Yooka-Laylee news round up

[Lanky Kong]

I love the voice sounds they make, especially shovel knight's "yo ho"

 

[the8thark]

http://gaming.thedigitalfix.com/con...interview-mark-stevenson-playtonic-games.html

Quite a nice interview. In the interview they did not say the game will not be ported to the NX. They only said:
'At this stage we’re aiming to just release on what we promised on Kickstarter - which is a lot for us as a team of twenty people!"

 

[the8thark]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...vival/posts/1697841?ref=backer_project_update

Greetings, backers and welcome to the sort-of-monthly Playtonic Labour Update, serving as both an insightful update on the progress of the Playtonic team, and a rare break for us from the punishing development mines (don’t worry: we’ll be pushed straight back down the dev shaft as soon as we’ve pressed the submit button).

This month the Playtonic team exhibited at the EGX expo in Birmingham, where attendees were offered the opportunity to be the first members of the public (other than Kickstarter backers!) to sample a short demo of Yooka-Laylee. It was an excellent few days, topped by some humbling media coverage (BBC! Shortlist!) and best of all the lovely things visitors said about our game.

In case you missed the hoo-ha, the brummy bash was also the platform for our latest Yooka-Laylee video, featuring a parade of major supporting characters and a very special guest… Yacht Club Games’ Shovel Knight!

As our own Chris Sutherland explained, the guest appearance emerged from a mutual admiration between Playtonic and the Californian studio: "We've always been fans of Shovel Knight and thought it'd be great to have some guest star characters from the rest of the indie community. It's great for indies to be able to do that. There's no kind of big barrier, you don't have to go through seven levels of approval, you just go: yeah, we're going to do that."

It was also very nice of Yacht Club to supply both the 3D model and voice of their titular warrior. You can look forward to meeting and assisting him in Yooka-Laylee early next year! You will have spotted all kinds of new and familiar characters in the same video – plus an aural glimpse of a new Grant Kirkhope tune – but be assured there’s still much, much more you don’t know about waiting to be discovered in the final game.

RELEASE UPDATE

With everyone safely back in their office chairs, development progresses unhindered on Yooka-Laylee. As we get closer to launch and our plans take final form, we’re finally able to clarify many of your most burning inquiries and requests. One such query we’re delighted to tackle today is the ever-booming call for a boxed version of Yooka-Laylee. Do we have plans for a boxed release? Today we can confirm that the answer is, yes!

We’re delighted to be able to offer Yooka-Laylee in both digital and boxed flavours in time for the game’s launch in Q1 2017. As we speak, our business badgers are busily burrowing away on an initiative that will allow Kickstarter backers to upgrade their digital pledge to a physical version, if they choose to do so. We’re not ready to share the exact details just yet, but very soon you should be able to stick your head in the badger hole and look for yourself.

BACKER CREDITS: FINAL CALL

It wouldn’t be an update without a bit of housekeeping, and today’s involves Kickstarter Backer game credits.

Kickstarter backers are reminded to please stick to the below guideless when providing your name for the Yooka-Laylee backer credits. Our credits overlords tell us they’re quite intimidated by the impending mandate to shift through 70,000 names, and would really appreciate it if you could triple-check that your supplied credits name falls in to the guidelines below to avoid your name not making the scratch.

Backer credits guidelines:

Anything that is not identifiable or verifiable as a name or nickname risks not being included
ASCII art and Unicode characters are not allowed
Only the first line of text will be used
Anything above the character limit will be cut off
There should be no messages to Playtonic in the credits name field
URLs and hashtags are not allowed
If you need to make changes to your backer credit, please visit Backer Kit and if necessary contact their support.

Thanks for your support!

This does mean backers of this can have a physical version. Yay. I'm even more excited for this now.

 

[the8thark]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...laylee-awarded-games-of-show-by-egx-attendees

Yooka-Laylee is way better than Battlefield 1. YL and BOTW will be the best games of early 2017.

 

[the8thark]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...laylee-awarded-games-of-show-by-egx-attendees

Yooka-Laylee is way better than Battlefield 1. YL and BOTW will be the best games of early 2017.

*********************

Yooka-Laylee will be playable on PS4 at the PlayStation Experience!
https://www.facebook.com/playtonicgames/posts/1781377558796449

 

[the8thark]

New post cause this is a really big (potential) rumour.

Yooka Laylee dated March 14, 2017 on Amazon Germany http://amzn.to/2gE0vx9
https://twitter.com/wario64/status/804396579515838464

 

[the8thark]

11/04/2017
11th April

http://nintendoeverything.com/evidence-pointing-to-april-launch-for-yooka-laylee/

 

[the8thark]

http://www.playtonicgames.com/yooka-laylee-reptile-rolls-towards-release/

Long article but the main information from it is the game is moving to the Switch with a slightly later Switch date. Feel free to scroll down to the relevant Switch part.

 

[A Link In Time]

Another big middle finger to Wii U owners. I'm worried the Switch will be another home to belated ports as well. I have no interest in supporting a company that baits and switches like this.

 

[Mido]

It's a shame to hear about the Wii U, and I can't say that I'm not disappointed about the whole thing. While I never played any of the Banjo games, I have hype for Yooka-Laylee because the whole idea reminds me of the sort of "bygone era" of quirky platforming games from the late 1990s. It would have made for a nice last hurrah for the Wii U, but it at least is good to see that Platonic is providing Wii U backers with appropriate compensation!

Having the game come to the Switch will only help said console, so it's good to see this news, and definitely doesn't leave Nintendo behind in this respect!

 

[the8thark]

http://www.playtonicgames.com/faq/
WiiU backer FAQ - explaining what is happening in the move to the Switch.

 

[Lozjam]

Another big middle finger to Wii U owners. I'm worried the Switch will be another home to belated ports as well. I have no interest in supporting a company that baits and switches like this.

This is not because of the Wii U itself, or the fact that it's a Nintendo system. It's quite simply the fact that the console's architecture makes it nearly impossible to port to from Unity. The power of the system also hinders it a lot as well.

Since the Switch is using modern architecture and uses both Unreal Engine 4, and Unity from the get go, this will not be a problem for the Switch.

I remember when Oddworld company had this exact same problem with Unity. It was a fantastic game, New 'n Tasty. But they wasted over a year's worth of development time porting to Wii U, and trying to find a work around. They managed to do it eventually, but it was so late that sales weren't really that high. Do we really want to see the same for Playtonic?

But like I said, with the Switch, this won't be a problem because it doesn't use the Power PC architecture the Wii U, Wii, and GameCube does.

 

[CrimsonCavalier]

but it at least is good to see that Platonic is providing Wii U backers with appropriate compensation!

The only appropriate compensation is a refund, which according to that FAQ, is going to be incredibly difficult to get.

I'm glad I didn't waste money on this. I'll never fund a Kickstarter on principle, but this one in particular, I'm glad I didn't do.

I could smell "won't be on the Wii U" a mile away.

Since the Switch is using modern architecture and uses both Unreal Engine 4, and Unity from the get go, this will not be a problem for the Switch.

That's only part of the reason. I can't imagine that they're not thinking "potential Switch vs Wii U sales" as a huge—maybe the real—reason why they're doing this, with the "technical" issues a really good excuse.

 

[Lozjam]

The only appropriate compensation is a refund, which according to that FAQ, is going to be incredibly difficult to get.

I'm glad I didn't waste money on this. I'll never fund a Kickstarter on principle, but this one in particular, I'm glad I didn't do.

I could smell "won't be on the Wii U" a mile away.


That's only part of the reason. I can't imagine that they're not thinking "potential Switch vs Wii U sales" as a huge—maybe the real—reason why they're doing this, with the "technical" issues a really good excuse.

Like I said, Oddworld Inhabitants ran into the exact same problem with Unity and the Wii U... And that took an extra year of development time. Of which they tried really hard to get it to work.

Instead of the Wii U version being cancelled, they would have to spend an extra year of development resources on a dead console.

The reason that a game such as Yooka Laylee will not work on Wii U, is because in the switch of Unity, it uses a route of shading and lighting that is incomprehensible with the Wii U for some reason. I would have thought that Playtonic would be able to find a work around for this.... But I guess not.

My biggest disappointment is that Switch version doesn't appear to be coming at launch date on April11th....

 

[the8thark]

The reason that a game such as Yooka Laylee will not work on Wii U, is because in the switch of Unity, it uses a route of shading and lighting that is incomprehensible with the Wii U for some reason. I would have thought that Playtonic would be able to find a work around for this.... But I guess not.

My biggest disappointment is that Switch version doesn't appear to be coming at launch date on April11th....

That's news to me. Thanks for sharing it.

The assume the date for Switch will be delayed but we will get the full info about it in January. They are working closely with Nintendo on this to get it al sorted out. It is Rare after all. They know now to piss off their golden cash cow (ie Nintendo fans). I am sure they could have siad this earlier but also are quite disappointed internally that ti came to this. The upsiade? Yooka-Laylee on the go wherever we want on the Switch. Also it will not have any frame drops at all. BotW (a much more intesive and open game) can paly well on the Switch, that means Yooka-Laylee will too as these blokes know how to program well.