SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!

And yes, i just had to beat ASW to the punch.

Yep, it's out. It's also highly cool. Go download it. If the mods are annoyed at me for posting this, sorry.

Changes are awesome:

-- Added menu and shortcut to toggle fullscreen mode.

-- Added options to adjust turning and acceleration sensitivity.

-- Avoid "out of range" refresh rates in fullscreen mode.

-- Added 1280x1024 as a display option.

-- Fixed several large memory leaks and crashes.

-- Detect a conflict with "Secure Keyboard Entry" and post a warning if other software (Terminal, Quicken, BBEdit) left this enabled.

-- Capped blob spawning, so that when you've got 15-20 blobs on screen killing them no longer yields little blobs.

-- Fixed bug where you couldn't join another player on the same NAT.

-- Prevent custom levels with the final boss sprite from triggering the end sequence and posting a high score.

-- Custom levels now support save areas in a limited fashion. You can save/restore a game in a single session, but not across sessions.

-- Added an little extra bonus to the Crazy Zone if you managed to kill all of the bosses.

-- Can use shift to extend selection in edit fields.

-- Better placement of items after destroying a boss.

-- Properly display "hard" times longer than the best "normal" time.

-- Compressed texture files, reducing total size by about 10MB.

-- Hitting enter in dialogs now highlights the corresponding button.

-- The high score lists are now updated with new data as necessary, and don't require you to quit to see your own high scores.

-- The in game pause menu is now correctly displayed if the user pauses by switching out of the game.

-- Typing key equivalents in the aftermath chat nolonger causes strange results.

-- Some better system even handling to prevent that bothersome spinning beachball cursor.

-- Updated copyright and version strings.

Editor:

-- Added tools for automatic background creation, clearing visible sprites.

-- New text sprites now get assigned the basic sketchfont by default.

-- Added options to show a screen-rectangle, lock layers.

-- Running the animation now clears any stored undo info so you can't mess it up by undoing after running.

-- "Show contact rect" now also shows a sprite outline rectangle that allows you to see invisible sprites

-- Fixed text sprite scaling/rotation handles.

-- Fixed some memory leaks.

-- Updated editor manual and sample levels.

This post has been edited by PiSketch : 06 March 2007 - 03:27 PM

@pisketch, on Mar 6 2007, 04:27 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

<snip>

Your Fast!

i posted the official release here as well so people can see it.

hehe
:laugh:

YESSS! Awesome. Except...

I was hoping levels like Shooting Gallery and the Obstacle Course's rapids would perform better with the new better collision handling. Guess what? They're completely unplayable. We're talking catastrophic slowdown here. As in, 0.5-1 fps slow. How could this happen?

Gaaahhhh! NOOOOOO!

Really? Shooting Gallery works fine for me... What're you playing on?

EDIT: Ok, it sucks. Nevermind.

This post has been edited by PiSketch : 06 March 2007 - 04:18 PM

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: OH YEAH!!!!!!!!!

Thank you Ambrosia Software, and all of the Mods and testers who made possible this marvelous products released.

Hey GSN, does this mean you'll be able to release TTOTP now?

@cheleball, on Mar 6 2007, 03:59 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

YESSS! Awesome. Except...

I was hoping levels like Shooting Gallery and the Obstacle Course's rapids would perform better with the new better collision handling. Guess what? They're completely unplayable. We're talking catastrophic slowdown here. As in, 0.5-1 fps slow. How could this happen?

Gaaahhhh! NOOOOOO!

Lars's reply to that message.

Yeah, well, it's not that much a worry. The problem would have been the same before, but due to incorrect frameskipping it would have sent you flying through the walls instead of slowing down. Now it slows down but the ship behaves correctly, which is better. For now the solution is just to keep the number of force fields down as they're obviously a big drain on processor power

The background tiling feature is even better than I dreamt it would be! ^_^ I bet it could take about 20% of the time off creating levels! :laugh:

@kauthor, on Mar 6 2007, 02:18 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

Lars's reply to that message.

Yeah, well, it's not that much a worry. The problem would have been the same before, but due to incorrect frameskipping it would have sent you flying through the walls instead of slowing down. Now it slows down but the ship behaves correctly, which is better. For now the solution is just to keep the number of force fields down as they're obviously a big drain on processor power

Not much of a worry for him. His levels aren't hopelessly broken now.

You can argue that I never should have done something like "the Rapids" in the first place, and in light of 1.01 you'd be right, but I had no way of knowing at the time that this would happen.

From my perspective, the problem is not the same at all; it's orders of magnitude worse. A pretty significant portion of my map went from "a little rough, but manageable" to "OMG WHO IS THIS IDIOT DESIGNER DOESN't HE TEST HIS LEVELS???!!!11one1"

I just can't fathom the magnitude of the difference. I would really appreciate a little more clarification on what exactly has changed, because "improper frameskipping" just doesn't in my mind account for the huge number of frames dropped now as opposed to before.

deap, calming breaths...must...act...like...civilized...person!

I don't want to bite your head off for fixing a bug, so thanks. I appreciate it, and all the effort you've put in to this excellent release. I'm just a little sad that Obstacle Course is broken, and there's really nothing I can do to fix it. I'll look in to reducing the trigger count in the rapids. I may have to completely rip them out and redo them, or even just replace them with a different challenge altogether. 😞

@silverwind, on Mar 6 2007, 04:54 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

The background tiling feature is even better than I dreamt it would be! ^_^

I can't find the tools menu to set the background. can anyone tell me where to look?

Up there with the file menu.

thanks!

@dogbert, on Mar 6 2007, 10:08 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

thanks!

Great!

The trigger problem is a bit of a pain though - on my own level, I have even managed to get inside some walls as a result of the slow down (though I didn't get far enough to not be pushed back out in the 'correct' direction). Still, one step at a time. 🙂

Guess I will be waiting for 1.0.2 😛

I just noticed that the Smudge Script now works perfectly even when placed out of sight from the Game Start. Now it really looks like there's foam sloshing about at the foot of my waterfall in TCOC! 🙂 Also, weapon upgrades have Pickup Pulses without an Extra 2 value. It's the simple things like that that make me happy.

Cheleball, you know when you said you added some "sprite heavy" stuff in area 2 in Project Muti Sketch? Has that been effected by the frame rate problem?

P.S. Sorry about getting upset in my previous post. I apologize, it was wrong of me.

I really am curious about the changes, though, and if anyone can/will provide clarification, I would greatly appreciate it.

For reference: before the update, on my 1Ghz PowerBook G4, I could run through the rapids with naught but a few dropped frames. No skipping through walls, nothing unusual, really little indication that the engine is seriously chugging it. After the update, it's all you can do just to get past the first area, and once you get out into the middle where the force fields are most numerous, the game literally just stops. Screen updates stop, the music stops, everything grinds to a halt. 2-4 seconds later, the screen updates and you find yourself an entire screen away from where you left off.

Now, does that sound like the only thing that changed is the frame skipping routines to you? I looks, from my uneducated, uninformed, user's perspective that something is very seriously wrong.

So please, educate me. 🙂

This post has been edited by cheleball : 06 March 2007 - 05:51 PM

@silverwind, on Mar 6 2007, 03:48 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

Cheleball, you know when you said you added some "sprite heavy" stuff in area 2 in Project Muti Sketch? Has that been effected by the frame rate problem?

Nope. It seems that the only thing drastically affected are force fields. If anything, the game actually handles my several-hundred-sprites-onscreen-at-once areas better now.

@cheleball, on Mar 6 2007, 10:49 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

P.S. Sorry about getting upset in my previous post. I apologize, it was wrong of me.

I really am curious about the changes, though, and if anyone can/will provide clarification, I would greatly appreciate it.

For reference: before the update, on my 1Ghz PowerBook G4, I could run through the rapids with naught but a few dropped frames. No skipping through walls, nothing unusual, really little indication that the engine is seriously chugging it. After the update, it's all you can do just to get past the first area, and once you get out into the middle where the force fields are most numerous, the game literally just stops. Screen updates stop, the music stops, everything grinds to a halt. 2-4 seconds later, the screen updates and you find yourself an entire screen away from where you left off.

Now, does that sound like the only thing that changed is the frame skipping routines to you? I looks, from my uneducated, uninformed, user's perspective that something is very seriously wrong.

So please, educate me. 🙂

FWIW, on my PB 1.67 G4 the rapids section is whilst very 'bitty', not a serious problem. It jerks a little, and even as you describe has a second or so of 'think' when entering the final loop - but otherwise the frame rate is okay(ish).

I'm a little more worried about an area of my own map which has far fewer triggers but is grindingly slow. I've also managed to get inside a wall as a result of the slow-down, which to me indicates that perhaps there are still problems.

That said, there's really nothing that can be done except to be patient and wait for the trigger issues you to be fixed. I'm sure that it is possible - it ought to be trivial to check whether the player's ship intersects with a set of rectangles... Especially given that with culling, (and then filtering on those that are actually triggers) there really ought to only be say 50 on screen at absolute worst case at any time.

This post has been edited by Crono : 06 March 2007 - 06:39 PM

@pisketch, on Mar 6 2007, 01:27 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

-- Capped blob spawning, so that when you've got 15-20 blobs on screen killing them no longer yields little blobs.

this needs to be optional and togglable for single-player games at least. Blob hearding is fun.

Quote

If anything, the game actually handles my several-hundred-sprites-onscreen-at-once areas better now.

That single paragraph terrifies me! :blink: wonders exactly what Cheleball has in store for us in area 2

Do not despair, all hope is not lost! I tested the level not but a moment ago and found it only slightly slower than before. Except for the middle bit as you pointed out, that does get really slow but only for a second. I was able to complete the rapids on my first attempt and there was no going through walls or anything of the sort, this was on my 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 I'm not sure if that helps or not, but perhaps the rapids could be slightly altered in an update and be thus fixed.

@pisketch, on Mar 6 2007, 01:27 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

-- Added options to adjust turning and acceleration sensitivity.

Even now that I've been playing for several months, this looks like it will be a nice addition.

@pisketch, on Mar 6 2007, 01:27 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

-- Capped blob spawning, so that when you've got 15-20 blobs on screen killing them no longer yields little blobs.

Yes, this will definitely help with the locally-scored ultra-high scores, but I think that the network scores (such as 202380 by Newt and Edwards) used a different tactic which is completely unaffected by this, so I do recommend creating separate listings for the different maps.

@pisketch, on Mar 6 2007, 01:27 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

-- Custom levels now support save areas in a limited fashion. You can save/restore a game in a single session, but not across sessions.
(...)
-- Added tools for automatic background creation, clearing visible sprites.

Although these have been known for weeks, I still feel obligated to put in a "w00t!" here.

@pisketch, on Mar 6 2007, 01:27 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

-- Added an little extra bonus to the Crazy Zone if you managed to kill all of the bosses.

If? IF? I feel insulted now... 😛
Still, I guess I'll need to go test this now, along with the "better placement of dropped items" fix.

@pisketch, on Mar 6 2007, 01:27 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

-- Properly display "hard" times longer than the best "normal" time.

Anyone know exactly what this one means?

@pisketch, on Mar 6 2007, 01:27 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

-- Can use shift to extend selection in edit fields.

-- The high score lists are now updated with new data as necessary, and don't require you to quit to see your own high scores.

-- Typing key equivalents in the aftermath chat nolonger causes strange results.

Ah, that wonderful feeling of seeing your own pet bugs listed in the "fixed" list. Thanks!

@pisketch, on Mar 6 2007, 01:27 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

-- Added options to show a screen-rectangle, lock layers.

This one sounds very interesting. Does this mean that we can now leave layer 1 displayed all the time without worrying about editing it, assuming we've locked it?

@silverwind, on Mar 6 2007, 03:44 PM, said in SketchFighter 1.0.1 is out!:

I just noticed that the Smudge Script now works perfectly even when placed out of sight from the Game Start. Now it really looks like there's foam sloshing about at the foot of my waterfall in TCOC! 🙂 Also, weapon upgrades have Pickup Pulses without an Extra 2 value. It's the simple things like that that make me happy.

Well, that's one issue to be removed from my "to investigate" list, and one to get edited into the (in)Complete Guide.

Re: The force-field framerate issues, I just tried out my first (unreleased) level again, and the framerate does indeed go to Hell in a handbasket when there are dozens of force fields on screen. In addition, this was a level where I used forcefields and the old framerate bug to shoot the player through walls, and I am actually setting new range records in 1.0.1. If it were possible for me to actually fly in the vicinity of the accelerator, rather than using the debug start placed inside it, I suspect that the level would actually work better now.
In other news, I think I'm almost glad that a crash somewhere along the line destroyed my progress on The Ocean. One of its minibosses had a "currents" design very similar to that of Obstacle Course's Rapids, only with narrow corridors. Given that the Rapids is now unplayable (as tested on a 1.33GHz iBook G4), this bug would definitely have crippled my level.

On a lighter note, I really like the "there is a new version available" notice in the main menu.

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 06 March 2007 - 09:30 PM