I've just updated the main HeroMachine 3 Alpha version with the latest User Interface. Holler if you have any problems with it! This should not affect your saved characters in any way.
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Man, you move fast, Jeff. Two comments right off the bat:
Clicking the ‘Clear All’ button warns me that the action “cannot be undone”. Except that, you know, nowadays it can.
Mirroring (any direction) an item and then clicking it in the canvas area makes the scale% number box display a negative value. At first I thought this was a bug, but after the better part of an hour trying to abuse it, I realized that’s just how the mirroring works. I’m not sure this should be changed, it was just a little surprising.
Awesome new layout, Jeff! I’m really digging it. It looks much more organized than the previous version.
I’ve read through the previous thread pertaining to the new UI and I love the new changes including the ability to input negative rotation angles. I’m awful with math so that really helps! Thank you 🙂
Also I don’t know if this has been brought up before. I apologize if it has, but is it possible to put an interactive scroll bar in the load/save window?
By which I mean, click and drag the scroll bar instead of just repeatedly clicking the up and down arrows? If there’s a long list of characters, it just takes some time to scroll.
To all users, don’t try stunts with the Clear All button like I described above. Just avoid that button for now. Full description in a few minutes.
I’ve run across a bit of a bug where when changing sets, ( Example from tops male Spandex to Neckware standard ) the previous set doesn’t unload and the next set loads on top of it and the load status bar remains on screen at 100%. I need to click on something on screen already and select a new sub-set that I haven’t used yet to get it to correct itself.
It appears that the new layout broke something with loading sets. This bug is present in the ‘newlayout.htm’ version, but likely not in the yellow version (cache cleared, can’t test).
“Cannot be undone” indeed
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Description: Locks up heromachine after using Clear All
Severity: Mild
1. Start hm3 clean
2. Load Background-Standard
3. Add the top left item
4. Load Backplane-Auras
5. Add the top left item
6. Press ‘Clear All’ and confirm
7. Load Belt-Standard
8. The loading progress bar will get stuck at 100%.
Any not loaded Set can be used in place of Belt-Standard.
Adding any item from already loaded sets after step 6 but before step 7 will disarm the bug.
If you encounter this bug it’s unlikely you will lose any of your work since you just cleared everything. In any case, you can still access the Undo and Save buttons by tabbing to them and pressing space.
This is most likely related to what Kaldath mentions above me.
Still Love!
Shiny! Good job! 🙂
By the way, the load screen’s never seemed to understand the concept of “old” or “new” very well. Now that the time information is included, it looks like it’s using day of the week as the first sorting criterion rather than year then month then day then time? Also an improved scroll bar like Tim (3) and others have mentioned would be really really good, especially now that there’s only one save per line instead of two like in the old UI.
Good catch as always Panner, thanks. Replicated it, tracked down the problem, fixed it, and just uploaded a replacement version.
Improved scroll bar is definitely on the list, as is a better way of sorting the save files. The time stamp is probably not implemented correctly in some way — I need to rework all of that.
@Jeff: Not a problem, but I was starting to like the version number… any way to bring that back?
Worf, yeah, I liked that too — I was looking for a place to put it right before I saw your comment, actually, but this new layout’s pretty tightly packed.
What I think I am going to do next is to rearrange the color palettes, moving the Custom and Preset tabs up top, moving the color swatches down, and doing some sort of “Active Colors” row that’ll show all three current colors for the current item. And hopefully a color-swap function there.
If I do that, I’ll free up quite a bit of room at the bottom right that could fit the version number in, hopefully.
And by “up top” I actually mean “over to the side”, along with the current column of buttons starting with “Primary color” and ending with the color all buttons.
Entering a number value in any color alpha number box and pressing Enter applies that alpha value to the entire item image, not just the selected color. Mousing over the item in the canvas area returns its image to normal.
Simple explanation – it’s like when items didn’t inherit alpha2 correctly.
Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but the custom color box (where you can point and click your color) goes over every other box, like options and such.
When i load HM3 the usual layout shows up. i cleared my cache, it didn’t fix anything. 🙁
Something is still broken about loading sets.
This is pretty much the same thing as above, except deleting a single item instead of all items.
1. Start hm3 clean
2. Load Background-Standard
3. Add the top left item
4. Load Backplane-Auras
5. Add the top left item
6. Remove the aura just added with the control bar
7. Load Belt-Standard
8. The loading progress bar will get stuck at 100%.
Any not loaded Set can be used in place of Belt-Standard.
Found the problem. Evidently it must be something wrong with it working on IE9. Because when i loaded it on Firefox, it worked.
Panner (13): What happens is, the whole item gets focus, as if you were mousing over it. The alpha value is applied correctly, but since it’s essentially being moused over you can’t really tell. I need to tweak that.
Panner (16): Another good catch, thanks. Just uploaded a fix for that.
If you’re curious, both that one and the earlier loading issue were caused by the new bit of code that makes sure all the Transform tab controls are set properly when you change items. When you deleted the last-added item, the program wasn’t updating the little variable that tracks which item is active, so the Transform tab was trying to set itself to an item that wasn’t there any more.
Anyway, it should be fixed now, thanks for pointing it out!
Jeff, I like the new layout but I think I just discovered a bug. I thought about giving a test character a tail, decided against it, and tried to switch back to the standard backplane items set. The two sets seemed to overlap. In the midst of loading the standard set, the software froze, and every thumbnail of every item in the standard set had a tail superimposed over it. I’ve never seen HM 3 do this. Could it be a glitch in the new layout?
Jeff: Hmm, I don’t like to be this way, but could I convince you to do a double check on the alpha thing?
For example, add the square insignia, set color 1 and 2 to red and blue, then go to line color. Type in ‘0’ in the alpha box and press Enter. The insignia will disappear completely.
And why, yes, I was a bit curious about the loading bug. Its connection to deleting items became obvious, but this explains why the bug didn’t appear when “deleting” items with the Undo button or by loading an empty save.
Panner, hmm, I see what you mean … Yeah, that doesn’t look right. I’ll check on it later tonight, time for “Idol” at the moment!
Plus I’m in the middle of moving up the Custom and Pre-Set color tabs so I can’t republish until that’s done.
Niall, try it again — I think you were caught using a version just before I updated it to address what I think is that bug.
Could we add an “Are you sure?” button. I have made the mistake of deleting the wrong character because I clicked the wrong x.
I’m missing the head-shot-watch-option. Now I can’t watch the faces I’m drawing …
NOOOOO!!!! I will confuse now buttons! And all is curve is located!
Brittishcoal: Until we get some kind of confirmation box, you can recover a deleted character by either immediately backing up hmcharacters.sol or by crashing Flash. Heromachine only writes to the file when you close it or save a character.
Finarfin: I’m sure you’ve found it by now, but in case not, it’s in the bottom left corner now.
No delete all button? That was my favourite!
Nope, wait, didn’t see it…
Hey, entering negative degrees of rotation isn’t working for me. When i use it the item goes to the rotation, then immediately flips back at 0.
Brittishcoal (22): I don’t know, I guess I could consider something like that …
Finarfin (23): As Panner said, that option is on the bar below the character, labeled “View”.
Chisoph (26): Just to clarify for anyone else reading this thread down the road, the delete all button is now labeled “Clear” with a trash can icon and is in the middle of the big column of buttons in the middle of the screen.
The Eric (28): Please detail what it is you’re doing that isn’t working properly, as I am able to enter negative values just fine and they never go back to 0. I don’t understand what you’re seeing or what you’re doing to make that happen. Thanks!
Wait…i think i was pressing “Reset” instead of hitting Enter.
It is possible that i am dumb.
had a problem exporting a character, i had it holding an rifle (masked) and when it exported the masked rifle was gone.
I was in the middle of creating a new image when the update(s) took place. I saved the image and tried to Export. Doing so caused the character creater to reset (no big deal, I kinda figured that may happen which is why I saved).
However, when I reopened the saved image, I noticed that the working area seems to be bigger and the save seemed to be shifted about 40ish pixels down (the characters foot is cut off). I selected all items and shifted everything back up and tried to Export. However, the Exported image tries to save as “undo.jpg” and it is shifted back down.
Mashlagoo (32): I’m not sure which update this happened in the middle of, but regardless, nothing you do with the “All” grouping is going to work particularly well when loaded, saved, or exported. That feature will be undergoing major revision in the near future, but for now you’ll have to use smaller Group settings to move everything where you want it to be (in other words, use the “Head” grouping and manually move that where you want it to be, use the “Body” grouping and manually move THAt where you want it to be, etc.).
I can’t guarantee that old save files will be positioned properly if they were saved using the All grouping.
I encountered a big issue I hadn’t noticed before yesterday.
I pulled up an old file, and was going to do a screen capture. That’s when I noticed that the bar that gives me my viewing options covers up about the bottom 5% of my pic. It seems the only way to get rid of it for a screen capture is to go to Landscape view, but if I do this, then I lose the framing of the original picture size. As I’m making a series of tarot cards, the regular dimensions–with the thin black frame around it–are the perfect size, and I can’t figure out how to frame in those exact same dimensions to crop from the Landscape view.
Is there any chance the viewing options bar can actually be moved completely off our pictures?
Thanks
Peace
Whittier