Sorry for the long wait after 0.981 guys. I decided to skip some numbers since it has been so long. Then after the release, I didn’t want to announce it here until it had been tested for a little longer.

Even with a couple weeks of beta testing, no less than 5 major errors were reported after 0.985 was released. As disappointing as it was to not catch these before shipping, the number of changes and time between 0.981, the last released version, and 0.985 made this almost inevitable. Not wanting to make the mistake I made after 0.981, of trying to fix the bugs that version introduced while also finalizing some features, I spent another week making sure to fix the major issues which were uncovered. I’m now very proud of this version, but I am going to try to keep future releases smaller in scope to prevent them from being so difficult to manage.

Version 0.986 brings with it a couple tools to help customize your game, or make them feel more like a professional Ace Attorney experience. There are evidence adding animations, the standard court record button by default (and much easier to replace), and some options for the main button from the various games. These are the first entries from a number of community run projects for moving PyWright towards 1.0 from a content perspective.

You can see the continued status of some of these projects here, and if you have the time and the desire, you might want to help out there. Thanks to everyone who has contributed!

Under the hood, a lot has been done to make things generally work better, and prepare for future versions. I say this a lot, but this is really what I spend most of my time on! One example of this is to make the engine work better on lower framerates. Currently, everything is based on a constant display of 60 frames per second. Most computers can run this just fine, but some, shall we say, more mobile computers, are a bit slower. For instance, android phones. Look for that soon.

In the meantime, update to 0.986, and see what new possibilities have opened up. Don’t forget to check out the latest example scripts as well. From the examples menu, you can find various scripts I wrote to test the engine. The newest ones are: bigbutton_changes, showing how to customize Pywright’s lower screen; showevidence, demonstrating the evidence animation options; and rectangles, showing a feature that is to come.

And I can finally sleep. I am really excited about this version, and I hope that you are too! I have incorporated almost every suggested change or new feature, or at least laid out some plans for how to add those in the future. More than that, I have cleaned up and fixed many of the things that have hampered the engine a bit in the past.

Things like label none conflicts, menus forcing you to split your scripts a certain way, and there being no way to load a script at any other line then the first, forced game coders to do things in a certain clunky way. Many of those kinds of limitations are now gone.

There were still a few areas where PyWright could not easily be customized. There were hacky ways to do things, and it was MUCH more flexible than some people gave it credit for, but it still had a long way to go. In fact it still does. However, being able to put graphics on your buttons, and some more variables to customize other core components, makes this the most customizable version ever.

So to sum up, I’m really happy with how this version came out. When I started working on 0.95 (which was then called beta10.95), I didn’t expect to get into it as much as I did. But with all of the great feedback from users, the help I’ve gotten with various things, testers finding new ways to break it, and some epiphanies on how to fix long-standing issues; it has culminated into something I’m actually proud of.

It’s a long way from 2.0, but I am happy to finish 1.0 before going there. One step at a time.

Downloads here, as usual. I hope you enjoy it. If something breaks, that is good too, because there is so much more to be done.

Don’t forget to read the changelog, especially the part about regressions. While there is mostly just a bunch of new features, some things have changed that may or may not be detrimental to your project. beta 10.94 won’t force upgrade to 0.95, so you are safe to stick with the old version if you must.
And with that, I’m going to have a nap!

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.

Marching ever forward, the beta 10 series shows no signs of stopping. The more that gets added, the more that needs to be fixed. As I said in the court-record announcement, I do hope this is the last beta 10 release. I don’t think beta 11 will ever come out if I continue to support beta 10 indefinitely. If only I could clone myself!*

*But then I would have to eat twice as much, and could not afford it, so maybe I’ll hold off on the cloning

More info in the forum post!