* New script API method: Self.CameraFollowMe() to draw camera focus toward
your doodad (it sets the Canvas.FollowActor target.)
* The camera will go back to following the player on any action inputs
(arrow keys, jump, use, etc.); if the player is constantly on the move
the camera stays on him even if another actor is trying to take the focus.
* The first few ticks of Play Mode the player character is always followed,
to allow for Anvils to settle into place without taking the focus.
* Canvas FollowActor: if the actor is 4 times the max scroll speed away,
allow scrolling in greater leaps of 4 times the max scroll speed.
New and Changed Doodads
* Anvils will take the camera focus while they are falling.
* New doodad: "Look At Me" - a 'camera region' technical doodad. Link it to
any power source such as a Button - when this doodad receives power it will
take the camera focus for a few frames. Use it to highlight a door that
opened far off screen by linking the Button to both an Electric Door and
a "Look At Me" near the door.
* Add an exception catcher that pops open a UI window showing errors that
occur in doodad scripts during gameplay.
* Shows a preview of the header of the error (character wrapped) with a
Copy button to copy the full raw text to clipboard for inspection.
* Buttons to dismiss the modal once or stop any further errors from
opening during this gameplay session (until next restart).
* Add developer shell commands to test the exception catcher:
- 'throw <message>' to throw a custom message.
- 'throw2' to stress test a "long" message.
- 'throw3' to throw a realistic message copied from an actual error.
* Scripting engine: console.log() and friends will now insert the script
VM's name in front of its messages (the filename + actor ID).
* Add modal.Wait() that creates a global progress bar modal which is not
dismissable by the user; the caller must Dismiss() the modal
themselves when ready.
* It will be useful in the future in case e.g. saving a Level needs to
take a while to rebalance chunks and the modal prevents ALL
interaction with the game so the user can't further modify the level
while it's busy refactoring itself.
* Cheat code: "test wait screen" to show the Wait modal for 10 seconds.
* Made the loadscreen useful again (give it work to do async so the game
doesn't simply freeze during): does a first call to LoadUnloadChunks
to preload the viewport chunks.
* Hide the mouse cursor when movement keys are pressed.
* On the failure (but still success) dialog on Survival Mode levels
(e.g. Azulian Tag): make the default be to retry the level but
show a "pity" Next Level button below, as the level is marked as
completed (silver score) and the next one is unlocked.
Previously: the Chunker tracks with chunks were gotten during the
current game tick and the N-1 and N-2 ticks, and chunks not accessed in
two ticks were freed immediately.
Now: they go into a "garbage collection" pool with a minimum number of
game ticks to free. So if they're needed again, they're saved from the
gc pool. F3 overlay data shows the count of the gc pool.
Water pixels finally do something other than turn your character blue!
* When the player character is "wet" (touching water pixels, and so appearing in
a blue mask), water physics apply: gravity is slower, your jump height is
halved, but you get infinite jumps to swim higher in the water.
* Holding the jump key under water will incur a short delay between jumps, so
that you don't just fly straight up to the surface. Tap the jump button to
move up quicker, you can spam it all you want.
Azulians are also able to handle being under water:
* They'll sink to the bottom and keep walking back and forth normally.
* If you are above them and noticed, they'll jump (swim) up towards you,
aware of the water and it jumps like you do.
* The Blue Azulian has the poorest vertical aggro range so it isn't a
very good swimmer. The White Azulian is very good at navigating water
as it can pursue the player from the furthest distance of them all.
Changes to the editor:
* New brush pattern added: bubbles.png
* It's the default pattern now for the "water" color of all
of the built-in palettes instead of ink.png
* A repeating pattern of bubbles carved out showing the
level wallpaper.
* The old "Bubbles (circles.png)" is renamed "Circles"
* The last scroll position is saved with the Level file, so when you reload
the level later it's scrolled at where you left it.
The gamepad mouse cursor has become THE mouse cursor. It is always visible and your
real cursor is hidden, and this way the game can swap out other cursors for certain
scenarios:
* The Pencil Tool in the editor will use a pencil cursor over the level canvas.
* The Flood Tool has a custom Flood cursor so you don't forget it's selected!
Other improvements:
* The Palette buttons in the editor now render using their swatch's pattern
instead of only using its color.
* If you have an ultra HD monitor and open a Bounded level in the editor which
is too small to fill your screen, the editor canvas limits its size to fit
the level (preferable over showing parts of the level you can't actually play
as it's out of bounds).
* The "brush size" box is only drawn around the cursor when a relevant tool is
selected (Pencil, Line, Rect, Ellipse, Eraser)
* New built-in wallpaper: "Dotted paper (dark)" is a dark-themed wallpaper.
* New built-in palette: "Neon Bright" with bright colors for dark levels.
* New cheat: "warp whistle" to automatically win the level.
* In case the user has a VERY LARGE screen resolution bigger than the full
bounds of a Bounded level, the Play Scene will cap the size and center
the level canvas onto the window. This is preferable to being able to see
beyond the level's boundaries and hitting an invisible wall in-game.
* Make the titlescreen Lazy Scroll work on unbounded levels. It can't bounce
off scroll boundaries but it will reverse course if it reaches the level's
furthest limits.
* Bugfix: characters' white eyes were transparent in-game. Multiple culprits
from the `doodad convert` tool defaulting the chroma key to white, to the
SDL2 textures considering white to be transparent. For the latter, the game
offsets the color by -1 blue.
* Editor: Auto-save on a background goroutine so you don't randomly freeze
the editor up during.
* Fix actor linking issues when you drag and re-place a linked doodad: the
level was too eagerly calling PruneLinks() whenever a doodad was 'destroyed'
(such as the one just picked up) breaking half of the link connection.
* Chunk unloader: do not unload a chunk that has been modified (Set or Delete
called on), keep them in memory until the next ZIP file save to flush them
out to disk.
* Link Tool: if you clicked an actor and don't want to connect a link, click
the first actor again to de-select it.
Updates to the `doodad` tool:
* `doodad edit-level --resize <int>` can re-chunk a level to use a different
chunk size than the default 128. Large chunk sizes 512+ lead to performance
problems.
Adds several new doodads to the game and 5 new wallpapers (parchment
paper in blue, green, red, white and yellow).
New doodads:
* Crusher: A purple block-headed mob wearing an iron helmet. It tries
to crush the player when you get underneath. Its flat helmet can be
ridden on like an elevator back up.
* Snake: A green stationary mob that always faces toward the player.
If the player is nearby and jumps, the Snake will jump too and hope
to catch the player in mid-air.
* Gems and Totems: A new key & lock collectible. Gems have quantity so
you can collect multiple, and place them into matching Totems. A
Totem gives off a power signal when its gem is placed and all other
Totems it is linked to have also been activated. A single Totem may
link to an Electric Door and require only one gem to open it, or it
can link to other Totems and they all require gems before the power
signal is sent out.
* The blue bird follows the same base AI as the red bird (it has a
target altitude that it tries to maintain, and it will dive at the
player) but the blue bird flies in a sine wave pattern around its
target altitude. It also has a longer scan radius to search for the
player than the red bird.
* The sine wave pattern of the blue bird means you may fly under its
radar depending how high it is on average.
Cheat codes that replace the player character are refactored to make
it easier to extend, and new cheats have been added:
* super azulian: play as the Red Azulian.
* hyper azulian: play as the White Azulian.
* bluebird: play as the new Bird (blue).
* The level.FileSystem type has updated to support ZIP files too.
* Legacy levels loaded from gz/json have their old FileSystem as a
simple map[filename]data and this parses from JSON OK.
* On save to zip, the legacy loaded file data gets exported to ZIP.
* Going forward: newly added or deleted files during runtime are kept in
the legacy file map until the next save when the filemap is again
flushed out to ZIP.
* For regular read-access, the FileSystem reads from the ZIP file if the
data is not in the hot map (legacy file or recently modified
attachment).
* Bugfix: be sure to Inflate() the Level/Doodad after loading from
zipfile - it used to be that directly after a save, trying to play the
level failed because the Level.Actors struct was missing their IDs,
and similarly recently written chunks would error out (become black
voids) on levels/doodads so we Inflate() both after save/replacing
their zip handle.
Too restricted by the cheat codes to play as certain characters
on-demand? Use the JS shell in the developer console to set any doodad
you want:
$ d.SetPlayerCharacter("key-blue")
$ d.SetPlayerCharacter("anvil")
$ d.SetPlayerCharacter("box.doodad")
The .doodad suffix is optional.
Interesting behaviors when playing as odd doodads:
* Most non-mobile doodads don't collide with each other, so you can pass
through doors and not activate buttons if you play as a key or a
trapdoor. Non-mobile doodads also generally have antigravity so you
can fly freely around the map.
* Non-mobile doodads can not open Warp Doors or interact with the Exit
Flag. You'll have to change back to a creature such as "boy" or
"azu-blue" to win the level.
* If you are a key, the Thief can collect you! This removes your player
doodad from the level and soft locks the game. No worries, another
call to d.SetPlayerCharacter() will put you back on the map!
* If the doodad name isn't found, you'll play as the built-in fallback
doodad, which is just a red "X" shape. It has anti-gravity and does
not generally interact with any doodad (can not push buttons or
collect keys - but it can pass through doors and other obstacles. Can
not win the level goal flag, though!)
Especially to further optimize memory for large levels, Levels and
Doodads can now read and write to a ZIP file format on disk with
chunks in external files within the zip.
Existing doodads and levels can still load as normal, and will be
converted into ZIP files on the next save:
* The Chunker.ChunkMap which used to hold ALL chunks in the main json/gz
file, now becomes the cache of "hot chunks" loaded from ZIP. If there is
a ZIP file, chunks not accessed recently are flushed from the ChunkMap
to save on memory.
* During save, the ChunkMap is flushed to ZIP along with any non-loaded
chunks from a previous zipfile. So legacy levels "just work" when
saving, and levels loaded FROM Zip will manage their ChunkMap hot
memory more carefully.
Memory savings observed on "Azulian Tag - Forest.level":
* Before: 1716 MB was loaded from the old level format into RAM along
with a slow load screen.
* After: only 243 MB memory was used by the game and it loaded with
a VERY FAST load screen.
Updates to the F3 Debug Overlay:
* "Chunks: 20 in 45 out 20 cached" shows the count of chunks inside the
viewport (having bitmaps and textures loaded) vs. chunks outside which
have their textures freed (but data kept), and the number of chunks
currently hot cached in the ChunkMap.
The `doodad` tool has new commands to "touch" your existing levels
and doodads, to upgrade them to the new format (or you can simply
open and re-save them in-game):
doodad edit-level --touch ./example.level
doodad edit-doodad --touch ./example.doodad
The output from that and `doodad show` should say "File format: zipfile"
in the headers section.
To do:
* File attachments should also go in as ZIP files, e.g. wallpapers
Instead of the loadscreen eager-loading ALL level chunks to Go Images, only
load the chunks within the "LoadingViewport" - which is the on-screen
Viewport plus a margin of chunks off the screen edges.
During gameplay, every few ticks, reevaluate which chunks are inside or
outside the LoadingViewport; for chunks outside, free their SDL2 textures
and free their cached bitmaps to keep overall memory usage down. The
AzulianTag-Forest level now stays under 200 Textures at any given time
and the loadscreen goes faster as it doesn't have to load every chunk's
images up front.
The LoadUnloadChunk feature can be turned on/off with feature flags. If
disabled the old behavior is restored: loadscreen loads all images and
the LoadUnloadChunks function is not run.
Other changes:
* loadscreen: do not free textures in the Hide() function as this runs on
a different goroutine and may break. The 4 wallpaper textures are OK
to keep in memory anyway, the loadscreen is reused often!
* Free more leaked textures: on the Inventory frame and when an actor
calls Self.Destroy()
* Stop leaking goroutines in the PubSub feature of the doodad script
engine; scripting.Supervisor.Teardown() sends a stop signal to all
scripts to clean up neatly. Canvas.Destroy() tears down its scripting
supervisor automatically.
* New boolProp to help debug memory issues: eager-render, set it to
false and the loadscreen will not eagerload Go images for all the
level chunks.
* Finally fix the level collision bug where the player could climb walls
to the right.
* Added to the F3 Debug Overlay is a "Texture:" label that counts the number
of textures currently loaded by the (SDL2) render engine.
* Added Teardown() functions to Level, Doodad and the Chunker they both use
to free up SDL2 textures for all their cached graphics.
* The Canvas.Destroy() function now cleans up all textures that the Canvas
is responsible for: calling the Teardown() of the Level or Doodad, calling
Destroy() on all level actors, and cleaning up Wallpaper textures.
* The Destroy() method of the game's various Scenes will properly Destroy()
their canvases to clean up when transitioning to another scene. The
MainScene, MenuScene, EditorScene and PlayScene.
* Fix the sprites package to actually cache the ui.Image widgets. The game
has very few sprites so no need to free them just yet.
Some tricky places that were leaking textures have been cleaned up:
* Canvas.InstallActors() destroys the canvases of existing actors before it
reinitializes the list and installs the replacements.
* The DraggableActor when the user is dragging an actor around their level
cleans up the blueprint masked drag/drop actor before nulling it out.
Misc changes:
* The player character cheats during Play Mode will immediately swap out the
player character on the current level.
* Properly call the Close() function instead of Hide() to dismiss popup
windows. The Close() function itself calls Hide() but also triggers
WindowClose event handlers. The Doodad Dropper subscribes to its close
event to free textures for all its doodad canvases.
* Bird is not solid when colliding with other birds.
* If the dev shell is used to run JavaScript during Play Mode, consider
it cheating (so player can't `$ d.Scene.ResetTimer()` for example)
* On Survival Mode levels, DieByFire immediately opens the End Level
(silver score) modal rather than respawn from checkpoint, so levels
don't need checkpoint contraptions to end the level.
* During level loading screens, wait and call doodads' main() function
until the very end.
New features:
* Flood Tool for the editor. It replaces pixels of one color with another,
contiguously. Has limits on how far from the original pixel it will color,
to avoid infinite loops in case the user clicked on wide open void. The
limit when clicking an existing color is 1200px or only a 600px limit if
clicking into the void.
* Cheat code: 'master key' to play locked Story Mode levels.
Level GameRules feature added:
* A new tab in the Level Properties dialog
* Difficulty has been moved to this tab
* Survival Mode: for silver high score, longest time alive is better than
fastest time, for Azulian Tag maps. Gold high score is still based on
fastest time - find the hidden level exit without dying!
Tweaks to the Azulians' jump heights:
* Blue Azulian: 12 -> 14
* Red Azulian: 14 -> 18
* White Azulian: 16 -> 20
Bugs fixed:
* When editing your Palette to rename a color or add a new color, it wasn't
possible to draw with that color until the editor was completely unloaded
and reloaded; this is now fixed.
* Minor bugfix in Difficulty.String() for Peaceful (-1) difficulty to avoid
a negative array index.
* Try and prevent user giving the same name to multiple swatches on their
palette. Replacing the whole palette can let duplication through still.
Added a new level property: Difficulty
* An enum ranging from -1, 0, 1 (Peaceful, Normal, Hard)
* Default difficulty is Normal; pre-existing levels are Normal by
default per the zero value.
Doodad scripts can read the difficulty via the new global variable
`Level.Difficulty` and some doodads have been updated:
* Azulians: on Peaceful they ignore all player characters, and on Hard
they are in "hunt mode": infinite aggro radius and they're aggressive
to all characters.
* Bird: on Peaceful they will not dive and attack any player character.
Other spit and polish:
* New Level/Level Properties UI reworked into a magicform.
* New "PromptPre(question, answer, func)" function for prompting the
user with the developer shell, but pre-filling in an answer for them
to either post or edit.
* magicform has a PromptUser field option for simple Text/Int fields
which present as buttons, so magicform can prompt and update the
variable itself.
* Don't show the _autosave.doodad in the Doodad Dropper window.
* Loadscreen: put the progress bar between the Title and Subtitle so it
looks good even on mobile landscape orientation (narrow height)
* Bugfixes around window OnResize events: the loadscreen handles
resizing correctly now and the Level Editor (or w/e) will also be the
right size if you resized the window during loading.
UI improvements specifically for mobile (running the game with the
`-w mobile` or `-w landscape` options) screen sizes.
* Rework the Settings window to be mobile friendly to landscape
oriented screens (`doodle -w landscape`) and migrate Options tab
to magicform.
* The toolbar in the Editor will be a single column of buttons
on small screens, such as `-w mobile` (375x812) portrait mode
smartphone. On larger screens the toolbar shows in two columns
of buttons.
* Fix tooltips not drawing on top.
* Centralize the hard-coded references to specific font filenames
* Add cheat code: `test load screen` to bring a sample loading screen up
for a few seconds. It needs improvement on `-w landscape`
Two new tools added to the Level Editor:
* Pan Tool: left-click to scroll the level around safely.
* Text Tool: write text onto your level.
Features of the Text Tool:
* Can choose from the game's built-in fonts, size and enter the message
you want to write.
* The mouse cursor previews the text when hovered over the level.
* Click to "stamp" the text onto your level. The currently selected
color swatch will be used to color the text in.
* Adds two new fonts: Azulian.ttf and Rive.ttf that can be selected in
the Text Tool.
Some implementation notes:
* Added package native/engine_sdl.go that handles the lower-level
SDL2_TTF logic to rasterize the text into a black&white image.
* WASM not supported yet (if the game even still built for WASM);
native/engine_wasm.go stubs out the TextToImage() call with a "not
supported" error just in case.
Other changes:
* New Toolbar icons: they are 24x24 instead of 32x32 to make more room
for more tools.
* The toolbar now shows two buttons per row for a more densely packed
layout. For very narrow screen widths (< 600px) the default Vertical
Toolbar layout will use one-button-per-row to not eat too much screen
real estate.
* In the Horizontal Toolbars layout there are 2 buttons per column.
* When playing as the Bird, the dive attack is able to destroy other
mobile doodads such as Azulians and Thieves.
* The Box has been made invulnerable so it can't be destroyed by Anvils
or player-controlled Birds.
* Bugfixes with pop-up modals:
* The quit game confirm modal doesn't appear if another modal is
already active on screen.
* The Escape key can dismiss Alert and Confirm modals.
* Add "Level" menu items to Play Mode to restart the level or retry from
the last checkpoint (in case of softlocks, etc.)
* The title screen now loads the default maps from a LevelPack. The game
no longer ships with the Tutorial levels in the "levels" folder as
default; they are in the LevelPack so the "Edit Drawing" screen begins
as a blank slate for only user levels.
* Add the Zoo level to the Tutorial levelpack
* Bugfixes around changing the player character to work around clipping
issues if the character has changed height drastically.
If the Azulians aren't hostile to the player character (e.g. you are
playing as a Thief or Azulian or you are invulnerable because you're the
Anvil), the Azulians won't aggro and pathfind to you either.
