Beta 10.94 release

Beta 10.93 was intended as the last release of Beta 10, I have changed my mind though and decided to have a smoother transition from beta 10 to beta 11. Many many features and a few lingering bugs were reported for beta 10.93, the long period between beta 10.93 and beta 11 would be too long for many of these. Beta 10 is definitely on it’s last legs, but there are still small things that can be done to say goodbye with some fanfare!

Beta 10.94 fixes some elements of the last release that were fundamentally broken, including cross examinations and fading.

Cross examinations are now much less buggy: hidden statements work properly, and resume doesn’t get screwed up by successive goto commands. I am not positive, but I think almost any cross examination situation can be taken care of without ugly work arounds. If I am wrong, please inform me

Fading is still poor, there is a significant frame delay before things fade, but it doesn’t result in objects getting progressively darker each time they are shown. I am not terribly interested in working on this issue in beta 10 any longer. This series’ opengl model is flawed, forcing me to stick with software rendering, which is VERY slow for anything with alpha transparency. I may be able to make the load time for fades a bit lower though. Beta 11 will have strong opengl support making this issue moot.

There are a few other nice tidbits in beta 10.94, update today!

Here’s the full changelog:

PyWright Beta 10.94
    - Some more fixes to hidden statements
    - Fix to gui mouse event handler, next button sometimes hard to click (thanks StBacchus for helping
        pinpoint this longstanding bug!)
    - Add the "random" command to generate random numbers. "random x 1 10" will set x to a number
        from 1 to 10.
    - The underscore character in nametags/character names will translate into spaces when the
        name is printed
    - The nametag bar expands horizontally to fit the width of the nametag
        (The 3 image files, nt_left, nt_middle, and nt_right in art/general control how each part of
        the name bar looks. The nt_left controls the left corner, nt_middle is repeated along
        the length of the bar, and nt_right is displayed on the right corner.)
        You can add arbitrary spacing in the name (extra padding) by adding spaces at the beginning
        or end of the nametag: char guy nametag=_______Guy_______" will have a longer
        name bar.
    - safety mode for resolution changes, will revert back after a few seconds if the change is not OK'ed
    - fading does not corrupt the original image (fixes ever darkening lists)
    - black fade in for lists and investigation buttons is back in single screen mode (and optionally in
        double screen mode, if _double_screen_list_fade is true)

Roadmap

The test game for beta 10.94 is not yet up, I am going to work on making it a much clearer test game than previous test games. In the past, the test games are little more than a way for me to make sure specific features are working as advertised, but people have argued that they want the test games to communicate something to users as well. The beta 10.94 test game should be out soon.

The next priority is on improving the website and adding more documentation and support for new users. PyWright works pretty well once you learn it, but learning it can still be insurmountable for some people. The focus for the next few weeks is on the tutorials, of which I am being helped by a few kind people; making a nicer formatted version of doc.txt that is easier to navigate, and finishing the ace attourney online converter. This is likely going to take the next few weeks to a month.

There will also most likely be a few more engine releases in the beta 10 series, still mostly focused on fixing bugs. There are some bugs logged for beta 10.95 already. I am trying to find a good transition into beta 11. There will likely be a time where both beta 11 and beta 10 are being supported for some time, as beta 11 will be behind in some ways. I am hoping to get that out before the end of the year, but it remains to be seen if that will happen. It is hard to judge how far along I am, I could be just a few bugs away from finishing, or there may be many new features that I want to include before releasing it.

To recap: documentation/new user aids first, continuing beta 10 series releases, and continually marching forward on beta 11 progress.