* Fix collision detection to allow actors to walk up slopes smoothly, without
losing any horizontal velocity.
* Fix scrolling a level canvas so that chunks near the right or bottom edge
of the viewpoint were getting culled prematurely.
* Centralize JavaScript exception catching logic to attach Go and JS stack
traces where possible to be more useful for debugging.
* Performance: flush all SDL2 textures from memory between scene transitions
in the app. Also add a `flush-textures` dev console command to flush the
textures at any time - they all should regenerate if still needed based on
underlying go.Images which can be garbage collected.
* Rework the Story Mode UI to display level thumbnails.
* Responsive UI: defaults to wide screen mode and shows 3 levels horizontally
but on narrow/mobile display, shows 2 levels per page in portrait.
* Add "Tiny" screenshot size (224x126) to fit the Story Mode UI.
* Make the pager buttons bigger and more touchable.
* Maximize the game window on startup unless the -w option with a specific
window resolution is provided.
Adds some support for "less giant" level screenshots.
* In the Editor, the Level->Take Screenshot menu will render a cropped screen
shot of just the level viewport on screen. Note: it is not an SDL2 screen
copy but generated from scratch from the level data.
* In levels themselves, screenshots can be stored inside the level data in
three different sizes: large (1280x720), medium and small (each a halved
size of the previous).
* The first screenshot is created when the level is saved, starting from
wherever the scroll position in the editor is at, and recording the 720p
view of the level from there.
* The level screenshot can be previewed and updated in the Level Properties
window of the editor: so you can scroll the editor to just the right position
and take a good screenshot to represent your level.
* In the future: these embedded level screenshots will be displayed on the
Story Mode and other screens to see a preview of each level.
Other tweaks:
* When taking a Giant Screenshot: a confirm modal will warn the player that
it may take a while. And during the screenshot, show the new Wait Modal to
block player interaction until the screenshot has finished.
* Overhaul the clunky old alpha Edit Level/Doodad menu with a modernized
version featuring the new ListBox widget.
* The new level loader is a Window that can be spawned from anywhere instead
of on a dedicated MenuScene.
Updates to doodad scripts:
* Actor.IsOnScreen() checks whether an actor's visual sprite box is on-screen
in the level viewport. `Self.IsOnScreen()` will check for the current actor.
Other changes
* PlaySound() to deduplicate the same sound effect from playing at once.
Updates the savegame.json file format:
* Levels now have a UUID value assigned at first save.
* The savegame.json will now track level completion/score based on UUID,
making it robust to filename changes in either levels or levelpacks.
* The savegame file is auto-migrated on startup - for any levels not
found or have no UUID, no change is made, it's backwards compatible.
* Level Properties window adds an "Advanced" tab to show/re-roll UUID.
New JavaScript API for doodad scripts:
* `Actors.CameraFollowPlayer()` tells the camera to return focus to the
player character. Useful for "cutscene" doodads that freeze the player,
call `Self.CameraFollowMe()` and do a thing before unfreezing and sending the
camera back to the player. (Or it will follow them at their next directional
input control).
* `Self.MoveBy(Point(x, y int))` to move the current actor a bit.
New option for the `doodad` command-line tool:
* `doodad resave <.level or .doodad>` will load and re-save a drawing, to
migrate it to the newest file format versions.
Small tweaks:
* On bounded levels, allow the camera to still follow the player if the player
finds themselves WELL far out of bounds (40 pixels margin). So on bounded
levels you can create "interior rooms" out-of-bounds to Warp Door into.
* New wallpaper: "Atmosphere" has a black starscape pattern that fades into a
solid blue atmosphere.
* Camera strictly follows the player the first 20 ticks, not 60 of level start
* If player is frozen, directional inputs do not take the camera focus back.
Add the ability for the free version of the game to allow loading levels that
use embedded custom doodads if those levels are signed.
* Uses the same signing keys as the JWT token for license registrations.
* Levels and Levelpacks can both be signed. So individual levels with embedded
doodads can work in free versions of the game.
* Levelpacks now support embedded doodads properly: the individual levels in
the pack don't need to embed a custom doodad, but if the doodad exists in
the levelpack's doodads/ folder it will load from there instead - for full
versions of the game OR when the levelpack is signed.
Signatures are computed by getting a listing of embedded assets inside the
zipfile (the assets/ folder in levels, and the doodads/ + levels/ folders
in levelpacks). Thus for individual signed levels, the level geometry and
metadata may be changed without breaking the signature but if custom doodads
are changed the signature will break.
The doodle-admin command adds subcommands to `sign-level` and `verify-level`
to manage signatures on levels and levelpacks.
When using the `doodad levelpack create` command, any custom doodads the
levels mention that are found in your profile directory get embedded into
the zipfile by default (with --doodads custom).
* Fix display bug with rectangular doodads scrolling off screen.
* The default Author of new files will be your registration name, if available
before using your $USER name.
Convert the Chunker size to a uint8 so chunk sizes are limited to 255px. This
means that inside of a chunk, uint8's can track the relative pixel coordinates
and result in a great memory savings since all of these uint8's are currently
64-bits wide apiece.
WIP on rectangular shaped doodads:
* You can create such a doodad in the editor and draw it normally.
* It doesn't draw the right size when dragged into your level however:
- In uix.Actor.Size() it gets a rect of the doodad's square Chunker size,
instead of getting the proper doodad.Size rect.
- If you give it the doodad.Size rect, it draws the Canvas size correctly
instead of a square - the full drawing appears and in gameplay its hitbox
(assuming the same large rectangle size) works correctly in-game.
- But, the doodad has scrolling issues when it gets to the top or left edge
of the screen! This old gnarly bug has come back. For some reason square
canvas doodads draw correctly but rectangular ones have the drawing scroll
just a bit - how far it scrolls is proportional to how big the doodad is,
with the Start Flag only scrolling a few pixels before it stops.
* Added a Cheats Menu UI accessible from the Settings window's "Experimental"
tab and from there you can enable the Cheats Menu from the "Help" screen of
the gameplay mode.
* Commonly used cheats all have corresponding buttons to click on, especially
helpful for touchscreen devices like the Pinephone where keyboard input
doesn't always work reliably.
* The buttons in the Cheats Menu just automate entry of the cheat commands.
* `boolProp` command has a new `flip` option to toggle their value (e.g.
`boolProp show-hidden-doodads flip`)
* Add new pixel attributes: SemiSolid and Slippery (the latter is WIP)
* SemiSolid pixels are only solid below the player character. You can walk on
them and up and down SemiSolid slopes, but can freely pass through from the
sides or jump through from below.
* Update the Palette Editor UI to replace the Attributes buttons: instead of
text labels they now have smaller icons (w/ tooltips) for the Solid,
SemiSolid, Fire, Water and Slippery attributes.
* Bugfix in Palette Editor: use cropped (24x24) images for the Tex buttons so
that the large Bubbles texture stays within its designated space!
* uix.Actor.SetGrounded() to also set the Y velocity to zero when an actor
becomes grounded. This fixes a minor bug where the player's Y velocity (due
to gravity) was not updated while they were grounded, which may eventually
become useful to allow them to jump down thru a SemiSolid floor. Warp Doors
needed a fix to work around the bug, to set the player's Grounded(false) or
else they would hover a few pixels above the ground at their destination,
since Grounded status paused gravity calculations.
* Add "Options" support for Doodads: these allow for individual Actor instances
on your level to customize properties about the doodad. They're like "Tags"
except the player can customize them on a per-actor basis.
* Doodad Editor: you can specify the Options in the Doodad Properties window.
* Level Editor: when the Actor Tool is selected, on mouse-over of an actor,
clicking on the gear icon will open a new "Actor Properties" window which
shows metadata (title, author, ID, position) and an Options tab to configure
the actor's options.
Updates to the scripting API:
* Self.Options() returns a list of option names defined on the Doodad.
* Self.GetOption(name) returns the value for the named option, or nil if
neither the actor nor its doodad have the option defined. The return type
will be correctly a string, boolean or integer type.
Updates to the doodad command-line tool:
* `doodad show` will print the Options on a .doodad file and, when showing a
.level file with --actors, prints any customized Options with the actors.
* `doodad edit-doodad` adds a --option parameter to define options.
Options added to the game's built-in doodads:
* Warp Doors: "locked (exit only)" will make it so the door can not be opened
by the player, giving the "locked" message (as if it had no linked door),
but the player may still exit from the door if sent by another warp door.
* Electric Door & Electric Trapdoor: "opened" can make the door be opened by
default when the level begins instead of closed. A switch or a button that
removes power will close the door as normal.
* Colored Doors & Small Key Door: "unlocked" will make the door unlocked at
level start, not requiring a key to open it.
* Colored Keys & Small Key: "has gravity" will make the key subject to gravity
and set its Mobile flag so that if it falls onto a button, it will activate.
* Gemstones: they had gravity by default; you can now uncheck "has gravity" to
remove their Gravity and IsMobile status.
* Gemstone Totems: "has gemstone" will set the totem to its unlocked status by
default with the gemstone inserted. No power signal will be emitted; it is
cosmetic only.
* Fire Region: "name" can let you set a name for the fire region similarly to
names for fire pixels: "Watch out for ${name}!"
* Invisible Warp Door: "locked (exit only)" added as well.
* 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.
