guidebook/docs/changes.md

Changes

v0.6.0-alpha (June 6 2021)

This release brings less jank and some new features.

The new features:

• Choice of Default Palette for New Levels: when creating a new level, a "Palette:" option appears which allows you to set the default colors to start your level with. The options include:
  • Default: the classic default 4 colors (black, grey, red, blue).
  • Colored Pencil: a set with more earthy tones for outdoorsy levels (grass, dirt, stone, fire, water)
  • Blueprint: the classic Blueprint wallpaper theme, a bright version of Default for dark level backgrounds.
• Custom Wallpapers: unhappy with the default, paper-themed level background images? You can now use your own! They attach to your level data for easy transport when sharing your level with others.
• More Wallpapers: a couple of new default wallpapers are added: Graph paper and Dotted paper. They are both on light white paper and offer a light alternative to Blueprint.

Some bugs fixed:

• Collision fixes: you should be able to walk up gentle slopes to the left without jumping, as easily as you could to the right.
• Debugging: the F4 key to show collision hitboxes around all doodads in Play Mode now functions again, and draws boxes around all doodads, not just the player character.
• Hitboxes are tighter: a doodad's declared hitbox size (from their JavaScript) is used when a doodad collides against level geometry or other doodads. Meaning: Boy, who has a narrow body but a square sprite size, now collides closer with objects on his right side.
• Physics are tweaked: Boy now moves and accelerates slightly faster.

v0.5.0-alpha (Mar 31 2021)

Project: Doodle is renamed to Sketchy Maze in this release.

New Features:

• New Tutorial Levels: the bundled levels demonstrate the built-in doodads and how they interact and shows off several game features.
• Level Editor: you can now set the Title and Author of the level you're editing by using the Level->Page Settings window.
• The Inventory HUD in Play Mode now shows a small number indicator for items which have quantity, such as the Small Key. Colored Keys do not have quantity and don't show a number: those are permanent collectibles.
• Fire Pixels: when the player character dies by touching a "Fire" pixel during gameplay, the death message uses the name of the color instead of calling it "fire." For example, if you name a color "spikes" and give it the Fire attribute, it will say "Watch out for spikes!" if the player dies by touching it.
• New cheat code: give all keys gives all four colored keys and 99x Small Keys to the player character. The drop all items cheat clears your inventory.

New Doodads:

• Warp Doors allow the player character to fast travel to another location on the map. Drag two Warp Doors into your level and use the Link Tool to connect them together. Doors without an exit link will be "locked" and don't open.
• Small Key Doors are locked doors which consume the Small Keys when unlocked, unlike the colored doors where the key is multi-use. The player character can hold many small keys at once and only unlock as many doors as he has keys.

Updated Doodads:

• Several doodads were increased in size to better match the player character: Colored Locked Doors, Trapdoors, the Crumbly Floor and Electric Door, and the blue and orange Boolean State Blocks.
• Colored Doors now have a visual locked vs. unlocked state: while locked, a golden padlock hangs from the door, which goes away after it's been unlocked.
• Switches now interact differently with Electric Doors: the door will always toggle its current state regardless of the 'power' setting of the Switch.
• Buttons which are linked to a Sticky Button will press and stay down if the linked Sticky Button is pressed. Or in other words, the Sticky Button makes all linked Buttons act sticky too and stay pressed while the Sticky Button is pressed. If the Sticky Button is released later (e.g. by receiving power from a Switch) it releases its linked Buttons as well.

v0.4.0-alpha (Nov 21 2020)

This update brings improvements to the editor; you can now fully draw all the graphics for a custom doodad using the in-app tools!

A key difference between a Level and a Doodad is that doodads have Layers where they keep multiple frames of animation or state. The editor tool now supports working with these extra layers.

Other new features:

• The Guidebook has been updated with tons of good info and screenshots of the game's features. Press F1 in-game to open the guidebook, or check it online at https://www.sketchymaze.com/guidebook/
• Layer Selection Window for Doodads: when you're editing a Doodad drawing, a "Lyr." button is added to the toolbar to access the Layers window.
• Global UI popup modals: when you're about to close a level with unsaved changes, you get an Ok/Cancel prompt confirming if you want to do that. Hitting the Escape key will ask you before just exiting the program. Alert boxes are supported too, and an alert command added to the developer console.

v0.3.0-alpha (Sept 19 2020)

This update introduces the player character to the game. He doesn't have a name; the game just refers to him as Boy.

His sprite size is bigger (33x54) than the 32x32 size of the placeholder player character from before. So, the three example levels shipped with previous versions of Project: Doodle no longer work. This release comes with two replacement levels which are better decorated, anyway.

Other new features:

• Palette Editor: you can add and modify the colors on your level palette! Pick any colors you want, give a name to each swatch, and mark whether they behave as Solid, Water or Fire. Without any of these properties, colors are decorational-only by default.
• Doodad Window: when selecting the Actor or Link Tools in the editor, the Doodads window pops up. Doodads can be dragged from this window onto your level, instead of the Palette toolbar turning into a Doodad palette.
• The Palette toolbar on the Editor is now thinner and only shows colors. Mouse-over tooltips show the name and properties of each swatch.
• Added a --window option to the Doodle program to set the default window size. Options can be a resolution (e.g. 1024x768) or a special keyword "desktop", "mobile", "landscape" or "maximized"
  • Default size is desktop: 1024x768
  • Mobile and landscape mimic a smartphone at 375x812 resolution.

v0.2.0-alpha (June 7 2020)

This release brings Sound Effects and Menus to the game.

New features:

• Added some User Documentation to ship with the game which teaches you how to create your own custom Doodads and program them with JavaScript. More documentation to come with time.
• Sound effects! Several doodads have a first pass at sound effects using some free sounds I found online. More doodads still need sounds and the existing sounds are by no means final. Buttons, switches, doors and keys have sound effects so far.
• The game now has a Menu Bar with pull-down menus in the Editor Mode instead of just a top panel with New/Save/Open buttons.

v0.1.0-alpha (Apr 13 2020)

New doodads:

• Start Flag: drag this into your level to set where the player character will spawn. There should only be one per level.
• Crumbly Floor: a rocky floor that breaks and falls away after a couple seconds when the player (or other mobile doodad) walks onto it.
• State Blocks: blue and orange blocks that toggle between solid and passable when the corresponding ON/OFF button is touched.

New features:

• An inventory overlay now appears in Play Mode when the player character picks up one of the colored keys.
• While editing a level, you can click the new "Options" button in the top menu to open the level settings window (like the one you see when creating a new level): to change the wallpaper image or the page type.

Other changes:

• Added better platforming physics to the player character: acceleration and friction when walking.
• The colored Locked Door doodads have been re-designed to be shown in a side-view perspective and have an open and closed state in either direction.
• Tooltips added to various buttons in the Editor to show names of doodads and functions of various buttons.

v0.0.10-alpha (July 18 2019)

New features:

• Added the Eraser Tool and support for brush sizes. Now you can clean up your mistakes and draw shapes with thicker lines!
• Added the Ellipse Tool for drawing elliptical shapes.
• Added a third example to the game's built-in levels.

Bug fixes:

• The Undo command now restores the original color of a pixel instead of just deleting it. Only works for thin lines so far.
• Improved collision detection algorithm to prevent players from clipping through a solid doodad, regardless of speed. This change is invisible this build, but opens the door to improvements in the 2D platforming physics and making the player character move and fall faster.
• Fix mobile non-player doodads from sometimes being able to clip through a solid doodad. For example, a Red Azulian could sometimes walk through a locked door without interacting with it.
• Sometimes hitting Undo would leave a broken "chunk" in your level, if the Undo operation deleted all pixels in that chunk. The broken chunk would show as a solid black square (non-solid) in the level. This has been fixed: empty chunks are now culled when the last pixel is deleted and existing level files will be repaired on next save.

v0.0.9-alpha (July 9 2019)

First alpha release.