Monthly Archives: March 2011

Just wanted to give you a heads-up that a minor tweak to the HeroMachine 3 Alpha has been uploaded (version A.22) that improves the performance of the scroll bars in the Load/Save window. You can now hold the arrows down and the list will scroll on its own, or you can drag the little handle in the middle for more rapid manual scrolling.

I thought I'd fixed the "sort by date" bug on that screen too, but it turns out it's still broken. Feh.

I just wanted to give you a quick heads-up regarding three minor tweaks I uploaded to the HM3 Alpha this morning:

1. The manual entry box for resizing items used to be limited to 200%, but now goes all the way up to 999%. That should allow for some interesting effects.
2. The label formerly known as "Scale" has been renamed to "Size", on the recommendation of UI specialist Mark Shute. I agree with him that this is a much more universally understood way of saying what the tool does.
3. While you could previously click on the three "current color" swatches to change color areas just as if you'd clicked on one of the buttons over to the side, you can now also click directly on the numbers themselves to do the same thing. Before this tweak, the numbers were not clickable, creating a non-functional blank spot right in the middle of the swatch.
4. It doesn't get much more minor than this, but I added "%" indicators to the manual entry boxes for the Size tool.

One question for you all, is it obvious that you can manually change the settings in the Transform area?

I've just updated the HeroMachine 3 Alpha with the long-requested Color Swapping feature! Here's how it looks:

I'm dubious I've nailed the best possible arrangement here, but this is at least functional. That new row below the color name and alpha slider shows all three color areas, appropriately numbered in the big color swatch.

Each of the three blocks has three parts to it: The big current color swatch for that color area; smaller color swatches for each of the other two color areas (again, appropriately numbered); and buttons for either copying the main color (one arrow) or swapping the main color and one of the other colors (two arrows).

Look at the first main box, labeled with a big "1" in the light green swatch:

• If you were to click the the top button having only one arrow, that light green would get copied to color 2, currently a tannish-brown.
• If you were to click the bottom button having only one arrow, the light green would get copied to color 3 (line color), currently a very dark green.
• If you were to click the top double-headed arrow, color 1 and color 2 would swap, so color 1 would become tannish-brown and color 2 would become light green.
• If you were to click the bottom double-headed arrow, color 1 and color 3 (line color) would swap, so color 1 would become very dark green and color 3 would become light green.

It looks confusing, but I think once you've used it for a minute or two it'll make sense. Note that clicking any of these new buttons does not change which color is currently active, as indicated in the buttons to the left with the white outline around them ("Prime Color" in the screen capture).

One question I have for you obviously is, does this work? But I also would like to know if you think it makes sense or is too confusing. Should I add numbers so the selection tabs read "Prime Color (1)", "Second Color (2)", and "Line Color (3)" or something?

Just as a reminder, here's the color swap box in HeroMachine 2:

With three colors, I couldn't do this exact layout, but the basics are the same -- big color swatch, one-headed arrow for copying color from one to the other, and a double-headed arrow for swapping them.

Thanks in advance for your feedback and patience as we all continue working together to improve the program!