Junk Jack iOS 3.0.1 bugfix update is available on the App Store!

Hello miners! We just released on the App Store a patch which fixes many reported issues and crashes, making the experience better and hopefully crash-free.

Now the game is named Junk Jack, as it’s our flagship product! The old Junk Jack on iOS became Junk Jack Retro with added widescreen support!

Thanks everyone for the support, we always appreciate constructive feedback.

Changelog

• In-App purchases now are saved correctly between sessions.
• Fixed a crash on opening stats after using forge/chest/etc
• Fixed wrong doors behavior
• Explosive arrows won’t explode anymore in protected worlds
• Fixed a crash involving extending a piston on top of the world
• Fixed a crash happened when attacking monsters
• Long tap on backpack now toggles item tooltips on/off
• It is now possible to attack creatures with placeable items
• Fixed trap-door issues with object placements
• Added default chest treasures to Tor chests
• Tweaked pickup “pop” sounds
• Tweaked mini item stack arrow in inventory labels
• Tree leaves can now be broken with any tool effectively
• Removed life leech from some weapons
• Polearms are now held correctly in your hand
• Fixed minor graphical issues on some blocks

Junk Jack X 3.0 update is available on the App Store!

Welcome to Junk Jack X 3.0!

This is our biggest update yet, it includes months of work and brings all the new features and improvements from our PC/Mac version to iOS. The changes are too many to list here, but we’ll try to mention at least the major changes below here!

There is a downside though: unfortunately we had to change the whole engine, this makes actual worlds and player incompatible, forcing you to start a new game to experience the new patch. Old worlds and players won’t be deleted but they’ll become unaccessible from the game.

** PLEASE NOTE THAT UPDATING THE GAME WILL MEAN A FRESH START WITH NEW PLAYERS AND NEW WORLDS **

We sincerely hope you understand, sorry for any trouble this may cause.
This is the only choice we had, the only alternative would have been to sell a different game under the same brand which wasn’t acceptable for us.

Happy mining!

Changelog:
• All new Junk Jack logo!
• More than 250 new rare treasures: happy hunting!
• All planets have been overhauled with new graphics, content, biomes and tweaks to make them more fun and varied.
• New planet reachable from Mykon: Tor!
• More than 20 new Tor monsters!
• More than 40 new slimes different for each planet
• Added a collections view which will track all the things you gathered while playing: rare treasures, fancy equips, fish, cooking recipes
• Added scrolling to super minimap
• Super mini map will only show discovered areas
• New procedural part engine for mobs: many mobs will now have random parts attached!
• Explosive arrows!
• Each slime type has its own unique behavior
• New king slime mobs!
• Many mobs have been redrawn from scratch
• New weapons, armor, trinkets can be found in Tor
• New pocket pets, statues, fish, objects, blocks and so on!
• New world sizes options
• Added customisation options for world creations also for adventure mode
• Tweaked treasures and ores distribution
• Dozens of new placeable blocks and objects!
• Added objects and blocks to creative
• Added a new actuator: piston block! It’s able to push players, mobs and items by extending and also behaves as a bridge or one-way door according to rotation
• Added a new actuator: advanced pressure pad! It’s like the normal pressure pad but it’s able to detect mobs too
• Added a new actuator: retractable block! it’s a block that becomes solid when activated and blocks light, movement and liquids
• Trapdoors now behave as devices and can be opened and closed with electronics signal
• Health bars of creatures have been added
• Improved overall game difficulty balance
• Rebalanced food heal values
• Rebalanced potions heal values
• Tweaked treasures drop rates on all planets
• Tweaked chest treasures drop rate
• Tweaked portal chests spawn rate
• Tweaked crates seeds drop rate
• Tweaked mobs health and hit values
• Added many utility crates in the world
• Added dangerous spikes on end game planets
• Portal chests now emit light
• Two new types of wood have been added
• Additionally tweaked light thresholds for mob spawning
• Add-ons now have default crafts available
• 6 new wood crossbows, each one with different bullet and fire speed stats
• New craftable slingshot which throws tiny rocks
• New detailed tool and weapons graphics, with custom animations
• New bows graphics
• New craftable colored goo torches
• Objects and blocks can now be placed on small objects without the need to break them first
• It is now possible to place blocks behind objects without breaking them first
• Fancy trinket slot is now considered for pet summon and will take priority if a pocket pet trinket is present in that slot
• Added Ninja Potion which alters throw speed and power
• New ambient sounds and sound effects
• New music tracks have been added to Terra
• A new manly hurt sound has been added
• New liquid graphics

That’s not all! We made dozens of other tweaks and bug fixes to improve the game experience, we hope you will enjoy the new Junk Jack X 3.0!

Junk Jack 3.0 update is out!

Hello! Today we’re releasing a big content patch which adds more than 250 treasures to be discovered, we call it the treasure hunt season! We also added a new end game planet named Tor, which can be reached from Mykon, with lots of new monsters, equip pieces, treasures and blocks. Planets have been tweaked and should be more varied and fun to explore, we redrawn a lot of mobs and made many balance tweaks and bug fixes.

We’re quite satisfied with the progress made to the game and we think the game is mature enough to be released in full form on Steam, so please let us know what you think of this patch!

After the release we’ll continue with the updates, to improve Junk Jack even more.

Happy treasure hunting!

Enhancements

• treasure hunt season is now open! We added more than 250 unique rare treasures in chests. Happy hunting!
• new planet reachable from Mykon: Tor! Make sure to generate a new Mykon Adventure or you won’t find the new portals
• planets surfaces, graphics and biomes have been revamped and are now more varied and fun to explore
• many new blocks and discoverable treasures can be found on Tor
• dozens of new blocks and treasures!
• more than 20 new monsters!
• lots of new weapons, armor and other equip pieces can be dropped from Tor monsters
• 10 new fish types
• 12 new statues
• new pocket pets!
• two new types of wood with their relative crafts and weapons have been added: Green and Ebony wood
• new rare manufacts have been added, older ones will be converted to the newer ones
• all rare weapons now have custom animation, speed and knockback values
• many walking mobs have been redrawn from scratch
• many new blocks, decos and objects have been added on all planets

Tweaks

• added many missing objects and blocks to creative
• each add-on has now some crafts available by default
• added starter crates near the surface
• tweaked ores distribution
• tweaked treasures distribution tables
• rebalanced food heal values
• rebalanced potions heal values
• tweaked mobs health and hit values
• tweaked mobs bounding boxes, now they should stuck less between blocks
• decreased healing potions drop chance from mobs
• crates can now rarely drop iron lumps
• water won’t spawn floating on ground anymore
• new in use symbol on objects
• tweaked portal chests distribution
• slightly increased crates distribution
• added rare chests and pots on planets surface
• removed workbench requirement for stone tools
• decreased weapons drop chance from chests
• increased salt and sulphur rates on some planets
• decreased hard rocks distribution on planets
• reduced vases on all planets
• added dangerous spikes and ice on end game planets
• new liquid graphics
• new hurt sound!
• new dirt sounds have been added
• most hit sounds had their volume corrected
• tweaked mobs spawn rates
• fixed some minor graphical glitches

Bug Fixes

• import craftbook/potions from other players
• fixed bug with stackable objects improperly loaded from player save
• fixed sticky bullets in multiplayer on clients
• fixed sticky bullets from mobs which were damaging player when unintended
• fixed durability glitch which affected stacks split with shift+click
• added scroll wheel to changelog view
• added portals Yuca -> Magmar
• fix to music that was abruptly changing / stopping when unintended
• increased silence time between songs
• fixed crashes related to interaction at top of the world
• fixed some small glitches in physics engine
• many bug fixes and tweaks not listed here!

Troubleshooting Junk Jack Issues

Hello everyone, we heard some of you have issues launching the game, we’re sorry to hear that. Here are some possible fixes which could help you running the game:

Junk Jack on Windows has been compiled with latest tools from Microsoft so it requires Visual Studio 2015 redistributables, which can be downloaded here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48145

These redistributables are automatically installed by Steam when you launch the game for the first time but, if for some reason the install fails, it just fails silently without warning the user.

Older operating systems like Windows 7 or Windows8.1 requires certain official Windows updates to be installed to work properly with Visual Studio 2015 Redistributables so if the game doesn’t start this is probably the issue to be solved.

INSTALLING REDISTRIBUTABLES

You can try to manually install redistributables by downloading them from the previous link or by launching the one bundled with the game. To do the latter select Junk Jack in steam Library, then right click and choose Properties:

Then under Local Files Tabs choose Browse Local Files, this will open the game folder:

Browse to the folder _CommonRedist/vcredist/2015 and launch the executable which matches your Windows version, x86 is for 32 bit, x64 is for 64 bit.

You can then choose to Repair installation or Uninstall and try installing it again. If the installer gives you any kind of error then it means that your Windows is not officially updated.

Windows 8.1 requires the update KB2919355 to work properly while Windows 7 requires all available mandatory updates.

SAFE MODE

If you are then able to install redisistributables properly and the game still doesn’t start then try to launch it in safe mode, this can be done through opening the properties of the game and in General tab click the buttn Set Launch Options, add “-safe” (without the quotes) and then try to start the game again. This will try to launch the game in windowed 800×600 resolution.

DISABLE ANTIVIRUS

If neither this fixes your problem please try to disable any Antivirus temporarily to see if it’s preventing the game from launching properly.

IF EVERYTHING FAILS..

If none of this solves your problem please specify your operating system and computer spec and send us an email at pixbits@pixbits.com or write to the Community Hub of the game!

 

Junk Jack is out now on Steam!

We’re proud to announce that Junk Jack is now out on Steam by Early Access!

Here is the link to the Steam Store where you will find the game at a price of 14.99$: Junk Jack on Steam Store

Have fun playing Junk Jack!

Thanks everyone for the support during these development months, and thanks to everyone who will buy the game and help us to shape it the best it can be.

This is only the beginning!

*If you encounter any issue please let us know, we’ll do our best our best to promptly fix it.

Announcing Junk Jack Steam release date

Hello everyone! We’re satisfied with the development status of Junk Jack and we think that it’s ready to be released by Early Access on Steam platform.

We’re finally proud to announce our planned release date for Junk Jack:

27 April 2016, with a price of 14.99$!

We’re completing last steps right now to be able to have everything ready for the chosen date!

See you soon in Junk Jack! 😀

Junk Jack Closed Testing recruitment begins!

Hello everyone, we’re making good progress towards the Steam release of the game, but we need your help to start the testing phase to make sure everything is working correctly by addressing any major bug, glitch and game balance issue found. The testing will require the Steam platform since we’ll use it to distribute the binaries to selected testers.

If you’re interested in beta testing Junk Jack, please fill the form at the link below and the relative details:

Junk Jack Closed Testing application form

If you’ll be selected we will contact you by email/steam as soon as everything is ready, so please provide valid details.
Thanks for helping us!

Junk Jack is approaching PC release!

Hello fellows!

We’re working hard to finish porting the game, the global status is quite promising! Although we didn’t manage before end of 2015 as we initially planned we hope to be able to start with Early Access phase shortly!

A big thing that slowed down our progress are the controls, the original game had controls optimized for touch devices, which isn’t good for a deskop game, so we worked on giving the character real physics behavior to make it more platform style, some tweaks are still to be done but the final effect is absolutely promising!

Another issue is the fact that we weren’t satisfied at all with the current tools and weapons, either aesthetically either with the mechanics, so we spent some time trying to figure how to improve the overall thing. We ended up with something that we’re sure you will enjoy, check this out:

Some inner details are still to be decided but we’re slowly finalising them!

In the Early Access phase you should expect a game that already has all the gameplay features available, but with some more delicate components still missing until we’re sure they work correctly. For example steam API integration or multiplayer, which will probably introduced some time after. This doesn’t mean that such features aren’t already implemented, but that we need time to make them work without problems!

More news coming soon!

Junk Jack X 2.4.8 Christmas Update is here!

Ho Ho Ho! Apple has just approved Junk Jack X 2.4.8 Christmas update!

This version adds a new planet called Umbra with new mobs, treasures to discover and many mobs with unique drops, a new physics engine, a new fancy equip system, completely revamped player graphics and equip pieces, a new user interface and many fixes throughout the whole game. Zombies will also throw snowballs to you in the new Christmas themed Terra!

Merry Christmas by Pixbits!

Changelog:

• A new spooky planet called Umbra with new mobs, weapons, equip pieces, blocks and objects has been added
• The new planet portal chests can be found in new generated Terra worlds
• A new special flying type of monster has been added, bats!
• Terra is now christmas themed, with themed objects, treasures and a new christmas zombie mob
• more than 20 new monsters
• many new placeable objects and blocks
• many weapons to discover
• many equip pieces to discover
• 4 new unique music tracks
• fancy equip system, to dress like how you want while wearing the best armor pieces!
• physics engine has been completely rewritten to be more accurate and believable
• the new flying behavior for monsters, bat is just the first one, more will come in the future!
• the User Interface has been completely redrawn
• new more modern Junk Jack logo
• streamlined block and object removal rules accordingly to their appropriate tools
• new energy bar system which opens many possibilities for the future (currently used for underwater breath reserve)
• chest interface now has the color of the opened chest
• the main player sprite has been redrawn, with new appearance and animations
• all equip pieces are new, better looking with more details
• many small things are changed, enhanced or removed to keep consistency with the ongoing desktop version of the game
• fixed broken trading system
• fixed a multiplayer craft related to client crashing after exiting from the game
• added missing objects and mobs to creative
• added some missing crafts
• many bug fixes throughout the whole game, too many to list here!

We hope you’ll enjoy this patch! We didn’t have time to add more features but we’re working hard on the cross-platform engine for the release of the game on desktop platforms and, since we want to keep the iOS version as much coherent as possible with the other upcoming version,  we had to focus a lot on things “behind the scenes”!

Junk Jack Development Roadmap

Hello everyone, we’re making good progress on Junk Jack for desktop platforms, so we thought to share a roadmap to with you!

Starting from this roadmap, our primary task is to have the plethora of current features of Junk Jack X correctly ported and adapted for desktop platforms. So basically our schedule is the following:

• finish porting the current product to let it run on desktop platforms
• early-release the game
• follow the feedback and what the users want most
• integrate large changes in the game to make full advantage of the increased characteristics of desktop platforms (screen size, cpu/gpu power, flexible controls) over the time

The interesting part will come after our initial release, when we’ll be able to raise the bar and add many interesting features that have been in our construction yard for so much time, especially if we’ll be able to establish a good user base that can provide useful feedback to us!

As people that played our games on iOS already know, we’re quite dedicated to this game and we’ve been able to add so many features over the years on the mobile counterpart that we’re really excited to be able to enforce the same dedication for the desktop version of the game!

Check it out below:

More news coming soon!