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
* 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.
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.
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.
* Fix the Doodad Dropper and Registration windows not stealing the focus
when they are opened via menu bars.
* Bugfixes in gamepad support: stop at the first controller found,
Draw() to handle controllers going away and hide the mouse cursor
* magicform is a helper package that may eventually be part of the go/ui
library, for easily creating structured form layouts.
* The Level Publisher UI is the first to utilize magicform.
Refactor how level publishing works:
* Level data now stores SaveDoodads and SaveBuiltins (bools) and when
the level editor saves the file, it will attach custom and/or builtin
doodads just before save.
* Move the menu item from the File menu to Level->Publish
* The Publisher UI just shows the checkboxes to toggle the level
settings and a convenient Save button along with descriptive text.
* Free versions get the "Register" window popping up if they click the
Save Now button from within the publisher window.
Note: free versions can still toggle the booleans on/off but their game
will not attach any new doodads on save.
* Free games which open a level w/ embedded doodads will get a pop-up
warning that the doodads aren't available.
* If they DON'T turn off the SaveDoodads option, they can still edit and
save the level and keep the existing doodads attached.
* If they UNCHECK the option and save, all attached doodads are removed
from the level.
* The "Giant Screenshot" feature takes a very long time, so it is made
asynchronous. If you try and run a second one while the first is busy,
you get an error flash. You can continue editing the level, even
playtest it, or load a different level, and it will continue crunching
on the Giant Screenshot and flash when it's finished.
* Updated the player physics to use proper Velocity to jump off the
ground rather than the hacky timer-based fixed speed approach.
* FlashError() function to flash "error level" messages to the screen.
They appear in orange text instead of the usual blue, and most error
messages in the game use this now. The dev console "error <msg>"
command can simulate an error message.
* Flashed message fonts are updated. The blue font now uses softer
stroke and shadow colors and the same algorithm applies to the orange
error flashes.
Some other changes to player physics:
* Max velocity, acceleration speed, and gravity have been tweaked.
* Fast turn-around if you are moving right and then need to go left.
Your velocity resets to zero at the transition so you quickly get
going the way you want to go.
Some levels that need a bit of love for the new platforming physics:
* Tutorial 3.level
Improvements to the Zoom feature:
* Actor position and size within your level scales up and down
appropriately. The canvas size of the actor is scaled and its canvas
is told the Zoom number of the parent so it will render its own
graphic scaled correctly too.
Other features:
* "Experimental" tab added to the Settings window as a UI version of the
--experimental CLI option. The option saves persistently to disk.
* The "Replace Palette" experimental feature now works better. Debating
whether it's a useful feature to even have.
The Doodad Properties window brings many features that used to be
available only in the `doodad` CLI tool into the Doodad Editor.
* In the Doodad Editor there is a new menubar item: "Doodad" which
corresponds to the "Level" menu when you're editing a level.
* The "Doodad" menu has two items:
- "Doodad Properties" (NEW)
- "Layers" (moved here from the Tools menu)
* The Doodad Properties window lets you edit the Title and Author values
of the doodad, as well as modify its Tags and manage its Script.
* Its script can be attached (browse for .js file on disk), its existing
script saved back to disk (dev shell prompt) or deleted altogether
from the doodad.
* You can create, modify, and delete Tags on the doodad.
Other changes:
* In the Level Editor, the "Level->Page Settings" menu is renamed to
"Level->Level Properties" to match with "Doodad->Doodad Properties"
and the pop-up window is retitled accordingly.
* The Exit Flag only exits if the Player touches it - not just any
mobile doodad!
* The loading screen for Edit and Play modes is stable and the risk of
game crash is removed. The root cause was the setupAsync() functions
running on a background goroutine, and running SDL2 draw functions
while NOT on the main thread, which causes problems.
* The fix is all SDL2 Texture draws become lazy loaded: when the main
thread is presenting, any Wallpaper or ui.Image that has no texture
yet gets one created at that time from the cached image.Image.
* All internal game logic then uses image.Image types, to cache bitmaps
of Level Chunks, Wallpaper images, Sprite icons, etc. and the game is
free to prepare these asynchronously; only the main thread ever
Presents and the SDL2 textures initialize on first appearance.
* Several functions had arguments cleaned up: Canvas.LoadLevel() does
not need the render.Engine as (e.g. wallpaper) textures don't render
at that stage.
* Free (shareware) versions of the game will not be able to Publish
Levels (attach custom doodads to the level file) and they will not be
able to load a level which relies on embedded doodads.
* The UI for the Publish Level window is still available, but clicking
on the confirm button will just open the Register (License) window.
* When loading a level containing embedded doodads: if some can't load
because they're embedded and you're using the free version of the
game, the error message is customized to reflect that.
In the Level Editor, the "Level->Attached files" menu opens the
FileSystem Window, which shows a paginated list of attached files and a
"Delete" button to remove them.
- Custom doodads which also exist locally can be deleted from the
level's filesystem at any time.
- If a custom doodad does NOT exist locally, and one of them is still
placed somewhere within the level, you can not delete it.
- You can't delete the custom wallpaper image IF the level is still
using it. Change to a default wallpaper and then you can delete the
custom wallpaper image.
* The Publisher is all hooked up. No native Save File dialogs yet, so
uses the dev shell Prompt() to ask for output filename.
* Custom-only or builtin doodads too can be stored in the level's file
data, at "assets/doodads/*.doodad"
* When loading the embedded level in the Editor: it gets its custom
doodads out of its file, and you can drag and drop them elsehwere,
link them, Play Mode can use them, etc. but they won't appear in the
Doodad Dropper if they are not installed in your local doodads
directory.
* Fleshed out serialization API for the Doodad files:
- LoadFromEmbeddable() looks to load a doodad from embeddable file
data in addition to the usual places.
- Serialize() returns the doodad in bytes, for easy access to embed
into level data.
- Deserialize() to parse and return from bytes.
* When loading a level that references doodads not found in its embedded
data or the filesystem: an Alert modal appears listing the missing
doodads. The rest of the level loads fine, but the actors referenced
by these doodads don't load.
* File->Publish Level in the Level Editor opens the Publish window,
where you can embed custom doodads into your level and export a
portable .level file you can share with others.
* Currently does not actually export a level file yet.
* The dialog lists all unique doodad names in use in your level, and
designates which are built-ins and which are custom (paginated).
* A checkbox would let the user embed built-in doodads into their level,
as well, locking it in to those versions and not using updated
versions from future game releases.
UI Improvements:
* Added styling for a "Primary" UI button, rendered in deep blue.
* Pop-up modals (Alert, Confirm) color their Ok button as Primary.
* The Enter key pressed during an Alert or Confirm modal will invoke its
default button and close the modal, corresponding to its Primary
button.
* The developer console is now opened with the tilde/grave key ` instead
of the Enter key, so that the Enter key is free to click through
modals.
* In the "Open/Edit Drawing" window, a "Browse..." button is added to
the level and doodad sections, spawning a native File Open dialog to
pick a .level or .doodad outside the config root.
* When editing a doodad in the Editor Mode, the toolbar has a "Lyr."
button that opens the Layers window.
* The Layers window allows switching the active doodad layer that you
are drawing on, as well as create and rename layers.
* With this feature, Doodads may be fully drawn in-game, including
adding alternate named layers for animations and multiple-state
doodads.
* Update the Pager component to have a configurable MaxPageButtons.
Controls that have more pages than this limit will stop having buttons
drawn after the limit. The "Forward" and "Next" buttons can still
navigate into the extra pages.
* Refactored and centralized the various popup windows in Editor Mode
into editor_ui_popups.go; the SetupPopups() and various methods such
as ShowPaletteWindow() and ShowDoodadDropper() make management of
popups simple for the editor_ui!
* The Menu Bar in Editor Mode now has context-specific tools in the
Tools menu: the Doodad Dropper for levels and Layers for doodads.
* Bugfix the Palette Editor window to work equally between Levels and
Doodads, by only having it care about the Palette and not the Level
that owns it.
