Monthly Archives: March 2011

When you save your character image in HeroMachine 3, it will now have the name of your character (if any) as the default file name instead of "hm3-beta". The name comes from the last character you saved or loaded.

Note that this is preparation for the long-awaited "quick save" and "undo" features, the next major code change initiative. Woot!

I've just added a third format option when exporting your character's image in HM3 -- "PNG (transparent 400x600)". This is basically just adding in an option for the way it used to be.

When you click it, the size gets reset to 400x600, the Area gets reset to "Character", and all other options are grayed out since you can't make any of the other sizes or head shots export with transparency. Choosing regular old PNG or JPG turns them all back on, though.

This should help those, like DiCicatriz, who use the characters with transparent backgrounds to paste into an image editor for either larger group shots, or just to have in a custom setting.

Let me know if you run into any problems using it. All other options will continue to export with a white background.

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.