Release v0.1-alpha is now available! This version brings a wide range of minor new features, bug fixes, and other miscellaneous improvements. I’ve been trying to be more thorough with my testing lately (including the Linux version, which I hadn’t been giving enough attention to), but let me know if you run into any issues and I will see what I can do to remedy it. I already have an initial list of things I am excited to work on for the next versions leading up to v0.2! I really appreciate the feedback I have received so far and I am open to suggestions and ideas for any features you’d like to see in the future.
I also released an updated trailer for v0.1 that you can check out here if you haven’t already, and I am beginning to make plans for some other new things like tutorials and possibly a dev blog.
New Features:
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Updated to Godot Engine 2.0 which includes a cleaner, improved UI.
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A new “Quick Script” feature was added which allows you to create scripts for tiles and objects on the fly rather than having to define a standalone script file from the Script Editor. This is convenient for situations where you need a simple one-off script that won’t be reused elsewhere, such as linking a tile to a new map. To access this feature, you can bring up the tile’s properties in the Map Editor and select “Quick Script” from the Script dropdown. If you then click the pencil icon, the Quick Script Builder will open, allowing you to define the script to attach.
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The Game Manager now contains a “Recent Games” list so you can easily open any game projects that you have recently worked on.
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New Set Entity Property scripting function for storing custom properties for entities (player, self, entity[“abc”], etc.). Conditional expressions were also updated to support the evaluation of an entity’s properties.
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The camera type for a particular map can now be overridden from the Properties panel.
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Randomize Rotation: The Map Editor now has a “Randomize Rotation” button on the toolbar that can be toggled on and off. When enabled, a random angle will be selected to use for the next tile or object placement. The pending tile/object will indicate what the next placement will look like, so you can still fine tune the rotations even with Randomize Rotation enabled. In Edit Mode, you can also randomize the rotation of the currently selected objects by pressing “Y” or choosing “Randomize Rotation” from the right-click context menu.
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Added the ability to customize the Map Editor’s navigation/interaction path colors from the Settings dialog.
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Added “Move Up” and “Move Down” buttons to the Script Editor toolbar to allow the order of commands to be rearranged.
Other Changes:
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Exporting your game now displays a progress dialog and is launched in a separate thread to prevent the application from potentially hanging up.
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When exporting your game, the last used destination path and target platform will be automatically populated.
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If the game export template for the selected platform is missing from the “export_templates” folder, a warning message will be displayed. Also added an “Export data only” checkbox if you only want to export your game data and not the platform-specific executable. This is useful if you are exporting frequently and you don't want the executable copied every time.
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Added summary text for the Modify Navigation/Interaction function in the Script Editor to display a better description when it’s collapsed.
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Slightly increased the opacity of the top left Navigation/Interaction legend and the top right Tile Level Shortcut Key legend in the Map Editor’s 3D view.
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When selecting a resource from the resource selection sidebar (tiles, objects, etc.), Place Mode will now be automatically enabled if the Map Editor is active.
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Changed the Load Map scripting function to also include the direction (north/south/west/east) that the player will face when the map loads. This will break any scripts that currently use this function, so you will need to either recreate them or manually edit the script file to include the direction as such: load_map(“my_map”, 0, 1, 2, “north”).
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General improvements to the “New Game” dialog. An error message will now display if any validation fails (specifically, if the destination path or game title is blank, or the destination path already contains a game or is within the application folder).
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Game exporting is now handled in a separate thread and with a progress dialog to prevent the application from potentially getting hung up during the process.
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Added DELETE as a shortcut key for deleting tiles/objects in the Map Editor.
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In the Script Editor, the script's source code can now be directly edited if you wish. The editor will validate the script as you type, and will update the visual script outline as appropriate.
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Pathfinding for the player is now handled in a separate thread to prevent the game from sometimes freezing up momentarily while the calculations are being done.
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Cleaned up a lot of the editor dialog windows to make the look and feel more consistent (button sizes, placement, etc.).
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In first-person games, the arrow keys can now be used for movement in addition to WASD.
Bug Fixes:
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Pressing the “Replace Color” button or the “Shift Model…” buttons on the Voxel Editor toolbar will no longer cause the application to crash if no voxel models are opened.
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Changed the animation name field in the “Add Animation” dialog to a single line text field instead of multi-line. You can also now press enter from the animation name field to submit the dialog. This was also fixed for the name field in the “Save As Map” dialog and a few others.
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When entering the Battle Editor, the available enemies list will be automatically refreshed if new enemies have been added in the Enemy Editor and saved.
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If an NPC is on a tile that is currently hidden (upper floor of a house, for example, when the player is on the bottom floor), the NPC will now be hidden also.
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When shifting the entire model in the Voxel Editor, any voxels that fall outside of the grid boundaries will be removed.
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If a “player_spawn” tile group does not exist in a battle map, the battle will just end and the player will return to the previous map instead of the player being stuck in the battle map.
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Removed the unnecessary checkboxes from the Navigation/Interaction submenu on the Map Editor context menu.
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Modified the resource loading code so that maps are now saved with relative resource paths (for its tiles, objects, etc.). This will allow you to move your game project folder without breaking the maps. Please note, however, that you will need to resave all of your maps before moving your game project folder if you wish to do so. This change also significantly improves the game exporting time.
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Fixed an issue with the “New Resource” dialog where the “Width of Tiles” field for maps would incorrectly show for other resource types when opened the first time.
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Fixed the function description box in the Script Editor so it will always automatically wrap the description text.
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Animations of type “Ping Pong Once” will now play correctly in the Voxel Editor.
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Fixed the “Clear” button on the Map Editor and Voxel Editor toolbars to work correctly again.
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