As Flash, AIR, Harman and practically every bit of software needed to make the Fancy Pants games run have been slowly depreciating - ever since Adobe left Flash in the dust - it's become increasingly likely for older machines to struggle.

This has most commonly manifested as the dreaded White Screen Bug.
When booting the game, you'll be confronted with a blank, white screen (sometimes with audio still playing). If you've been playing on Windows 10 or newer, it's unlikely you've encountered this bug. But for older machines, it's often rendered the game completely unplayable!!

Brad has crafted a custom solution!! This entire Pack is a testament to Brad's ability to problem solve, and force these old games to work. So why not patch in yet another custom workaround to dramatically improve the game's overall compatibility?!

When the Classic Pack now boots, it will run a quick check as to whether your PC will support either the Enhanced or "Constrained" version of things. If your computer can only handle the latter, it will instead flip over to a DirectX9 version!

Brad works on a Mac, now rendering out a Windows built of the game that forces the use of legacy APIs. After some beta testing in the Discord, we're mostly confident this will make the game playable for more users without breaking anything for those running the default "Enhanced" version.

Confirming the game still runs well on modern machines AND reports on how the game now runs on older machines will be equally valuable to us! Thank you for all your support.

Stay Fancy
-Graeme

PS. Super Fancy Pants Adventure is 50% of 2 more days! You can grab that game by itself, OR in a bundle with the Classic Pack for an extra discount. (A White Screen fix for Super will hopefully be coming soon!!)

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/22346/The_Complete_Fancy_Pants_Adventures/

18 YEARS OLD!!

Today marks the 18th Anniversary of The Fancy Pants Adventure: World 1 originally being released on browsers!! Come hang out in the official Discord[discord.gg] if you want to share in the fun and nostalgia with other Fancy Pants fans!

Today also kicks off the Steam Spring Sale! Unfortunately the Classic Pack is on a post-launch discount "cooldown", so it remains at full price. However, Super Fancy Pants IS on sale this week, with extra 20% off BOTH games in the Complete Fancy Pants Adventures bundle!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/22346/The_Complete_Fancy_Pants_Adventures/

UPDATE

Brad is on a major bug squashing blitz. Hopefully once the worst of those remaining are cleared up, development can enter a nice balanced state - equally crossing off minor bugs, while polishing up and further enhancing World 3!

The Classic Pack includes 3 different game engines, all needing to talk to one another. The engines are mismatches in handling the "Quality" settings, which was absolutely tanking performance for some users!

While this patch should see large improvements to performance overall, we've only been able to tested on a limited number of machines. If you do experience obvious performance issues after this update, please let us know, and try to include the following:

• In what World(s) you felt any struggle?
  
• Are playing windowed/fullscreen?
  
• Have you tried toying with Quality settings?
  
• Including your computer specs couldn't hurt!

-LOTS done to the royal bathtub. This area was prone to causing all sorts of bugs, and a few crashes. PLEASE let us know if the crashing persists!!
-Cleaned up "phantom" Squiggles

Brad is also working on memory usage in World 3. This will be a stepping stone towards 60fps support. But even before then, this work should also make a difference in performance!

For anyone who is interested in a peek at the sort of work Brad has to do to get these things working:

Originally posted by Brad Borne:

Next refactoring of World 3 should probably be the selecting caching system, especially if we want to up the res on W3, would bring memory usage down a ton and is probably the simplest change to make, can prioritize levels that take up more memory

I cannot overstate how much more complex bringing World 3 up to 60fps will be than it was for World's 1 and 2. Please bear with us! (I say us. I'm just here for support. It will all come down to Brad and some playtesters!!)

Thank you all for the support!!
Stay Fancy

There were reports of users losing progress, especially in regards to collectibles in World 2.
Please let us know if you ever experience the following after this patch:
Collect any trophy. Exit. Come back. And you no longer have said trophy!

You shouldn't need to reset your save. But if you would like to:

• Go steam offline mode
  
• Delete C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/userdata/<user-id>/1668460/remote/SaveData
  
• Go back online
  
• Steam asks to revert to a cloud save, or an empty save. Choose the empty one!

(Eventually we'll add the ability to reset your save within the game)

We're already playtesting more fixes. Hopefully the worst edges will be rounded off soon.
Stay Fancy!
-Graeme

This patch was really focused on improving World 3. It's still to early for full 60fps support, but these enhancements so smooth out the worst bugs, while generally improving the game feel!

-Window scaling - The menu/shell layer and individual Worlds were not properly scaling for some users. If you were previously unable to play the game properly in fullscreen, please do try it now and let us know if it works properly.
-Bottles (should??) now save
-Challenge fixes

-Redone focus camera
-Updated text bubbles
-improved water interactions

Here is the first post-release visual update!!
It's simple. But after nearly 12 years, it's pretty awesome to see old placeholder art being swapped out!!

(The original, Flash version of the wall break)

(The all new animation, specific to the Classic Pack!)

Brad is eager to clear up as many bugs as he can, before going deep on the graphical updates for World 3! There are a LOT of unfinished areas in the game he'd like to spice up while he's busy digging into everything again.
(Reminder: this will be all NEW art, as the console versions of the game are owned by OTT/EA)

We have a close eye on the bug reporting thread, as well as the Discord[discord.gg] thread. While I hope this patch addressed many issues, we're aware there are several in World 1 and 2 that still need to be addressed.

Thank you all for the feedback, and positive reviews! The work continues, as we edge nearer to all the most fun updates!
Cheers,
-Graeme

As a part of this wonderful celebration of 2D platformers here on Steam, we've extended the Classic Pack launch discount until March 3rd!

You can buy The Fancy Pants Adventures: Classic Pack alongside a selection of other indie platforming titles at a heavy discount, as a part of the Ultimate Platformer Pack.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/37938/Ultimate_Platformer_Pack/

There were a LOT of bug reports in the first week. Many we knew, and many we didn't!
After a short reprieve, Brad has been back at work fixing up as much as he can. General bug fixing, polish and optimization are all at the top of the list for now.

If only it were all as simple as "track and fix bug".
World 3 currently exists across ~40 separate Flash files that need to be separately opened and edited to address certain problems. This was completely unsustainable, and Brad is already working on solutions to save himself effort down the line.

Once the bugs and crashes have been squashed down to a minimum, that's when the fun updating can begin! Thank you all for your patience and feedback so far. Morale is high, and the move to Early Access has been really invigorating!

We'll have more to share soon :)
-Graeme (2 Left Thumbs)

PS. Did you know William and Sly launched today?! Check it out!!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2459620/William_and_Sly/

Entering Early Access, we knew things were a little buggy. Especially World 3.
Brad immediately got to work banging out fixes, and we already have a new build ready for you!

Brad has never really needed to keep patch notes before, so please bear with us. I'll attempt to include as many specifics as possible, but note going forward: these lists are unlikely to ever be 100% inclusive of all the minute things Brad is constantly fine tuning.

• World 3 door text added
  
• World 3 bonus rooms should now properly allow you to enter/exit
  
• Some World 3 bonus rooms have the timer on top of their doors fixed
  
• Squiggleville challenge complete dialogue fixed
  
• Squiggleville end platform fixed
  
• Outer Squiggleville challenge no longer breaks things, and pants are awarded automatically
  
• World 3 bottle interactions fixed
  
• Pirate Cove star fixed
  
• "earthquake bug" fixed
  
• Baddie pile in the ship screams when attacked now
  
• mice squeak when killed

• Pause Menu updated
  
• Removed World 3 Debug Menu (we may bring this back in a Beta branch!)
  
• w2 -> w3 pause fixed
  
• w3 menu music overlap in menu fixed
  
• pausing breaking cutscenes in w3 fixed

And a million other liiittle fixes.
We can consider this the Borne Index. A measure of all the teeny ways Brad is constantly improving everything on the fly, measured in Brads. Very high Borne Index in this first patch ;)

"The last two uploads were patching up some pretty broken stuff that just wasn’t fixed yet, we’re almost to the part where the fixes are actually interesting and not just ‘core function of game works now’"
-Brad

Hopefully we can find a system for more easily tracking bugs moving forward.
For now, I just wanted to make sure everyone knows the games are already being worked on!

A reminder, we are launching in EARLY ACCESS. Bugs are to be expected, and more content will follow!
The Fancy Pants Discord[discord.gg] will remain the best way to follow development.

We are pleased to offer "Classic" versions of all 3 base Worlds right from launch! Features like Achievements, Steam Cloud, and Trading Cards will come at a later date. There's polish to be added all around. And we plan to jam PACK this thing full of extra content - driven largely by community suggestions.

After nearly 2 decades of work on this series, it felt wrong to not embrace this wonderful community by opening things up through Early Access.

Nearly 18 years after World 1 launched in browsers, and 2.5 years after the announcement that The Fancy Pants Adventures: Classic Pack would be coming to Steam, the time has finally come!! Development had to stop and start more than once, we had some major meltdowns at the finish line, and it's such a relief to clear this milestone!

Brad has always preferred an open development approach. He built the first few Worlds in college, surrounded by people who could test things for him. We want the development process to once again be shared with the public!

Localized pricing is pending final approval, but when live, should offer fair pricing in all currencies offered by Steam. That should be ready in a matter of hours.

Pick the game up through a bundled discount with Super Fancy Pants Adventures. The extra discount will automatically apply for those who already own Super! (also, Super will be 50% off starting Feb 19th. Sorry that's not quite synched up)

Getting these old Flash games to run by modern standards has shaped up to be a Herculean task! Even just getting the original versions to run in 16:9 at 60fps has introduced loads of challenges.

"I'm just trying to not spend too much time trying to figure out how to basically hack flash into doing what I want it to - but I've gotten better at understanding some more advanced AS2 stuff (like 20 years too late lulz), so that helps at least" - Brad on the Classic Pack's Development

There are many small changes that will likely be imperceptible. For instance:

• Leveling caching had to be rebuilt multiple times for optimized performance, and to support additional resolution options (not something Flash likes...)
  
• World 2 now has improved jump input buffering to help with chaining together jumps!
  
• Or the snail shell code, which ended up being easier to fully rewrite.
  
• Everything in World 3 was saved as variables dumped in the root. This was nearly impossible to track, and Brad had to rip it all out, and rewrite everything as arrays.
  
• Not to mention countless bugs that have been squashed - alongside brand new introduced through this whole process!

Things were changing so much right up until today, that we're launching without a proper trailer... I've uploaded a little teaser of the Classic Worlds in action. But a proper launch trailer will be coming soon!!

We can't thank you enough for your support through - not just through this long and winding development - but through Fancy Pants' full history! It means the world that so many people would show up for these games and voice their love and support. I feel so honored to now be a part of this incredible legacy!

-Graeme
(2 Left Thumbs)

Fancy Pants isn't the only series 2 Left Thumbs is working to bring back to Steam!
You can play the original 2 William and Sly games entirely for Free TODAY!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2684790/William_and_Sly_Classic_Collection/

And please be sure to Wishlist the upcoming, fully 3D sequel being made by the series original creator, Lukas Paakh. The first public demo is coming soon!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2459620/William_and_Sly/

The Fancy Pants Adventures: Classic Pack was the first Flash game Graeme pursued publishing through 2 Left Thumbs. Fancy Pants Man is what comes to mind when thinking of "Flash Games". I am so honored that Brad would trust me to be a steward for these legendary games!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1668460/The_Fancy_Pants_Adventures_Classic_Pack/

And as of today, that partnership extends even further!!
These "Fancy Plans" (as previously teased) have been in the works for longer than I can remember offhand: 2 Left Thumbs is now the official Publisher for Super Fancy Pants Adventure as well! I wrote up a little post about it over there. Be sure to check out the Fancy Pants bundle to get the best possible price on either/both games!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/668210/Super_Fancy_Pants_Adventure/

You can pick these 2 games up together in a bundle for additional discounts
(whether you already own Super or not!)

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/22346/The_Complete_Fancy_Pants_Adventures/

This Flash passion is not passing fashion for me! I've been eagerly looking for other legendary Flash devs to work with, and recently made the leap with Lucas Paakh.
His original 2 William and Sly games are available to play in a totally Free Classic Collection (it's not nearly as beefy as the Classic Pack)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2684790/William_and_Sly_Classic_Collection/

With an entirely new William and Sly game coming February 26th! This open world, 3d platforming, collectathon-lite represents years of work from another passionate solo developer. Please be sure to add it to your Wishlist ahead of that upcoming release!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2459620/William_and_Sly/

Alice is Dead is a trilogy of point n click mysteries! This one was added to the catalog far earlier, but the team has been re-evaluating some things recently. We're still moving ahead with these remakes! We'll have more to share later this year.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1826770/Alice_is_Dead_Hearts_and_Diamonds/

Repella Fella released last year, and is a spiritual successor to the old Ray games. This choose your own adventure comedy isn't exactly for the same demographic as Fancy Pants, so careful going in... All from a solo developer, this sleeper hit is a wild and truly unique adventure!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1008860/Repella_Fella/

And finally (for now), Gorgon Shield is coming from Oliver Joyce, the absolute beauty behind the Swords and Sandals series. This game is a concerted effort to try developing a new IP, but it carries strong roots in the Flash game world. Try out the brand new demo for this arcadey, rotational roguelike!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2446920/Gorgon_Shield/

I don't know which developers or games I'll have the pleasure of working with next. I feel like Thanos, assembling an Infinity Gauntlet of incredible Flash games! I hope each and every release will continue to live up to what you remember and love about all these titles.

Thank you for all your support, and thank you for letting me be the caretaker of Fancy Pants. I won't let this community down <3
-Graeme
(2 Left Thumbs)

We've recently made some hard decisions, assessing our previous goalposts of what exactly will make the cut moving into Early Access! And we landed on something, that feels like the best possible trade off:

• World 1 Remix, and the 2 Remasters will not be available at launch.
  
• But ALL the Classic versions of Worlds 1, 2 and 3 will be included!!

This version of World 3 won't have all the enhancements currently seen in World 1 and 2 - it will be refined over time - but as the newest of the 3 Worlds, it was already the nearest in overall feel and performance to the desired modern standard.

This will give you PLENTY to play right from Day 1, and should hopefully both warrant the wait and encourage many to join us during Early Access! In many ways, this feels more appropriate. Starting with those original 3 Worlds, and building out from there.

This was actually the path of least resistance for getting the Classic Pack out there. AND it opens up some fun possibilities for Brad! We're very thrilled to see that take shape over the course of Early Access. Hang tight everyone. We'll be with you SOON!!

At the start of the week we felt closer than ever. Hence the big tease at the start of the week. The individual games are in fantastic shape!! Then you start pushing them together again for the final Pack, and the surrounding shell starts to show it's cracks...

For example, the master volume control was a little janky, and would suddenly spike to ear-destroying volumes for a few users! We are ok with moving to EA with a few bugs, (as that's sort of the whole point!) but not when those bugs are so aggressively anti-user. Deafening 10% of users doesn't really feel worth jumping the gun :/

I would have updated things sooner, but I was neck deep in Next Fest business. But worry not, Brad has been hard at work! How about a quick tease to thank you for all your patience!

👖 👀

It's a little soon to be updating again, but I (Graeme) will be away for the weekend.
What I can say at this time, is that the improvements Brad has made this past week have things feeling night-and-day better compared to where the game was such a short time ago :D

He'll be putting in some more work over the weekend, and when I'm back Sunday we'll re-evaluate where things are at. Fingers crossed the wait won't be much longer!

I hope everyone has a Fancy weekend!
And thank you all for the umpteenth time for you patience!!!
<3

I've been hoping we wouldn't spill into February, but here we are.
I jumped the gun on saying Brad has recovered. It seemed like he recovered quickly, but it was lingering and snuck back up. He seems to be actually recovered now!

Anyone who has been playtesting will understand why we haven't been able to release yet. Addressing some of these larger issues, often breaks smaller ones. You fix that small thing, and it breaks something even smaller. The process becomes continually chasing down that thread until the issue is acceptably small enough to leave for post-launch. THEN you turn and start working on the next major issue xD

eg. Brad recently had to completely redo how levels were cached to improve performance on some machines. This effectively broke every level, and Brad's main job the last few days has been cleaning that back up again.

We're trying to give things a big push to clear that launch threshold! We want things to be stable, as everyone involved is going take a step back and a hot minute for recovery once this game is launched. This has been a challenging couple weeks, but there's also been a building anticipation about finally getting it in players hands. Everything is being fueled by this raw excitement!!

Both the Bundle with Super and "Fancy Plans" are fully confirmed, and will be ready to share alongside launch! While I know these delays have been disappointing, I hope that this will be at least partially worth the wait :)

Our apologies for the slowdown on updates.
SO many things have been fixed already, but a few major hurdles lay ahead of us. For instance, fullscreen appears to be really breaking things for some users. And considering that's likely how everyone will want to play, it's sort of important to get that working properly!

Brad was also pretty out of commission for a day or two. This intense dev stretch caught up to him, and he simply needed more time to rest. He hasn't been grinding crazy hours this whole time. But it was unsustainable, and not a state of development that was ever meant to last this long!

He's feeling fit and ready, and is already have to work on things!
We'll hopefully have proper news this week. We're still waiting on that final Bundle approval as well. So hopefully that's ready to go before we're ready for launch!

Over 1 week past... Dang. We're deeply sorry for that!
Have you ever heard, "the last 10% is 90% of the work?"
Apparently that's true even when you're talking about the last 10% of an Early Access build.
I've been holding off on updates, because everything feels so close! So close... yet so far. Thank you once again for you patience!

On a positive note, we've all but confirmed a Bundle with Super FPA will be available. Final approval is still pending. That timing works out surprisingly well, as by the time the Classic Pack is ready, we should be able to sell the two games together! That's our silver lining among all these delays.

With that in mind, I'd cap the Classic Pack discount to 15%
With an additional 20% off when bought alongside Super (Super owners will get the discount without needing to repurchase anything they already own!)

And no, the Bundle is not the "Fancy Plans" teased a few days back...

Apparently I only give updates on even days? That hasn't been intentional! If you want more frequent updates, please consider checking out the Discord[discord.gg].

Things are looking and feeling good! In Brad's words,
"the main thing was tracking down anything that could crash the entire thing, I'm okay with a bit of jank"

Bug fixing is now mostly back-burnered (unless major crashes rear their head again). The main focus is on assembly, which should be a heck of a lot simpler a task overall :)
I'm a little gun shy at the moment with announcing a new date. But there appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you for your patience!

We're now 3 full days passed our intended launch window. The game is feeling and running MUCH better! Work is being done to reassemble these scattered pieces. Hopefully it all comes back together smoothly... If not, we may need to come up with a release plan that relegates some content to a beta branch. That feels like a worthwhile compromise, as we're eager to get this out there!!

Some good news in the meantime:

• We had a 10% launch discount planned. But the longer launch is delayed, the greater the discount I plan to apply! Maybe an additional % per day? That's the plan for now. Exact discounting TBD!
  
• Localized pricing has finally been approved, and will be ready at launch!
  
• Entirely coincidentally, some Fancy Plans that have been in the works for months happened to come to fruition today! I have my fingers crossed it will be fully resolved and ready to reveal alongside this launch. If it does, it will have (almost) made the delays worth it!!

It's now the evening of January 16th. We're about 32 hours passed the intended release time...
This morning, after 48 straight hours of coding, Brad finally had to clock out at ~6am, sleeping through the day, now re-emerging this evening to immediately start knocking out bugs again!

Attempting to untangle 18 year old code in a "dead" scripting language (Brad would beg to differ) is a nightmare. Progress is being made! I'll continue posting updates in response to this thread as there's more to share.

We will have this thing out asap, but I'd say don't expect it before the day's end. Everyone's kind words, support and understanding have all meant SO much! I sincerely hope it will feel worth the wait. Cheers!

-------------------------------------
-------------------------------------
The game was due to release @10am PT. Obviously we've now missed that time.
I have a full release write-up ready and waiting to share. So I'll keep this one brief!

The goal is still to launch today!

The Fancy Pants series was never really built to be pulled together like this. It spans multiple engines, and coding languages! At the home stretch here, the seams are being stress-tested, and a few stitches have come loose.

While we know a lot of polish and improvements will come with time - there is a minimum level of polish we want to achieve before considering it launch-worthy.

I've already seen people asking, "why set a release date, if the game is still buggy?"
I think people are overestimating how far out from release the average game is actually "done". I've been a part of quite a few launches now - and without fail things are always being worked on until the last minute. You can never predict what sort of ugly bugs are going to rear their head *right* at launch!

Brad pulled an all-nighter working on things, and he's still cracking away as we speak.

Bit by bit, it's coming together with improved stability.
But I think we're talking in a scale of hours. Sometime into the afternoon, potentially evening.

I'll do my best to provide updates here, or in the Discord[discord.gg]

-Graeme
(2 Left Thumbs)