With thanks to Panner and MMI, I’ve just updated the HeroMachine 3 Alpha with some more bug fixes:

• The alpha transparency settings for all colors (especially color2) should now be working properly when you add additional items.
• You can now switch on “Multiples”, add two of the same item, switch to “Single”, add a different item, and the previous items will correctly be removed without giving you “stuck” objects.
• You can now drag items with the mouse wherever you want, even off-screen. Previously you were limited to dragging items only within the composition window.

Thanks to both of those folks for their excellent troubleshooting and bug reporting, it made squashing the bugs much much easier.

My question for you all regards automatic masking.

Currently, let’s say you have one item (for example, a square insignia) masked to another (like a body). Here’s how that looks:

But then you decide you want to add a second item from the same slot. In our example let’s say we wanted to add the chevron insignia. We select “Multiples” in Insignia, then click the chevron. The old item, the square, becomes UNmasked from the body, and the new item, the chevron gets masked instead, like this:

The question is, when you add a second item from a given slot (like the chevron insignia), would you prefer that the masking on the previous item (the square insignia) stay applied? Or would you prefer to keep it like it is now, where masking transfers to the new item along with colors and such and the old item is unmasked?

I’ll explain the nitty gritty after the jump for those who are interested.

In the course of testing, I discovered two main problems. The first was that between the time some older characters were saved and today, the order and number of sets of items (sets are the second drop-down box in the main program, like Blades and Blunts) in various slots (slots are the first drop-down box, the main character areas like Nose, HandRight, Body, etc.) changed. For instance, initially Background only had one or two sets, but over time it grew to five. Along the way I rearranged the listing order of some of those sets. As a result, the character you saved last year might have used an item from Background-Standard when that set had an associated number of 1. But since then, Background-Floors was added and it is now entry number one on the list.

But your saved character still has Background Set number 1 listed as being “Standard”, so when it loads up Background Set 1 it’s actually getting Background Floors. Only it doesn’t know that, so when you try to add another item from that set, it loads what it thinks is item 10 from Background Standard, but it actually gets item 10 from Background Floors. And the item gets stuck.

So, to get around that (and any future similar problems), I introduced some error catching that basically matches the NAME of the set (which at least so far doesn’t change over time), and then from there gets whatever the latest number is. So even if I rearrange the order of all the sets and how they’re listed, all the items should continue to load for your saved characters.

The second problem was that up until a few weeks ago, I still had two empty layers in the character layout shell for slots I thought about adding, but never did. Like a separate “Pet” slot in addition to “Companion”. That caused some problems with layering so I removed the two vestigial layers from the main HeroMachine file. Well, it turns out that CAUSED problems for older save files, because they were trying to layer items onto a layer that no longer existed, in essence.

So I introduced more error checking that says basically, “Hey, if you try to put this on a layer that isn’t there, then instead just move it down to the highest actual layer available.”

As a result, hopefully this will clear up the problems some folks were having with layering and sticky objects in some older save files.

It also hopefully sets the stage for the “choose super big size” option down the road. In fact, I think I can by default set it to larger than 400×600 if you guys want, just let me know. This is all uncharted territory, I’m just hacking my way through it, but I’ll give it a whirl.

But, I wanted to put this up there for now to see if at least the layering problem is fixed. Give it a shot and let me know — I THINK you can load old characters and it ought to work properly.

• Made it so that you can apply Patterns to Hands and still mask Items into them — no more full-screen free-floating grayscale patterns when what you really wanted was scales on the hand to match the forearm.
• Changed the size of the mask on the Hands, so that long objects like swords or staffs shouldn’t get nipped in half when placed and masked.
• Changed the size of the default grayscale patterns (the ones in the Patterns tab) so they fill the whole screen. You can see this most easily when using the long cape in Backplane-Standard, previously all of the patterns would abruptly end about three inches before they got to the bottom of the cape. Now they go all the way down.
• Changed the “Tiger Stripe” pattern rather significantly, lowering the alpha value to 40% instead of 70% and using a completely new drawing for them, hoping to make them look better.
• Minor change to Save/Load, hoping to fix the layering problem. Let me know if this still happens — I don’t have high hopes I fixed it, but we’ll see.

Let me know if you see any weirdness.

Also, a warning — this isn’t supposed to do anything bad to your previously saved characters, but I can’t guarantee that. In general, until we get to a full release (or at least a solid beta), you should always make a JPG or PNG of any character you don’t want to lose. I may have to significantly change something at some point that will effectively destroy your old saved characters. I don’t PLAN on that, but you never know — that’s why it’s still an alpha.

All of the HeroMachine-based apps have improved by orders of magnitude thanks to people like Peter, willing to take the time to share their points of view and making great suggestions. Many thanks to him and to the hundreds of people over the years who have directly contributed to these applets.

I look forward to even more and better suggestions going forward, so if the thought of helping to contribute to a real piece of software appeals to you, get in there and start thinking!