Powering up with Unity Engine
The highly anticipated Etherjump Unity rewrite is live, bringing improved scalability and new innovative features for Builders
You’ve all been waiting for it, after weeks of development and community testing, the Etherjump Unity upgrade is here! The development team has skillfully rebuilt the game from the ground up in Unity, allowing for improved scalability and the addition of new features. We’re excited to share the changes with you all, so let’s get started!
Thank You, Etherjump Playtesters
Before we get into the update, we would like to take a moment to express our gratitude to all the playtesters who have been instrumental in the development of the rewrite. Your valuable feedback, dedication, and passion for the game have greatly contributed to refining the gameplay experience and identifying areas for improvement.
As we continue to scale and expand Etherjump, we look forward to your continued support and collaboration in making the game even better for all players to enjoy. Once again, thank you for being a crucial part of Etherjump's journey and helping us bring this Unity-powered experience to life.
Why Unity?
Switching to the Unity engine has provided Etherjump with increased scalability, allowing the development team to expand upon the game's features, optimize performance, and ensure that Etherjump can continue to grow alongside its dedicated community. This transition has also opened doors for future updates and improvements, making Etherjump more adaptable than ever before.
We’ve reworked our internal architecture to be a lot more modular, which will make it much easier to add to and scale our catalog in the future:
Gameplay is much more performant than before. Complex levels that were extremely laggy in the past, now run with ease, in the new engine. We architected the new codebase with maintainability and scalability in mind, ensuring that future updates remain performant and easy to implement.
All of the items from the old engine were also ported with multiplayer in mind, so that current game items will work mostly out of the box when we start to develop multiplayer, without significant redesign.
Unity makes it very easy to build across several platforms, opening the door to console and mobile versions of Etherjump in the future
With Unity, we can also make more effective hires through the rich pool of talent within the Unity community!
New Features
The Etherjump Unity rewrite has allowed the development team to introduce new features that weren’t possible in the previous engine, adding a new layer of level design for builders and gameplay for players.
Hello Full Screen
We've added full screen to the game, allowing you to dive headfirst into the action and enjoy every pixel of the world of Etherjump, edge-to-edge. Say goodbye to black bars, and hello to an all-new, immersive gaming experience.
Entity Interactions
Ever wanted to see a roadrunner bounce around a cage of jump pads? Well, now you can!
With the new engine, blocks like:
Jump Pads,
Clouds,
Sand,
Ice,
and Mud
…now affect all entities (enemies, vehicles, projectiles)
With this rewrite, we’ve totally reimagined the game’s architecture in order to accommodate a more modular and cohesive game world. This change greatly expands the realm of possibilities for building, and allows for more complex building patterns to create even more unique experiences!
This is the first step towards creating a more immersive Etherjump experience, and In the future, we hope to take this even further with more complex entity interactions (eg. fireballs melting ice, etc.) to bring greater variability to gameplay and introduce new game mechanics.
New-and-Improved Snowman ⛄
The original snowman was a bit of a weak enemy, so we’ve given it a revisit!
The new snowman now has the following behavior:
The snowman now throws directly out of its body, from the height that is closest to the player
You can no longer dash through the snowman
Thrown snowman nodes bounce and slide around terrain for an increased lifespan
These changes, in combination with the entity interactions described above, makes for some pretty cool possibilities!
Replays
The replay system is a big part of Etherjump and we wanted to take that into consideration when porting over to Unity.
We’ve preserved all of the leaderboard entries and replays from the original engine, and when you click on the time of an old replay, you will be redirected to the old replay viewer.
The new replay viewer comes with a few neat upgrades, such as the leaderboard entry name and a live timer in the corner!
Mobile Browser Support
Unfortunately, due to the nature of Unity WebGL builds, many mobile devices are unable to properly run Unity games in the browser, which means we could not offer proper support for mobile browsers to play Etherjump.
Luckily, due to Unity’s comprehensive cross-platform support, we will be able to offer a native mobile app experience for Etherjump with much less effort.
So although mobile support is paused, for now, stick around - the app will be way better!
Integration of Existing Elements
Rebuilding Etherjump in the Unity engine was a considerable undertaking. The team faced the challenge of seamlessly integrating existing game mechanics and the level design into the new platform. Through months of hard work and dedication, we’ve managed to achieve a perfect blend of old and new, ensuring that fans of the original game would feel right at home in the Etherjump Unity rewrite.
The new engine has also been fully integrated into the Level Builder, so that Builders can seamlessly test their creations in the new Unity game engine!
Stay Tuned
With the Unity rewrite, our goal was to transition to a new engine for enhanced scalability, while maintaining the game's core essence and charm. With its innovative new features, and the hard work put in by the development team, Etherjump is now better positioned for growth and expansion. The Unity engine lays the groundwork for exciting future features, including multiplayer capabilities, player progression systems, and an extensive catalog of new items for players to discover and utilize.
Thank you all for your continued support, and thank you to the bug testers for your valuable contributions along the way — see you all in the next update!