Development news : Player and editor update

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Unas
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Development news : Player and editor update

Post by Unas »

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the lack of news lately.
I have at last updated AAO with the latest development version, where the first contributions since going open source are visible.

It includes the following changes :
  • Update : Updated the About page with the list which had outdated information. (AceAttorneyMaster111)
  • Update : Added trial author in the player header (kwando1313)
  • New feature : Defined functions str_to_lower and str_to_upper in the expression engine, to convert a string into uppercase or lowercase. (kwando1313)
  • Bugfix : Inability to save during psyche locks (Enthalpy)
  • Bugfix : Bad dimensioning of wide backgrounds in Chrome (Enthalpy)
  • New feature : Frame presets (Unas)
Thanks to all contributors here, and sorry it tooks so long to put your work online ! :-)
I'll try to be faster next time.

Now, onto some explanation about the last feature, which is the first simple answer I came up for a recurrent complaint about V6.
As you know, V6 does not expose an "auto background" feature as V5 did. This feature used to be handy in particular when writing a court scene : it would allow to automatically select the correct background when the judge or any other character spoke, hence saving a great deal of time.
In V6, it was even better : you would set all the characters on the scene once at first, and then just picking the talking character on a frame you'd have the screen transition to his position - smoothly if needed. Well... that was until the judge intervened : being in a completely different place, it forced the author to set the whole court scene back after each intervention of the judge. Terribly unefficient.

With frame presets, this specific problem is gone.
A frame preset is an exact copy of a regular frame, which can be inserted again and again anywhere in the trial. The only difference with the original frame is that each new frame will have its own ID number.
Using the Frame presets menu next to the frame insertion bar, you can :
  • Save any frame as a preset.
  • Insert any of the saved presets just like you would insert an empty frame.
This should allow you to write repetitive scenes much faster than before. :)


Keep in mind that at this point it's only a basic implementation of the concept :
  • Presets are not saved yet. When you close or reload the editor (including when you save the game), presets are forgotten.
  • Presets are not shared across trials.
  • When you select a preset to insert, it is only identified by the content of its text box.
For these reasons, at the moment, it's useless to create a large collection of presets : they are only meant to be used locally while working on a specific conversation for example.

Future evolutions are planned on those three points : first, making the preset selection menu more helpful (showing more than just the frame text), which will be essential if you need to work with a lot of presets simultaneously; second, saving preset frames for future use, maybe even shared across trials.

Stay tuned and enjoy this update ! :)
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by GanonZD »

Still looking forward to a scene system, but this is a nice initial solution. :-D
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by Gamer2002 »

Wow Unas, NOW we are talking about frames.

This pretty much covers all my issues, or at last the worst of them. You can create set of pre-made frames at the beginning of some section, save them at start of the frames making and here we go. No longer re-setting all the characters on a court over and over again. This can be even used for classic investigations sections, having pre-made frames with all the characters separately, so adios annoyingly forgettable hide all shown characters check-box.

But anyway Unas, where is the AAO development forum? You closed the last update topic that was the main hub of your open source scene, where are we supposed to bullshit about our overly ambitious plans? Comment and Ideas doesn't yell OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPMENT enough >D
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by Enthalpy »

Hooray, the first updates!

This should fully fix the Chrome problem that a lot of users had been having, which is my personal favorite part of the update. I want do a bit more playing around to find out why we had that glitch in the first place, but it's functional now. Frame presets also look to be a nice feature.

I'm hoping to get back to spending some time in development in two or three weeks, when my schedule cools down. There are more bugs to squish!
[D]isordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. ~ Ben Jonson
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by kwando1313 »

Ohey, my new features are in here. Huzzah!

I still need to work on the custom voice blip thing though when I get back...
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Unas
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by Unas »

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If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
Si le savoir peut créer des problèmes, ce n'est pas l'ignorance qui les résoudra. ( Isaac Asimov )
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by drvonkitty »

Did the speed of text typing get changed with this update, by any chance? It feels really slow to me and I'm not sure if it's just me or if it's actually been changed.
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by Enthalpy »

We didn't touch code around the text display engine, and I can't reproduce any problems.
[D]isordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. ~ Ben Jonson
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by enigma »

About these frame presets, they're pretty handy. A very good addition. However, they're not really a good replacement for auto-BG's (since they take their label from the text in the box, using them to have a BG set for a character and a blank text box is... problematic)

May I suggest, possibly, a "frame preset" column in the sprite/animations area of the character page? That way, labelled by the animation name, I could just choose which animation I want from the frame preset menu and load it. (And any animations not given a preset would, naturally, not appear.)

Essentially, I could pick "Phoenix-zoom" from the preset menu and have a frame of the phoenix-zoom sprite with the defense zoom bg from the start.
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by GanonZD »

Then why not make a frame with the text "Judge Bench", save it as a preset and then delete it? I checked it, presets are stored even if the original frame is deleted.

EDIT: That being said, I do find the system of presets a tiny bit artificial and unnatural; nevertheless, it works effectively, and I can think of no good way to make it better (except, perhaps, if we incorporagte the scene system I have suggested several times).
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by Unas »

enigma wrote:About these frame presets, they're pretty handy. A very good addition. However, they're not really a good replacement for auto-BG's (since they take their label from the text in the box, using them to have a BG set for a character and a blank text box is... problematic)
As mentioned in the announcement, this is a first step, and I'm very well aware that using frame text as the only label in selection is not ideal - I plan on improving the drop-down selection menu to be more practical. ;-)
In fact, to be more precise, I'd like to make it so that this menu displays a preview of each frame preset including pictures, similar to what the profile, evidence and sprite drop downs currently do :)
GanonZD wrote:Then why not make a frame with the text "Judge Bench", save it as a preset and then delete it? I checked it, presets are stored even if the original frame was deleted.
Well, presets are not "stored" per se at this time (it's gone as soon as you close or reload the page), but yes, when you save a frame as preset, it is cloned into the preset list : if you delete the source frame, you can still use the preset. And similarly, if you edit the source frame, it will NOT modify the preset.

Basically, these presets work like copy pasting :)
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by GanonZD »

Also, Unas, IMO, it has all been implemented slightly wrong: You have to make a new frame and then import a preset, effectively overwriting everything you have made in the frame so far. Wouldn't it be more natural (and save typing) if you simply chose a preset, and a new frame was created?
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by Unas »

? No, selecting a frame preset is inserting a it as a new frame. What are you talking about ?

If your frame is overwritten when you select a preset, that's a serious bug.
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by GanonZD »

Ah, you're right, sorry. I apparently got confused by the fact that it is not possible to add a preset frame at the bottom of the storyboard; there is no "Frame presets" there. Speaking of that, shouldn't there be one?
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Re: Development news : Player and editor update

Post by Unas »

There could be, it's kind of like the insert blocks drop down I guess, I was just too lazy. :-P
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