy" than this one.

With its time changes, long runtime, and multiple sections, this track probably took longer to make than any other. We hope you enjoy it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFy8Wfmxgd4

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Trombone Champ is a few years old and we're finally at the point where it's beginning to feel "mostly complete." Here's what we plan to do next:

1. We're certain that we'll find a handful of bugs and quirks now that the game natively supports custom tracks. So, first and foremost, we'll be keeping an eye on things and looking for anything that needs patching!
   
   We also need to make the Nintendo Switch version of this update! The Nintendo Switch will not have custom maps or a level editor, but it will get Rhapsody in Blue & other improvements.
   
   
2. Our next step for PC & Mac is Steam Workshop integration. The game now loads tracks in a pretty smart way: you can basically specify any folder and the game can load all of the tracks in that folder. So, we think Steam Workshop may be pretty easy to implement at this point. Conversely, it would have been nearly impossible to get it working without all of the updates made in 1.25.
   
   
3. After that, we'd like to revisit input. We'd love to have nice controller support, mainly so we can get the game working as smoothly as possible on the Steam Deck. Trombone Champ does work on the Steam Deck, but it doesn't control nearly as nicely as it could. (The game was released at a time when the Steam Deck was heavily backordered — we weren't able to get one until much later!)
   
   
4. We're working on some cool secret stuff that we can't share yet! At the moment, we're not even sure how much of this stuff will pan out!
   
   
5. After that, we're probably done in terms of significant updates, but we'll still continue to support the game, fix bugs, and add new tracks. By the time we reach this point, our time will be better spent on new projects & games! We're going nuts and can't work exclusively on a comedy trombone game forever!

We hope you enjoy 1.25! This one took a lot of work, but it transforms the game into something with the potential to be a creative tool rather than something you simply consume, which is very important to us. Thank you for your continued support!!

Forever in your service,

Holy Wow Studios

Hi everyone - just letting you know that we plan to drop v1.25 pretty soon! This is a big update. Probably the biggest one since the game launched! Here's what to expect...



The biggest change is that the game now natively supports custom maps, which you can manage through "collections." Simply drag-and-drop your tracks into the specified folders and they'll appear as a collection of custom tracks.


If you create subfolders of custom tracks, each one appears as its own collection. You can even add jpg thumbnails and edit the collection names and descriptions with json!



The Tootmaker will be officially released in this version! It's currently hidden in a "secret menu" in Settings, but in the next version, it will appear right on the home screen.


We made sure the Tootmaker integrates nicely with Collections. When you're done working on a track, simply click the "Package" button. The Tootmaker will copy all of your track files into a new folder, renaming them if necessary, and the track will immediately appear in the "My Tootmaker Tracks" collection in the Track Select Screen!


Also, you can also use the Tootmaker to make tracks for Trombone Champ: Unflattened, the VR port of the game! We've included "background events" that let you control which "lane" the notes appear in if you load the level in Unflattened.


As always, this update will also contain a new track. It also contains new settings (required for Collections), and other stuff that felt necessary with the addition of Collections (the ability to delete scores, the ability to favorite tracks, etc).


Apologies for this update taking a while! Getting multiple lists of custom tracks required a lot of work! We had to rethink and rewrite tons of systems, such as how high scores are saved and loaded. Also, of course, making a user-friendly level editor is a ridiculous amount of work in itself.

That being said, we hope to have this update live in "around a month!" We're currently getting a bunch of copy localized, testing the update for bugs, and working on other finishing touches.

Since this update changes so much about how track data is loaded and used, most mods will need significant overhauling. We made some documentation explaining how the game has changed under the hood to help out modders, which you can check it out here![docs.google.com]

In the meantime, if you want to check it out, it's available as a beta in Steam via the new "1.25" branch. If you decide to try 1.25, please back up your saves and/or use a new save slot! Also, please note that none of the localized copy has been hooked up yet, so the new features are English-only until the update officially releases. Also, of course, since this is still a beta branch, expect a handful of bugs. We're already aware of a few small bugs and are planning to update this branch asap.

We're excited to share this update with the world soon! Thanks for your continued patience.

Forever in your service,

Holy Wow Studios

Hi everyone! Trombone Champ has been updated to 1.24B - the holiday update for 2024!

This update adds two holiday songs: "Carol of the Bells" and "Hanukkah Oh Hanukkah!" It also adds a "bonus" track: "Puttin' On the Ritz!" All three of these are pretty tricky but a lot of fun!

(We usually include a note here like: "this may break your mods, please check them for updates"... but this update is fairly small and shouldn't break anything.)

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBYTz7OjDBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJInjPIGOeg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKk16RCOWjc

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We were originally planning to make this update much bigger... we have tons of updates in progress, and a lot of them are almost ready to roll out. But the past few months have been busy with the launch of Trombone Champ: Unflattened in VR, plus the 9-player typing game we showed at NYU's No Quarter 2024[www.instagram.com] event. Around mid-November, we realized: "whoops, if we want these holiday tracks released before the holidays, we need to work on getting a smaller patch out the door immediately."

Here's a full list of what's new:

• New Tracks: "Carol of the Bells," "Hanukkah Oh Hanukkah," and "Puttin' On the Ritz!"
  
• When sliding trombone notes, the tone you hear should match the slide much more accurately.
  
• Replaced the logo on the home screen with the official logo used everywhere else.
  
• The game should jump from the Loading screen to the Gameplay screen a bit faster.
  
• OMG! Lots of improvements to the Tootmaker level editor (which is still "secret" for now).
  
• Fixed some conditions that caused the mouse cursor to reappear if the user had activated the Disable Mouse Cursor setting.
  
• Other minor graphical optimizations and tweaks.

The second bullet point is a big one! If you haven't noticed, pitch bending has been pretty inaccurate since launch: when you bent a note, the tone you would hear would be slightly off-tune in lots of cases. We found a new solution that works like magic and will probably write a blog post about it. This is one of those things that we're embarrassed to have left in the game for so long.

Before the end of the year, we'll make another post about our 2025 roadmap, but to summarize, we have a few large, fundamental updates we'd like to finish ASAP. In the meantime, happy holidays and thank you for your patience!

Forever in your service,

Holy Wow Studios

Hi everyone!

We're working on the next Trombone Champ update, but as always, it's taking a bit longer than expected. In the meantime, we'd like to highlight a bunch of related Trombone Champ / Holy Wow projects... We sometimes post about these on social media, but haven't really mentioned them in Steam News! Without further ado...

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Flat2VR Studios are working hard on the official VR port of Trombone Champ, which we're calling Trombone Champ: Unflattened. This has turned into a much larger & more ambitious game than we were imagining, and we have lots of plans for post-launch content and support. Flat2VR is doing the vast majority of development, but we're helping with a lot of stuff, like art assets, sounds, storyline, writing, ideas, etc. One of the things we like most about this project is that one of the primary developers is Raicuparta, who made the first VR mod for the PC version of the game shortly after it launched! Trombone Champ: Unflattened comes out later this year for Steam, Meta Quest, and PS VR2, so pre-order today!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3151670/Trombone_Champ_Unflattened/




Around a year ago, indie board game designer Jason Anarchy approached us and asked if he could prototype a Trombone Champ card game. We told him to go for it, and a few months later, he showed us a prototype via Table Top Simulator. It was really fun! Even as people who play a lot of board / card games, we genuinely had a great time. Jason is currently running a Kickstarter for the game and there are a few stretch goals left to hit... check it out here!

—> Trombone Champ: The Card Game on Kickstarter




We're excited to be taking part of NYU's "No Quarter" event, at the NYU Game Center in Downtown Brooklyn. At No Quarter, a small number of game developers are invited to show a new game. The experience we're developing is very ambitious: a nine-player competitive typing game, with nine keyboards centered around three vertical screens. Every part of the game was designed to be shown in a public space... it should be super fun to play and for others to spectate. Consider stopping by if you're in the New York area!

—> No Quarter 2024 Official Website[gamecenter.nyu.edu]




Our iam8bit vinyls were briefly sold out, but now they're back in stock! They did an amazing job with the artwork and packaging... these truly look beautiful in person. Once they sell out, they will probably be gone forever, so grab one if you're interested. A handful of these contain a special collectible Tromboner Card like the ones from the game... and a VERY small number of these contain a golden Babi card. It's possible that nobody on earth owns the Babi card yet. We really hope someone finds the golden card and lets us know!!

—> iam8bit | Trombone Champ Vinyl Soundtrack[www.iam8bit.com]




We have pins, t-shirts, and stickers available at our Etsy shop! We screenprint the shirts ourselves, basically right next to the computer where we make Trombone Champ. If you're looking for a shirt and the site says we're out of stock, feel free to message us - we may be able to screenprint another batch (we have a box full of blank shirts).

—> Holy Wow Merch World on Etsy[www.etsy.com]

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It blows our mind that Trombone Champ—a game we expected to have "mildly-viral success" at best—is still trucking along in 2024. Thank you all for your amazing support.

For the next game update, we have a lot of stuff in progress: a much-improved level editor, a main menu refresh that lets you actually access the level editor, a whole batch of new tracks, and additions to the level select screen that allow you to choose "collections" of tracks. This "collections" system is probably the largest piece of work... It allows you to browse and play tracks you make yourself, but is also extendable so you can theoretically load it up with multiple collections of tracks. Building this is critical for workshop support, DLC support down the road, etc.

We'd love to get this update in your hands ASAP, but we've been so busy with the stuff listed above that this may end up being a holiday release (we already have two holiday tracks that are almost done). However, we'll release a smaller version of the patch as a beta, so people who are interested can at least try the improved level editor in advance. Thank you for your patience!

Eternally in your service,

Holy Wow Studios

Hi everyone! We pushed a very tiny update today, which does nothing except hide the "Save (Binary)" button in the Tootmaker level editor. This was intended to be hidden. We literally have a checkbox called "enable_developer_features" and left it checked. Whoops! This is the karmic punishment we deserve for making last-minute updates right before setting this version live.

It's not reflected in this hotfix, but we've already have made a LOT of improvements to the level editor since this last version went live... we may push a beta soon that adds a lot of level editor features, so keep your eyes open!

(The next "real" version will add more than level editor features, so keep your eyes open for that too.)

Anyways, apologies for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience... and now, to continue working on the trombone game...

Forever in your service,

Holy Wow Studios