New release of The Pawn
We are close to a new release 1.0.1.2
Here is a change summary:
- Display kronos as "Kronos the Magician"
- BUGFIX: load game does not immediately refresh sidebar
- BUGFIX: can delete past prompt
- FEATURE: new text entry box
- FEATURE: XBR picture enhancement.
- FEATURE: image colour adjustments applied.
- FEATURE: add setting to apply image adjustment
- FEATURE: add setting to enable/disable XBR pixel scaling scaling
- FEATURE: can click on past text entered to re-enter/edit
- BUGFIX: startup in room without picture gave start picture.
For a short time, i've uploaded a release candidate for Windows here.
If anyone would like to test it before it becomes a full release, you are most welcome. Let us know if you find a problem.
Thanks,
-- Strand Team.
Comments
Will download, install and try it out.
Thanks!
:thumbsup:
Thanks. I've tested it today and it's looking good. We might make an official release tomorrow, unless some horrible bug turns up.
Fixed
Fixed
Fixed
New features work, and images are looking better definitely.
Image also scales with window resizing. **
SUGGESTION : **Text entry box look silly with large font. (Am testing on win10).
Very good idea.
Not fixed. Went to the burly guards, showed ransom note, got kicked out. Saved game, reset.
Reloaded game, it shows start game screen. (see above screenshot)
Now that's Mr Murphy for you
Thanks for the feedback. I probably let the input text scale too large on desktop, i'll tweak it. I'll checkout that load picture problem, i thought it was fixed...
Fixed the input box size and pictures on load.
Version 1.0.2.2 has now been released to itch for Windows.
Will be updating the other platforms shorly...
thanks for all your feedback. Always welcome.
Pleasure, always willing to help and give feedback
Input area font still a tad too big, esp on Android. Not a deal-breaker but just my opinion.
Maybe other people won't mind.
Yes, got the Android update during the wee-wee hours of the morning, baby needed a nappy change, so figured I can just as well check.
Thanks. i agree it's still a bit too big on Android. The problem with Android is that peoples fingers are different sizes. I might tweak it to be a bit smaller and scale with font.
Another idea - why not scale it according to the device (if such a thing is possible), so that a 7" tablet have a larger input area than on a 10" tab, and also landscape vs portrait orientation...
Apart from that, everything looks good.
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try some of these ideas out for the next release (not planned yet), but they will go on the list.
The resizable gfx is a great idea, now you can have it either fullscreen or thumbnail size.
Trying it out on my xiaomi redmi A4 device. Will update my other devices and give feedback as well (7" and 10" devices).
One suggestion tho :
Is sharing save games via google play in the pipeline, so you can play on one device, save, then resume on another device? This is not critical though.
Hi,
I am most interested to know if things are ok on Xiaomi. I have had reports that there is a problem exiting the app and a problem putting it in the background and restore on the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4.
This could be specific to a particular user or maybe it's connected to the MIUI interface or something not yet tested.
Would like to know if you have any problems.
Regarding sharing saved games;
Yes, this has been on the todo list for some time. The plan is to put a "share" icon on the action bar which can share to dropbox, Google or even as a file. There would have to be a corresponding way of launching with such a file.
But it would also mean the save games could be shared between desktop and mobile or even between people.
I'll bump this idea up a bit.
thanks for reminding me.
Share saving could be very useful for me. I play at home with my Ipad and outside with Iphone and it's a little confusing to remember the progress in each device.
sharing with the iPad is a bit more complicated than Android, i'll have to research than one. However, i would like to add it.
So far I haven't run into problems, but will let you know should it happen.
Cheers!
Tested it on two MIUI devices, no issues so far. (Huawei Mediapad and Xiaomi).
Also got an S4 Mini this morning, flashed it with lineageos, installed the pawn, also no issues there.
Hey thanks for the tests. The report i had from a Xiaomi user was a bit strange. Perhaps his phone was faulty or out of memory.
FWIW the Huawei device was not rooted and was factory resetted before testing. All I can think of is either a faulty phone, too little memory OR it could be another app interfering somehow.
malware comes to mind. something that perhaps tries to monitor what you're doing....
I noticed that at least with the Linux version, there is a difference between typing "save" in the input window and using the save command in the settings panel. Would it be possible to make them behave the same?
Yes and no, I'll explain;
In the current version, typing "save" as a game command is handled by the original game code. The result of such as save is not the same as using the save feature from the settings. Unfortunately, the formats are not compatible.
why?
Because the original game (typing "save") encrypted the save games (and also as an integrity check), but using save from the setting dialog, we just save out the memory image of the game. This is also how we handle undo/redo, by keeping track of memory images.
Originally, i tried to make the new save compatible with the old one, but i couldn't figure out how the encryption worked.
But now
We have the source code and plan to make a new release (at some point) with a version rebuilt from the original code - and that means;
So what remains is to decide whether to change the game itself to simplify its saves and thus make them simple memory images (and thus compatible)
OR
To encrypt the memory images made by the new save so that they are the same as the old save format.
Another complication is there might be new properties added to the save that will most likely make the saves not compatible with any of the original (ie 30 years ago) versions running in emulators. Not sure if anyone is bothered about this though.
If we don't care for real retro compatibility, it will be easiest to simplify the internal saves and actually make the new save use the internal code rather than a memory snapshot. Then they'll definitely be the same!
I can see how it might be useful for debugging, if you want to compare the current behavior to that of the original interpreter. I don't see much point as a player, though, to have a shiny new interface for the game and then use it to... not play the game by skipping ahead?
Anyway, my main concern with the two different save/restore interfaces is that if I type save/restore, I don't see which savegames I already have, and since I don't even know where they are stored I don't know where to look, of even if I can look. I should use the new save/restore interface, of course, but old habits die hard and sometimes my fingers forget.
Hmm... Maybe if there were save/restore buttons in the toolbar, instead of in the settings screen...
Suggestion : Sierra's games had a nifty little save/restore game where you could type in a long description of the saved game (if you want) (also the same with Alone in the Dark, but with a small thumbnail of your current location). Then it was just a point and click to restore the game should you want to revert back to an earlier game.
Another thing that just occurred to me is that sometimes I think it would be easier to read the text window if there was an option for it to include the commands you typed.
In particular, it could be useful later for games like Corruption, where you can spend a lot of time talking to characters. If you were to scroll back and only see this:
You couldn't really tell who said what about who. Something like this would make that much clearer, I think:
Thanks!
dup deleted.
@eriktorbjorn, i like this idea. Right now the past commands drop into the lower command buffer, but they could be transcribed into the main text as well.
I think they would go into both with this option.
I'll add this to the requested feature list, as it's a good one. thanks.
Just a random brainfart here, carry on