Tgames Actualité Consoles et Homebrew

v11.08.11

View complete "What's New" document

Features
A new build is now available for the GP2X Wiz
New Script Commands (1440-1472, see index in "Functions" doc)
Manual opening/creation of and reading from or writing to data files, making possible demo recording/playback, game progress saving, custom data editing, etc

Load new Player Character data into any existing Player Character slot at any time during gameplay to allow many Character types in a single game without having to expend the RAM to store them all at once

Load a new set of Global Palette Colors from a PCX/TGA image file at any time during gameplay

(Re-)Obtain a Tile Map for a Tiled Level Object from anywhere on any existing Tile Plane at any time during gameplay

Save standard Level Layout and/or Tile Data to the files that were last loaded, or a new location specified by Script Text

The _SaveObjects Command now accepts a "Register" for the Text ID parameter

Modify or retrieve (for value testing) the contents of Game Text Strings, enabling visible entry and use of names, passwords, etc

The Tile Editor has been rearranged to make better use of available screen space, and updated for functionality
The tiny, hard-to-click arrows have been removed; click options are now activated by left- or right-clicking the option label or its displayed value

The entire 256-color palette is now available all at once

An option is now available to place a smaller, less-featured version of either the Tile Selector or Level Editor in the lower-right corner for more quickly selecting tiles from the list or the level layout, drawing to the level layout, and instantly viewing changes to the overall layout image while editing a tile

Palette entries can now be swapped within the editor for easily organizing colors in preparation for Palette Animation, or any other purpose

An "Alias" system has been added so that more-easily-memorizeable names can be used for Commands, Variables, settings, etc. in scripts instead of their internal ID numbers. Aliases for standard IDs are included and listed/used in the documentation, and users can modify them and/or add their own for game-specific IDs
Tile Animations can now be set up more quickly and easily by means of the new automatic Tile Animation frame insertion, which uses the Level Editor's Tile Plane section selection/copy feature
Shortcuts have been added to both the Tile Editor and Level Editor for filling either an entire Tile or all non-transparent pixels of a Tile with any of the four solidity types
Sprite Editor "Dumps" of Player Character Sprites will now save these changes directly to the selected Character's Character Def File by default. The external "frames.txt" dump is still available, and can be performed by instead holding Ctrl while pressing Enter
Sprite Editor "Dumps" of Object Sprites will now save these changes directly to the appropriate Object Def File by default (depending on which set the currently-selected sprite set resides in). The external "frames.txt" dump is still available, and can be performed by instead holding Ctrl while pressing Enter
When viewing Object Sprites in the Sprite Editor, the Status element that displays the currently-selected set number will now display the set's ID relative to the Object Def that loaded it, rather than its E02-internal ID (Ex: If there are 28 Game-global Object Sprite Sets, the final set's ID will be shown as "27G", while the first "Zone" set's ID will be shown as "0Z" rather than "28"). The same principle has also been applied to the "Ani ID" element
When viewing Player Character Sprites in the Sprite Editor, the Status element that displays the currently-selected "Animation Function" will now display the set's ID relative to the "Player Character Common Functions" list or the selected Player Character's "Character Specific Functions" list, rather than its E02-internal ID (Ex: If there are 33 Player Character Common Functions, the final Function will be shown as "32C", while the first Player Character's first "Character-Specific" Function ID will be shown as "0P" rather than "33"). Also, the selection will default to the Player Character's first "Character-Specific" Function, and "Character-Specific" Functions belonging to Player Characters other than the one that is currently selected will not be accessible
A new error message has been added to report when Sprite width and/or height are defined as 0 (or less) for both Player Character and Object Sprites, eliminating crashes due to such settings. Please use a 1x1 sprite that loads a single transparent pixel for "invisible" Sprites or Sprite Frames
Further optimizations have been made to level collision testing for both Players and Objects
Message system messages have been made easier to read; each string is now drawn with a background color rather than allowing the game/editor/interface screen to show through
On program startup, there is now a three-second delay on updates testing that provides time to cancel the connection attempt. Also, when pressing F8 to return to the main menu, the menu comes up immediately instead of again testing for updates first
The current FPS has been removed from the Level Editor's Status display, since the display toggled by F10 makes it redundant

Bugfixes
_???=TileInfo(???) commands were treating incoming position values as unsigned rather than signed, which caused negative values to read as extremely high positive values and fail to wrap around the level or looping section boundaries correctly, causing crashes due to out-of-bounds reads. This has been corrected; passing variables containing negative X and/or Y position values will now cause the position to be wrapped properly, eliminating the crash and returning the correct tile data
Sprite Editor "Dumps" would fail without displaying an error/warning if the "dump" folder didn't already exist in the currently-loaded game's Game Folder. These features now automatically create this folder when appropriate
"F" for vertically flipping a single Tile Frame in the Tile Editor wasn't working at all, and "M" for horizontally mirroring the current Tile Frame was only functioning on Frame 0 rather than the currently-selected Frame. Also, these features were not functioning correctly in the DOS build with a "vmode" setting greater than 2 (default is 3). These features now function the way they were intended
All TGA image dumps were output with a single incorrect byte setting in the header, causing them not to load properly or at all in the majority of image editors (except, conveniently, the one that was used for testing). This has been corrected, and TGA image dumps for screen shots, level maps, sprite editor dumps, etc. should now open properly in all editors that support 8bit indexed-color RLE-compressed TGA images


11.01.02

* Added "Repository" support. Special files placed in the "repo" folder allow E02 to connect to other download resources. This makes possible the creation of public and private listings for third-party games, and private listings for local transfers between platforms (when already running an http server). This feature is not displayed when only the default repository file is found

-BugFixes-

* When a script line was followed by whitespace (space or tab), the whitespace would not be removed from the end of the loaded string. This would cause problems especially with filenames that were followed by comments, as the filename used would contain the space/tab characters and fail to load on some platforms. Trailing whitespace on strings is now ignored, eliminating this problem (comments can be used after strings, and the strings themselves will be terminated after the last non-whitespace character)

* Mode 5 for the Set_PaletteAlpha_Range Script Command attempted to set the global palette rather than the target palette, and when intentionally setting the Global Palette, the alpha was not properly applied. This Command should now function properly for mode 5, and for applying an alpha to the Global Palette colors

* The Dim_Palette_Range Script Command did not test for component value overflow when "Dimming" up, which caused them to "wrap around" and become the wrong colors. Using this Command to brighten the palette (a "Percentage" value greater than 128) should now work properly

* The "Installed Games" section of the menu would crash when no games were installed due to a test on an array entry for an array whose length matched the number of games (in this case, 0). The "Installed Games" menu will now display correctly under this condition, reporting no installed games and displaying only the option to return to the Main Menu