New Flash Versions

At the moment it's looking like I might be doing some part-time work for inXile on Wasteland 2, which means I wouldn't be working on Unleashed. Also, uni is taking up more and more of my time so it's just not looking realistic anymore for me to be finishing Unleashed in the same timeframe that I had predicted. However, I've still got enough time to be able to put some work into Flash versions. What I'm doing is refactoring the code so that it's much more similar in structure to what a ported version would be and I'm working on trying to bring some of the things that made Unleashed so good into the Flash version. This will make it MUCH easier to eventually port it to C.

tl;dr Unleashed is on the backburner for now, working on Flash versions to get results now and make the eventual port for Unleashed be a lot easier.

So far, I've been able to get tracks to load and save from anywhere on the disk using a standard file dialog, effectively ending the .sol era. It can still use the old save system so that you can load your older tracks (you'd then save them using the new system). I've also done the following so far:

- Fixed the tab key
- Removed the help system
- Increased loading speed by 25-30%
- Altered the loader to load the start point before the track
- Changed the compass to show distances in a non zoom dependent way
- Fixed the speedometer
- Added a frame counter to the timer
- Changed the in-game font to PT Sans
- Fixed the trash button's blur
- Removed a lot of old experimental code
- Updated the time display to show minutes.seconds;frames
- Added display of the time that the max speed was achieved
- Enabled drawing over the start point
- Added the ability to start playback in slow mo by holding the M key when starting playback
- Changed the flag to a vector to prevent pixelation when zooming in
- Removed the track dumping code that executed when the B key was pressed (this was debug code that made its way into the final release)
- Changed the linecount display to use swatches instead of text

Editor:


Playback:


Right now I'm just working on some bugs with the file loading and saving and doing a bit more cleaning of the code, but I'll push out new releases in a day or two.

EDIT: Here's a checklist of the "Master list of suggestions":

Glitches/Bugs/Fixes
Tab Key: In 6.2, tab zooms out to show the whole track in the screen. When pressed again, it zoomed back in to the previous zoom level, at wherever the mouse was. This feature was missing in 6.7.
Slow Blinking: Make Bosh blink slower in slow motion, so when he is recorded in slow motion and then sped up he isn't blinking super fast.
Fix broken sled: If you go off sled, mark a flag, the sled breaks, and then you press play, the sled doesn't fix itself and is still broken. Fix this.
Disable hotkeys when viewing the help page (except for H of course, so you can get back). This will prevent people from getting stuck on the help page and having to close Line Rider, losing work. I removed the entire help system
Ability to draw inside the start button
Sometimes tools besides the pencil tool act like the pencil tool. Causes unclear.
Fix the speedometer: It's accurate if you are traveling to the lower right or upper left, but if you travel to the lower left or upper right, no matter your speed, it's nearly zero.
Fix shift+backspace: If you erase a line early in a track and use shift+backspace to replace it, the track no longer works. Fix it so it does.

DON'T Fix These Glitches (actually, include them in the help file)
Multiple Line Glitch: When you draw a line, press Y, then click the stop button, it makes a duplicate of that line.

Relatively Simple Additions (that we basically all agree on)
Frame Counter: The timer, when clicked, would change into a frame counter, which would start at 0 and add 1 every frame, and would change back if you clicked it again. This would be very helpful for speed contests and challenges. A third mode would be great too, that would show seconds:frames/40. (e.g. 12:37 = 12 seconds, 37 frames) Clicking on it could cycle through these three.
Recording Mode: When a certain key is pressed (you pick) the game would shift into "recording mode" and run at 2 fps until the key is pressed again.
Auto Slow Motion: When you are in play mode and in slow motion and press Y, have Bosh start in slow motion.
More Deletion Safety: Have the game ask you "Are you sure?" when you either delete a save, or load a save when the current opened track has unsaved changes. Now that there's track saving to regular files, your OS will automatically prompt you before you try to save over something.
XY snap Mid-Draw: If you start drawing a line, then press X, have the line snap to XY.
Sticky Color Eraser: Once you've shift+clicked into color eraser, stay in color eraser whenever you select the eraser tool until you shift+click on it again.
Update the help page so it actually covers everything.
Autosaving: Recover progress if the game freezes or you accidentally close it or whatever.
Scenery Wiping: Shift+click on green swatch in color eraser, after a prompt all scenery is erased.
Flag Lock: Shift+click on a flag locks it, so it can't be pressed normally (a visual cue would be nice, like an X over it), Shift+click again to unlock it, then it works normally again.
Make Scroll Zoom and Play Mode Zoom go in all the way as if you were using the actual zoom tool
When you delete a track and start a new one, when you click to save make the box blank, so you don't accidentally save over the last save.
Save the flag when you save the track

Mildly Controversial Additions
Pause Button: Allow a hotkey for pausing the track.
Frame by Frame hotkeys: When paused, have the arrow keys navigate forward and backward frame by frame.
Fast Forward and Rewind buttons: Rewind would stop or play when it reached either a flag or the beginning of a track.
The F Key: Make the hotkey that jumps to the flag something other than F, so that on a mac someone can press Command+F to go to full screen and back without the view jumping to the flag.
Variable eraser size: a way to adjust the size of the eraser
Grabbing and moving scenery around
Have a toggle between following rider and sled when Bosh goes offsled
One click to make a dot
Green lines snapping to other green lines when a key is held down.

Game Changing Features (would no longer be Beta 2)
Variable Line Thicknesses
Shades of grey for lines
Fill Tool
Colors: either swatches or a picker
Select/cut/copy/paste for scenery lines between saves
Customizable Riders/Sleds
Multiple Riders
Camera controls

Difficult Suggestions (would be awesome, but easier said than done)
A hotkey during playback to send the track into "real time" mode, where the speed is kept at 100% at the price of dropping frames, in order to help with syncing to music.
Lessen the amount of line lag.
A button to open your .sol folder There's no more .sols
Save tracks to files, load tracks from files.
Built-in screen capture along with interface and video file exporting.
Track scrubbing: A slider that would fast forward when dragged forward, and rewind when dragged back.
Fix corruptions so they don't happen anymore.
In the Save/Load screen, when you click on a save, display date last modified and number of each type of line off to the side

I am the excite

Mhenr, you confuse me way too much

So what's that new button I see there?

Also, this should be a slightly less blurry hand icon:


All of the above may require additional work, idk.
Also, will you get rid of the stop button in edit mode and the edit-mode tools in playback mode, or is that for later and/or cancelled?

Mein führer! I can approve!

Might try 'em out later.

Spoiler:

kevansevans wrote:Mhenr, you confuse me way too much

So what's that new button I see there?

It's the open track button. Because I'm saving to regular files now, I need two separate buttons.

mhenr18 wrote:There's no more .sols

DAFUQ? How did you learn to do that for flash?

I use an as3 swf to load the as2 swf and use the as3 file apis, using LocalConnection to coordinate it. There's no performance hit at all