Quark Robot dev blog

MMR update #37

Quark Robot -

Quite a few little bugs fixed this week - some of them are quite obvious so I'm not sure how I never noticed them before. Unfortunately, I didn't have any time this week to work on LAN. Hopefully I'll have more time next week to get stuck back into the reliable UDP client.

Thanks to Tim for confirming the new darkness mode works on Ubuntu machines.

A name in parenthesis and in bold is the finder of the bug/quirk. Thanks to all, I really do appreciate your time and support. Cheers!

Editor

  • removed an unnecessary Boolean value used when drawing the puzzle
  • changed Ctrl/Cmd shortcut to Left/right Shift when painting every 2nd tile with the line tool;
  • see week #42 2016 post for details and a video on this feature
  • you can now hold Ctrl/Cmd to ignore the puzzle bounds when painting (Jeffrey)

Thanks to Jeffrey for pointing out a missing editor feature: you can hold down Ctrl/Cmd while painting bricks. What this does is ignores the default brick edging behaviour and give them a fancy edge (instead of a straight edge) when painting at either the top/bottom or left/right bounds of the puzzle. I've uploaded a basic video that shows this and a much better screenshot (look at the bottom row).

This feature applies to all bricks except liquid - blastable/turf (including buried ladders), solid/bedrock, phase, goop/slime covered, and trapdoors.

*Demonstration of edging feature*


Fancy edge on bottom row

Game

  • optimized monk behaviour when falling into a blasted brick;
  • this also greatly reduced a lot of complexity
  • removed redundant monk hump 'n bump code
  • editor grid overlay (Ctrl/Cmd + G) no longer shows in the game (Jeffrey)
  • fixed auto-saves creating a game save with a puzzle extension (Jayde)
  • high-score entries are now capped at 30 characters (Jayde)
  • screenshots (taken with F12) now use SCREENSHOTXXXX.PNG naming as opposed to date/time (Jared)
  • auto-saves (for game or editor) now use 24 hour time and with year/month/day first; (Jayde)
  • eg; AUTOSAVE 2017.09.14 15.25.22.SVG
  • fixed bug that could allow a monk to spawn into the puzzle outside of the puzzle bounds (Howie/Jayde)

General

  • cut-scenes no longer draw outside movie window bounds (Jeffrey)
  • optimized drawing world backgrounds to remove unnecessary draw calls
  • optimized cut-scene asset reader
  • German language now ships with the game; (Gareth)
  • build manifest files did not get updated, hence, the absence of the language file
  • thanks again to EnneaX for the translation
  • file dialog changes;
  • you can now press the delete key to delete a selected file
  • if when saving you did not add the extension for the file type you want to save (.PZL for puzzles or .SVG for saves), it will now be added (Jared)
  • textbox controls that have a maximum length will now bleep if you attempt to enter too much text

Bugs being worked on

  • monks merging when crossing on/off ladders
  • switching to windowed mode hides the Dock (Sierra)
  • regen bomb timing does not accurately match the Original

What I'll probably do next

  • continue working on LAN
  • ability to 'pause' the game when testing and return after minor edits