Spiky Caterpillar
1.0.69.3 in beta
#1 by Spiky Caterpillar - Nov 23 2015
This is a massive technical overhaul that took far too long to get to a presentable state. Basically, I've spent the past few weeks porting Magical Diary to Ren'Py 6.99.7. (And porting 6.99.7 to Magical Diary...)The short changelog:
- Works on El Capitan.
- OpenGL works a LOT better in the new engine.
- May fix some problems related to non-latin characters in usernames in Windows.
- Assorted minor dungeon bugs fixed.
- Controller support appears broken (at least on my computer)
This drops support for older versions of MacOS - you will need at least Snow Leopard to play the game. (Sorry, I *know* your PPC Macs are still perfectly good computers and I WANT to support them - but Apple keeps breaking APIs, so I can't support both old and new Macs. 1.0.42.2 should still work on PPCs)
Getting the update is a bit fiddly, since the engine changes require updater changes - so:
You may want to back up the game before starting, this is a BIG change and may change what the system's compatible with.
Update to 1.0.69.3. It will tell you that it needs to install 1.0.42.2 first; let it. Then upgrade again to 1.0.69.3.
If you're on Windows and installed to a UAC-protected directory, after the update completes the game will restart and tell you that your license key was rejected. It's lying, just close it.
Start it again, and you should be in the shiny new current version.
The long changelog:
SPELLS:
Ground Spell actually works. Freeze can cause the Hooded Figure's spells to fizzle. It should be more clear when Sticky Feet on monsters wears off. The magic-resistant doors now resist a few more spells. Disrupting someone else's attempt to teleport you should show the right anim. The black and white magic casting effects have been altered slightly. Pushing objects somewhere where they could only wind up facing one way should now leave them facing the right way. Inspection on things that are not objects now gives a useful error. Inspection on the Manus should work as intended now.
FEATURES:
Widescreen/4:3 switching has been significantly reworked (the new GL code in 6.99.7 is harder for me to smoothly hook into - actually working on my video cards makes up for that, though.). The software renderer will now default to using the desktop resolution (... because that preserves aspect ratio) in fullscreen mode.
Tracebacks and license keys can now be encrypted in transit. (This is still experimental, let me know if anything breaks.)
CRASH FIXES:
'{' characters in tracebacks no longer cause a crash in the crash handler.
Crashy screens should no longer crash the crash handler.
Crash casting Silence (don't remember the circumstances) fixed.
Crash when the hooded figure pushes you fixed.
Possible crash Communicating fixed.
Non-Latin characters in your username in Windows should no longer cause crashes when the game tries to access load/save/persistent. (Note: the game still cannot run inside a unicode directory on Windows if that directory contains glyphs that cannot be represented in the Windows ANSI API. Setting your locale in Windows to one that contains all the glyphs in the path to the game should let it start)
MINOR TWEAKS:
Now gain 5 cute points when Donald says "You're cute when you're righteous"
The engine upgrade required a rewrite a lot of the magic effects - Flame, Spirit Sight at the Dark Dance, Hodag claw anim, the New Years bonfire, etc. Pretty much everything that used blending has been poked at.
Faces 3 and 4 have been tweaked slightly, which should make certain expressions look better.
A few places where particularly large animations would have odd seams in widescreen mode have been leaned up.
I finally figured out why the other hooded figure jumps up in the middle of his animation. (Minor bug that's been nagging at me for YEARS and I could never figure it out...)
Rollback now stops autoplay/skip, since rolling back from a crash usually means you don't want to autoadvance right back into it. (This doesn't fix the indicator, though)
Given all the graphics-code changes, old saves may often display visual glitches for the first few lines. The glitching should fix itself the next time the game redraws the whole screen; however, if any old saves *crash*
or glitch terribly forever, I want to know about it.
It's easier to tell where you are when messing about with several hundred saves.
Now quit after upgrades.
Smarter tracking of ignored crashes and debugger use (so it'll be easier for me to tell which tracebacks indicate 'player broke the game with a hammer, probably not MY bug')
Various screens that allow hotkeys now use strings instead of keysyms. This makes them work more sensibly with non-qwerty keyboards.
Assorted typos and grammar errors fixed. (Mostly in the dungeon)
HACKER/DEVELOPER TOYS:
The game now has hooks for translation. If you're interested in translating it, post a request here and I'll go through and extract the actual translation data files for you. (Note that the default Ren'Py translation hooks are unlikely to work right, especially given the complexity of the dungeons. You'll want the translation data.)
The new Ren'Py console is a LOT nicer than the old python console I'd hacked in, so we're using it instead.
SmartInput()s (those input fields that let you have multiple text entry fields on screen at once) now handle arrow keys sensibly. I should probably post the code for 'em somewhere.
And, of course, tons of minor code rework, debug messages trimmed, new debug messages added, and little things adjusted in ways that should never show up at all.
If there were a scene already written and it just wasn't showing up, we'd fix it, but no new scenes now, it's just been too long. Sorry...