71 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
71 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: "v0.13.2 Released"
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date: 2023-12-02T14:37:02-07:00
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draft: false
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---
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It's been a bit over a year since the last release of Sketchy Maze, but I've been
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slowly working on it in between other distractions of life and work getting in
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the way. 😅
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This release brings some new features and optimization for the game's file
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formats to improve performance and memory usage.
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Some new features:
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* **Doodads can be non-square!** You can now set a rectangular canvas size
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for your doodads. Many of the game's built-in doodads that used to be
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off-center before (doors, creatures) because their sprites were not squares
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now have correct rectangular shapes.
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* A **Cheats Menu** has been added which enables you to enter many of the
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game's cheat codes by clicking on buttons instead. Enable it through the
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"Experimental" tab of the Settings, and the cheats menu can be opened from
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the Help menu bar during gameplay.
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* The game now supports **Signed Levels** and levelpacks which will enable the
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free version of the game to play levels that have embedded doodads in them.
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The idea is that the base game in the future may come with levelpacks that
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use custom doodads (to tell a specific story) and these doodads may be so
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specific and niche that they will ride with the levelpack instead of be
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built-in to the game. To allow the free version of the game to play these
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levels, the levelpacks will be signed. It also makes it possible for
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promotional levelpacks or "free DLC" to be shipped separately and allow
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free versions of the game to play them with their attached custom doodads.
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Other miscellaneous changes:
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* The default Author name on your new drawings will prefer to use your
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license registration name (if the game is registered) before falling back
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on your operating system's $USER name like before.
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* In the level editor, you can now use the Pan Tool to access the actor
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properties of doodads you've dropped into your level. Similar to the
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Actor Tool, when you mouse-over an actor on your level it will highlight
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in a grey box and a gear icon in the corner can be clicked to access
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its properties. Making the properties available for the Pan Tool can
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help with touchscreen devices, where it is difficult to touch the
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properties button without accidentally dragging the actor elsewhere
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on your level as might happen with the Actor Tool!
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* Fix a bug wherein the gold "perfect run" icon next to the level timer
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would sometimes not appear, especially after you had been cheating
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before - if you restart the level with no cheats active the gold icon
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should now always appear.
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* New cheat code: `tesla` will send a power signal to ALL actors on the
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current level in play mode - opening all electric doors and trapdoors.
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May cause fun chaos during gameplay. Probably not very useful.
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* Start distributing AppImage releases for GNU/Linux (64-bit and 32-bit)
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Some technical changes related to file format optimization:
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* Palettes are now limited to 256 colors so that a palette index can fit
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into a uint8 on disk.
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* Chunks in your level and doodad files are now encoded in a binary format
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instead of JSON for a reduction in file size. The current (and only)
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chunk implementation (the MapAccessor) encodes to a binary format involving
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trios of varints (X, Y position + a Uvarint for palette index).
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* Chunk sizes in levels/doodads is now a uint8 type, meaning the maximum
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chunk size is 255x255 pixels. The game's default has always been 128x128
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but now there is a limit. This takes a step towards optimizing the game's
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file formats: large world coordinates (64-bit) are mapped to a chunk
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coordinate, and if each chunk only needs to worry about the 255 pixels
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in its territory, space can be saved in memory without chunks needing to
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theoretically support 64-bit sizes of pixels!
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See the [Downloads](/download) page to try it out!
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