I’ve been spending some serious time on the next release of PyWright, and been having a blast. It kind of started when Ptapcc from court-records.net started asking me if PyWright could handle certain features he was interested in. When looking closely at what he wanted, most of the things were either doable right now, or would be doable with just a few modifications to the PyWright core.
One of the features had to do with zooming, which had already been implemented but not hooked up to wrightscript; and the other had to do with being able to do collision detection with wrightscript alone.
Now I am not trying to compete with pwlib, I don’t intend to fully replicate the edgeworth walkabout code. But I was interested in whether implementing that was possible without too many changes to the engine.
After implementing a few things, each change led to another, and beta 10.95 is turning out to be one of the biggest updates PyWright has ever had. Most of the updates are small, but quite a few of them are meaningful enough to really have an effect. Being able to add graphics to buttons, rock-solid saving capabilities, and more control over where code jumps (label none is being deprecated) can make workarounds the exception rather than the norm.
It’s such a big set of fixes in fact, that I am starting to think that the “beta 10.95″ moniker isn’t really fitting. PyWright for the most part has been pretty stable. Each release brings issues along with it that can break games, but the amount of changes needed to update games to be compatible has been low. I would have liked to break old games less than I have, but it was beta right? Well now it’s not. I’m not going to hide behind the beta name any longer. The internet has enough betas on it’s hand.
Henceforth, the next version of PyWright is going to be named version 0.95, and it is the series of releases that will eventually (and soon) be 1.0. I will still keep tweaking things as I always do, I’m sure 0.95 will break something, but I am aiming for more stability from this series. Changing the name is part of that. 0.95 will be out this February for sure. It will require new binaries for those of you using the binary releases.
Currently I am methodically testing the save feature in every possible situation I can come up with to ensure that it is crash-free.
Oh, and the mythical beta 11? Besides being somewhat on hold, it’s new name is going to be version 2.0.
Is it weird that I’m most excited about losing label none? I am really interested in seeing how you deal with “wrong-o, Wright” situations without it!
I’m also wondering about zoom. It’s already possible to do a “let’s take a closer look” scenario using macros. So is this new feature some kind of graphical effect, or something more complex?
Don’t be afraid! The only thing about label none that is leaving, is the fact that you have to call it “none”. Having to call it none every time can lead to (very) tricky situations where blocks of code can’t be used in the same place because the “label none” will throw off the wrong block. I was actually surprised how bad it can get, as I don’t actually have the time to use my own engine, but while coding a demo I realized how awful it was.
Now you will be able to add a “fail=blah” to a call to tell it where to go if nothing else matches. It should lead to less workaround code and situations. It can also be used in “is” or “flag” tests in order to simplify some of that logic, like if/else from other languages. Hopefully this will make certain messy situations a little cleaner and less confusing to program.
Zoom is indeed a graphical effect. It is set up similar to scrolling, allowing realtime graphics scaling. It is used in a demo to zoom into scenes and take photos, at the spot where the player clicks. It’s not a mind-blowing effect, but it can come in handy sometimes.
Back to the codestream
It’s funny, the more I work, the higher the todo list grows…
That’s awesome!! Yep, I ran into that problem a couple times. I was going to ask you about it because the way I did it shouldn’t work (except it does work, ha ha). And I will want to use the zoom – you can live without it, but I’m sure it will be cool to have. Looking forward to it!
I’m glad to know that I was responsible saluk for a quite a few updates to the engine
The only things I have concern with are the zoom (camera extension). How exactly will I configure it so that when I take a picture with it, one of those photos will be the evidence that you can present in Court. Is there going to be some sort of dynamic command where if I type in a line or so of code, it can check each photo for a specific set of coordinates from the main picture? :S It’s hard to explain. I’ll create a thread on Ace Fancase for you saluk about this in further detail.
You know that if you refine free roaming investigations (GK gameplay) further as in how sprites are configured it into it and enabling collision around the borders of a screen, then you will be awesome. This is all stuff i can probably do at the moment with the script. I have yet to fully test it out so I’ll have to give you my reply about it later.
Also, you are going to kill me but there is one more feature I will need. It’s something that even KSA_Tech has hesitated on deciding whether it is possible in PWlib so chances are it’s not in Pywright however I’m sure it can be done with very, very few changes. You’ll have to check out the thread on Ace Fancase for more details as it’s top secret stuff.
Woo long post
Since the beginning, I pretty much just add what people ask for. I am not actually making a game with PyWright (I long since abandoned that idea), so I rely on experts (you guys) to know what is missing! We’ll see about this other feature… I can’t add new features for 0.95 but it can maybe go into 0.96
Not too many features are too difficult to add, here’s a list of stuff that truly can’t be done before 2.0:
true 3d
erm, can’t think of anything else that really can’t be done
УРА!!! УРА!!!!!! УРА!!!!!!!!…
I’ve been spending some serious time on the next release of PyWright, and been having a blast. It kind of started when Ptapcc from court-records…..