HM3 Export options updated

I have very good news, and mildly bad news. The very good news is that I have just uploaded the latest update to the HeroMachine Alpha that allows you to output your creation at a wide variety of sizes, either as the full character or a portrait view, as a JPG or PNG, and in regular or widescreen format.

The mildly bad news is, saving as a PNG no longer puts your character on a transparent background -- it's a solid white. I tried to figure out a way around it, but given the various other constraints Flash put on me it was the only way to get output at anything but the basic size.

Here is the new menu, which you see now when you press either the "Save as JPG" or "Save as PNG" button:

If you have trouble seeing the images, the sizes are:

  • 200x300
  • 400x600
  • 500x750
  • 800x1200
  • 1200x1800
  • 1600x2400
  • 800x600 (widescreen)
  • 1280x1024 (widescreen)
  • 1600x1200 (widescreen)
  • 2048x1536 (widescreen)

My version of Flash has a maximum dimension limitation of something like 2800 pixels, so we couldn't do the ridiculously ginormous size, just the mostly ginormous ones.

In laying all this out it didn't make sense to have "widescreen" be a separate toggle button, so now the program just automatically does it all for you depending on which set of dimensions you choose.

I hope you like the new feature, and please let me know if you run into any problems with it. The larger sizes naturally take longer to render, so don't be surprised if the pop up window just sits there for ten to thirty seconds thinking.

I didn't touch the save/load code or anything else in this release except the export functions.