News
Happy Wheels Javascript is UP
By Jim on December 28, 2020

Moments before the horrific, blasphemous death of flash, the java script version of Happy Wheels has arrived. That was close. Sorry for the delay. Hopefully the fear of losing Happy Wheels did not prevent your restful sleep. If you didn't even know it was in development, then here is your exciting news.

This is the first public version of the game, so please allow some time for the remaining bugs to be ironed out. Though I still love flash, what's great about this version is that it performs very well on mobile devices. However, this release does not yet include on screen mobile controls. That will be added in the next update. If you're desperate to try it out on your phone, a bluetooth keyboard works very well. Though I mentioned previously that the game would now run at 60 fps, some of the heavier levels definitely bog down at that framerate. It is already possible through a setting though, so perhaps I could host a 60 Hz version on another page for those with super beefy processors. Aside from that, Happy Wheels JS should be pretty close in every way to the original. The database of users, levels, and replays remains the same. The only thing lost is the impending doom of the end of existence.

Goodboy Digital are my friends in London responsible for the port of the game, and they have my eternal thanks. This took far more effort than expected, and they even managed to make a custom port of box2d just to maintain all the quirks of the original game. I'd also like to thank site and discord admin Kittenswolf for his help, and everyone else beta testing on discord for the past few months. Thanks to everyone else for still playing Happy Wheels 10 years after its launch, even without updates. I don't know why this is still happening, but I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing without your help. Special no thanks to the few international randoms who have inspired a resurgence in DDOS'ing the site over the past couple months.

The original flash version of Happy Wheels will, for as long as possible, be located here.

Yes, my full time job is still developing the sequel. No, I am a slow recluse and will not share anything. Ok, that's it seeya.
Happy Wheels is not dying
By Jim on January 09, 2020

Hello friends. I probably should have made a news post about this a while ago, but surprises are nice I guess. There has been a javascript version of Happy Wheels in the works since early 2019. It will be out before Flash is murdered by Chrome. Was scheduled for this month actually, but I don't see that happening so immediately. I probably didn't want to tell anyone so nobody would ask me when it will be released.

A nice upgrade is that it will run at 60 fps (interpolated, physics will still be 30 fps). Unfortunately all older replays will be inaccurate though as Box2d will have been updated slightly. They'll still be there for the sake of top records. If you somehow play the Flash version, they'll function fine.

I'm not developing the port, but I hired a company who I thought was most capable. I'll give more details once it's up. I'm still solely working on the sequel (and it is going well).
Some Stuff
By Jim on March 22, 2018

Hello pals. I'd like to continue hosting the flash version of Happy Wheels as long as possible. With the loss of certain ad networks, I'm going to try out a few different ad formats on this site as I continue to attempt to regain some of the revenue that went missing. I'll be making a few minor changes here and there to see whatever works best. Nothing should be annoying. This heads up was the main reason for this news post.

The discord server, which is now official at https://discord.gg/happywheels, has been very helpful to me and the game. Through it I was introduced to some cool users, several of which have become much needed moderators who have greatly improved the quality of the general level submissions. There are also some really great tools that server admin Kittenswolf has made that have automated sharing and reporting of levels. I've not seen a naked watermelon level in months. I also managed to speak with a lot of featured level authors... some that I had never even communicated with, despite their massive contributions to the game (IAMURHUSBAND, bobisdacool1, Iamverybored, Farlaineloco... there are others, those were most recent). Anyways, if you're reading this, you'd probably like to visit that place. There's also a chance I may be on as I've been using discord to speak to my brother as we murder rats in Vermintide 2.

Though I would prefer to be silent, I feel obligated to say that I am still working full time on the sequel, and it's still reeeeeaally time consuming. Thankfully, much of the basic graphics engine is complete, and I've been building out the new editor with it over the past year. There are so many complexities to building out all of the vector drawing tools that function similarly to Flash, that I have developed a much greater level of an appreciation for that program. I'm actually going to have to build in pen support as that would totally be possible given the way the brush tool works. That would allow me to actually make much of my own artwork for the game in the editor itself. I don't like sharing media of what I'm working on as I would just prefer the final product to speak for itself. That's all I've got for now.
video ad problems?
By Jim on September 23, 2017

Hello everyone. I realize I have not made a news post in around 2 years. I think the topic here borders on a slight emergency, so I'm making this one.

Earlier this year google decided, after 7 years, that they no longer felt Happy Wheels was appropriate for their ads. It was fine all that time, but now, after zero changes to my content, it's offensive. In a very slow manner, I've made the effort to replace that revenue by using other ad networks. Flash ads no longer seem to be viable, so, as you may have noticed, I just recently added an html5 ad before Happy Wheels loads.

From my own testing I've not been able to find any bugs, however many of you have reached out to tell me they cannot play the game. If you're having issues loading Happy Wheels, please tell me what you're experiencing in the comments below. Tell me the browser you're using, the operating system, what you see, and any other pertinent information. When I first uploaded the changes, there was indeed a bug that affected 1 of my 2 front end servers which prevented the game from loading. However I fixed that on Friday morning (yesterday). I've still gotten a couple complaints though. If there's an issue, I can't fix it unless I know what it is.

Outside of that, I realize I owe everyone a very long blog post regarding the current state of what the hell I've been doing. The short version is that I'm still just working on the sequel to Happy Wheels, and I'm extremely poor at time estimates. I've been building my own game engine from scratch. Unlike the flash version of Happy Wheels, I've basically had to learn a new language and construct all of my own tools before I could even get to the creative side of things. Logically all the steps I've had to take make sense to me, but actually implementing them is absurdly time consuming. Though daunting, I do find solving each successive problem to be rewarding and educational... I just wish I could magically present everyone with what I'm working towards now rather than at some undetermined point in the future. So, I'm sorry to everyone that I can only now offer more waiting. If anyone cares, I'm doing well, I've made enough money to fund development for however long it takes, I will put in as much detail as I feel necessary, I'm currently working on the editor, I've made significant progress, and I think I will make an excellent game worthy of everyone's time. Hopefully it will become the fully featured platform I always wanted Happy Wheels to be. Blah blah blah.

*The issue should be fixed as far as I can tell. If it's not please complain in this Happy Wheels discord here: https://discord.gg/6UKrjNa 

 
Notes on iOS update 1.0.6 and Android
By Jason on December 16, 2016

When I began work on the iOS version of Happy Wheels, I questioned whether or not it would be accepted into the App Store at all. I found examples of bleeding limbs, gibs, blood explosions and screams in iOS games, but no one example seemed to put all these effects together like Happy Wheels does. Also, at the time, the App Store guidelines were intentionally vague in places, "What is objectionable content? We know it when we see it." So I submitted our little game and breathed a sigh of relief when it was accepted with a 12+ age rating.

However, the App Store and its guidelines are living, breahting entities that change over time. Eventually one of our updates was reviewed by someone who felt the violence was not "cartoon/fantasy", but "realistic", requiring an age rating of 17+ (and banishment from the Brazilian App Store–Sorry, Brazil!). We didn't love this as many Happy Wheels players are below the age of 17, but we went along with it and really nothing seemed to change. Goody.

But then the App Store issued an objection which was not as easily remedied: inury to Irresponsible Dad's child. We were always a bit concerned that this might be an issue and if so, how would we work around it? We ended up going with the obvious solution which was to disable injury to the child. Before anyone throws their arms up in angry protest, I suggest you try it. The child can fall off the bike and will ragdoll, but always remains intact. If you find this lack of violence utterly offensive, let us know. We're considering an alternate solution.

Because of the aforementioned changes, it was easy to implement the option to remove blood/gore from all characters. This option can be found in the Option > Advanced Options. This was request made by a few people... very few.

With that out of the way, the update 1.0.6 also includes levels 1-5 for Wheelchair Guy.

I am actively working on the Android version. After other solutions failed, I decided to go with a pure C++ rewrite of the code. This is unfortunately the best, but slowest solution. At this point, I've got the base characters working as well as couple of the vehicles. It's a good start, but it's still a ways off. Sorry about that. I'd give a more specific timeframe, but I would be guessing and probably inaccurately.

Jim says that he'll update the blog soon.
Yet another minor Happy Wheels update
By Jim on October 27, 2015

After reading a couple suggestions in the last news item, one of them was actually a new idea I hadn't thought of that would be very easy to implement. Another I thought was going to be simple, but instead was much more complicated... and now I am slightly mad at myself for spending as much time as I did on the old game. Here's the changes:
  • you can now set triggers to be activated by mouse click by setting "triggered by" to 6. 
  • triggers can now trigger multiple actions per object for most objects.
  • selected items that can be double clicked into are now surrounded by blue bounding boxes. 
These are fairly straightforward, but I feel they're fairly helpful. Mouse clicking should add a lot of new funny possibilities.

Ok, I'm now going back to working on the sequel in severe, painful isolation... permanently if I can manage it.

As for mobile Happy Wheels, there are several new levels in production... we'd like to get them out for the next character as soon as possible.

**10/29/15 - fixed the inevitable new feature bugs for mouse activated triggers

**11/2/15 - fixed them again.
Minor Happy Wheels Update
By Jim on September 23, 2015

So for the sake of ourselves making some more interesting IOS levels, I made couple small changes in the flash level editor. They mostly all involve the harpoon gun:
  • Harpoon guns can now be set to a fixed angle of your choosing. The turret will only aim in one direction, and will fire as soon as a human target crosses it's cleared path. There is no path prediction when firing at the target, so the harpoon has a lower chance of being fatal. This will make it easier to have characters jump over a bunch of harpoons without causing instant death.
  • Harpoon guns can now be fired with triggers. It is also possible to set it so this is the only way the harpoon will fire.
  • Triggers can also be used to activate and deactivate the harpoon gun.
  • A little light now signals the state of the harpoon gun. Red is normal, blue is a fixed angle harpoon gun, green means it will be fired by triggers only, and black is deactivated.
  • Boost panels now have a variable power setting. They were originally set to 20, and now go from 10 to 100.
Ok, that's it!