Version history of VVVVVV

This page details the version history of VVVVVV.

Pre-1.0 versions

Main article: Prototypes

VVVVVV has several development prototypes, some of which have been made publicly available after the game's release.

1.0

Released on 11 January 2010. This is the first version of VVVVVV to be released publicly. It was built in Adobe Flash.

1.1

Released on 2 February 2010

New features

• You can quickly restart the time trials by pressing ENTER.
• Now supports more flexible graphic options, which may help improve performance on some machines.
• The game now starts in a window by default, which makes it easier to run on Linux through Wine.
• A number of small bug fixes.

Bug fixes

• Fixed warping back to ship from tower bug.
• Quick saving in the tower now defaults to the correct camera position.
• Mac version now remembers fullscreen settings properly.
• Fixed trying to quit during the Gravitron bug.
• Fixed 21st Trinket bug.
• Room death counts reset properly on game restarts.
• Mouse now hidden in fullscreen mode.
• Fixed animation glitch in No Death Mode game over screen.
• Fixed opening cutscene repeat problem in No Death Mode.
• No Death Mode no longer overwrites your telesave.
• Scripts are now reset when restarting the game.
• Final Level room names now reset properly.
• Fixed Prize for the Reckless platform glitch.
• It's no longer possible to warp back to the ship during the "game complete" screen.
• Room names in menu bar now report correctly for final level "glitch" and "change" rooms.
• Invincibility toggle is now remembered when you quit; fixes exploit.
• Viridian will now be sad if they've missed the par time on a time trial.

1.2

Released on 2 February 2010

• Fixes a bug introduced by 1.1, where finishing a time trial would instead restart the time trial, as if the user pressed Enter at the end

2.0

This is the C++ port of VVVVVV, created by developer Simon Roth. This allowed for the game to be ported to various platforms including Linux, Nintendo 3DS and Pandora. This version of the game added support for custom player levels, along with a level editor to create them.

2.0 was released on 26 July 2011. Beta versions of 2.0 were sent out to some of Terry's friends so they could make some player levels, which have been included in the final release of 2.0.

2.1

This was an intermediate development version of VVVVVV, which was never officially released except for some betas published on the Distractionware forums, the latest (and easily most used) of which on 4 October 2011. The 3DS version is based on 2.1.

This version was never officially released on Steam due to the hardware acceleration changes breaking the game for some people.

New features

• Partial game pad support
• New Direct Mode in editor allows you to manually set each tile (press F10 to toggle it in a room, Ctrl+Arrows change tile, Middle Click for dropper)
• Added speaker command to change textbox colour and position in player levels
• Player levels now have minimaps
• Player levels which have been previously completed are now marked with a star
• You can now press S and L instead of Shift+S and Shift+L to save and load levels
• Editor now asks if you'd like to save before exiting
• Changed Shift behavior in menus (Now a menu toggle like the space menu, not a modifier)
• Roomname disappears in the editor when the mouse cursor is at the bottom of the screen
• Added new scripting command to show/hide the map - map(on/off) (on by default)
• happy and sad commands can now change the mood of any character
• Added squeak command, which turns crewmate squeaking on/off, or makes a crewmate squeak
• say and reply commands now support 50-line text boxes
• GPU acceleration enabled.
• Large performance gains for high res screens.
• Steam overlay enabled.
• The game now automatically pauses whenever the window loses focus.
• An option to open the levels folder was added, however it was OS-specific.

Bug fixes

• Stuttering for some Windows users fixed
• Performance massively optimized
• Editor crashes fixed
• Multiple Flip Mode text fixes
• Flip Mode is disabled in the editor
• Alt+Tab is more usable
• Mouse hiding is more intuitive.
• Resolution settings are now properly saved.
• Extra key bindings added.
• Time trial ranks are now being saved properly
• Fixed one pixel offset in vertical gravity lines
• Entities are now colored according to tileset while in the editor
• Game now remembers slowdown settings
• Resolution settings are now applied before preloader
• R to restart from the last checkpoint now only works in player levels (as it should)
• Time trial music fades back on reset
• Changing tileset color and enemy types in editor display info properly
• Quitting during a cutscene will reset cutscene bars
• Resolution settings are now being saved properly
• WASD controls work in game
• Warp line collision now uses a special system instead of relying on direct entity collisions; this fixes being able to "clip through" through a double-sided warping border that uses warp lines
• Many more fixes.

Built-in levels

New built-in levels were added to the game, while some existing levels were updated. All changes to existing levels are completely undocumented in the 2.1 patch notes written by Simon Roth.

All changes to the levels since 2.0 were made in 2.1, since 2.2 did not touch the contents of the data folder or data.zip.

New levels

• The Tower of Power by Ruari O'Sullivan
• Vertex Vortex by Matt Thorson
• Dimension 333333 by Sendy (easy version)
• Victuals by Noyb
• Seasons by Michael Brough
• Soul Searching by Matthew Rodriguez
• Quantum Tunnel by Matthew Rodriguez

Existing levels

Golden Spiral

• Fixed a missing spike in "Weep like a Widow" which made it possible to skip the DTTHW clone
• Fixed a missing tile behind the player start point in "Black, then White"

Line Wrap

• Removed an errant 1x1 tile from "Don't Slip"
• Removed an errant 1x1 tile from "What Did I Just Tell You?"
• Simplified the geometry of the middle section of "Unlock Sequence"
• Fixed being able to skip "Flip-Flop Latch" by simply going through the three-tile-high gap the disappearing platform is in; that gap is now two tiles high
• Renamed "Cliffhanger" to "Don't Fall Down"

A New Dimension

• Fixed being able to clip into walls in two places in "You can rush it or take it slow"
• These rooms now use the Overworld style instead of the Lab style:
  • S curve
  • Final race
  • Tap-tap-tap-tap
  • Intermittent interference ingestion
  • Tricks on the go
  • Turning it down
• "Joshua, what is the winning move?" was technically modified, but no functional change was made
• Fixed a room transition misalignment between "Safe within the walls" and "Machine room"
• The middle warping hallways in "Safe within the walls" are now three tiles high instead of four tiles high
• Spikes were added to the bottom-right of "Safe within the walls"
• "Congratulations!" now has a warp token to take you to the beginning of the level if you missed any trinkets or crewmates, along with a terminal explaining so
• Two missing spikes were added to "Expander"; one functional, one not really consequential
• Fixed room transition misalignments between "Gravitron remnants" and "Three's a crowd"
• Nerfed "City lights", replacing some spikes and a platform with a checkpoint
• Added platform bounds to "City lights"
• One tile was added to "Dismantling of the space continuum" even though it is inconsequential
• Three tiles were moved in "Outburst of energy"
• Added a wall to the right side of "Occult ceremony"
• Removed one spike from "Lets be friends again"
• Added an apostrophe to "Lets be friends again", so it now reads "Let's be friends again"
• Cut off the trinket in "Virtually Voracious" and added a tunnel that starts from "Your reality is someone's dream", going through "T of life", "If you ain't flippin' you be trippin'", "Jumping is so 1984. Today, we flip!", "Positively positive", and "You can pierce the sky" to access it
• Renamed "Virtually Voracious" to "The one dead end"
• Minor, not really consequential changes to "Doing things the side way"
• Named (14,0) "GQ's tears are delicious..."
• Fixed the spelling of "Persistance is key", so it now reads "Persistence is key"
• Named (5,19) "Everything working against you"
• Named (13,19) "Yellow room with support structures"
• Numerous non-text entities acquired garbage data due to the in-game level editor garbage entity bug
• Buffed the side checkpoint in "Things are getting dicey" by adding an enemy
• The text boxes of crewmates in their crewmate scripts are now colored instead of being gray

VVVV 4k

• A typo was introduced (not fixed!) in the website field of the level. It now reads http://notch.tumbler.com instead of http://notch.tumblr.com.

2.2

This version was primarily developed by Ethan Lee. It was initially released on 11 June 2014, but later versions of 2.2 continued to be released until 2016. The Make and Play edition was first introduced in this version.

Initial release

New features

• Upgraded to SDL2
• Controller support improved, although still only partial support
• PhysFS is now used
  • The data folder has been replaced with a data.zip zip archive containing the same contents
  • Unfortunately, this means that symlinks are no longer supported by default
• SDL_image has been replaced with LodePNG
• Support for FamilyJules7x's MMMMMM soundtrack has been added. The game will now load an mmmmmm.vvv file if it exists, and let you switch between PPPPPP and MMMMMM.
• Pressing R has been re-enabled in the main game (the comment given is //Have fun glitchrunners!)

Removals

• The open levels folder option from 2.1 was removed, due to being OS-specific.

Unknown release

The date of this release is not known.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a regression (from earlier in 2.2? This bug didn't exist in 2.0) where the Time Taken timer would not be reset when quitting to the menu.

Release on 2016-10-20

This is the last released version of 2.2.

New features

• Added integer scaling mode.

Minor release on 2019-11-19

This release made functionally no change to the game, and only removed two comments made by Ethan Lee from the Linux launch shell script, which were # Fix your shit Valve and # Seriously WTF guys you rushed out 2.0.5 for nothing. SDL2 was also upgraded.

The reason that Ethan Lee removed his comments was because he reworked the library path in this update, fixing the bug that he was referring to.

2.3

Main article: Version 2.3

The first post-source code release version of VVVVVV, this implemented various fixes and additions by contributors on GitHub.

It is the first major update in 7 years, and the biggest update to VVVVVV since 2.0.

It was released on 31 August 2021.

2.4

Main article: Version 2.4

The second post-source code release version of VVVVVV, currently in development.

Development started on 31 August 2021, when 2.3 was released.