changelog.md

Arrow: Changelog

v2.3.0

• Add filter by scene usage functionality to the main resource inspectors
• Few readability and UI/UX enhancements
• Multiple bug fixes

v2.2.0

• New built-in Tag-Match node

  This new node helps creating non-binary branching gates by comparing a character's tag against a set of patterns. For more information check out the repo's wiki for Tag-Match node.

• Added ability of checking (and copying) raw underlying UID for resources.
• Few bug fixes and improvements

v2.1.0

• New (experimental) Cross-chapter Resource Transfer

  For more information check out the repo's wiki on project organization

• Few minor fixes

v2.0.0

This major release introduces many changes in Arrow, including few structural updates that may affect your projects.

CAUTION!
Although no major trouble is expected, create a backup of your old projects (created with v1.x) before opening them with the new v2.x generation.

Notable Changes

Following is a list of updates you may find impacting your workflow:

• New distributed resource identifier system

  Resources (nodes, scenes, etc.) are now getting distributed UIDs. They ease workflows where multiple authors work on the same project simultaneously, or when a project is divided to different chapters/documents and no UID conflict is desired.

  Older documents will be modified automatically, by moving next_resource_seed to authors metadata. Although no conflict with existing identifiers is expected, it will affect the UIDs and names you'll get later.

• Content node's brief is updated to display a substring of the content instead of an independent text

  Any content node being inspected will be automatically updated by using the current brief's length as the new brief's integer value, and then moving the old textual brief to top of the main content.

• Arrow is now capable of building the HTML-JS runtime template automatically from the bundled source

  This change comes with deprecation of the gulp.js builder and removing all the related dependencies. Some changes in directory structure and placeholder tags are also introduced. The template generated this way is not enhanced or minified, and is considered a debug tool, therefore no beautification or compression support is planned.

  For more information, check out readme file of the official HTML-JS runtime.

• Representation of color values is changed from ARGB to more common RGBA

  This will affect your projects in the most visible way, by changing color of markers, frames and possibly characters.

  One quick fix is to use RegEx search and replace for ("color":\W")([\d\w]{2})([\d\w]{6})(") with $1$3$2$4 on saved documents.

• Representation of last_save time of projects is changed from dictionary to date-time (ISO 8601) string.

  This shall not affect your projects, unless your (custom) runtime depends on last_save property being a dictionary/map. The value will be automatically updated on first next save.

• Projects list serialization is changed from Godot's binary (variant) to JSON

  Arrow reads the old project listing format with no problem; but they will be updated on first next save. This change allows manual hacks in path listing.

• Project (document) file extension is changed from .arrow-project to .arrow

  This does not affect the projects listing process. You just need to rename existing files and they work fine.

• Console and the official HTML-JS runtime have undergone many revisions

  These changes are mostly quality-of-life updates such as better display, debug and manual control, as well as standardization of auto-play/skip, macro scoping, and tracking of nodes and variable states. In general, they have no effect on normal projects, but production code directly depending on such behaviors.

• Many node types are revised, and in some cases, their inner structure is changed

  All these changes are meant to be backward compatible. Your old projects shall work with least problem. But if you use a custom runtime, make sure to check out the updates. Following change(s) are the most notable:

  • Frequently used nodes with commonly empty fields (i.e. Content and Dialog types,) are optimized for file size

  If a parameter is set to its known default value, it might be left from save files and exports to optimize for size and load. This behavior is node type specific, depends on SAVE_UNOPTIMIZED constant, and is applied to nodes being inspected. We expect it not to interfere with how your projects behave in console and the official runtime.

• Arrow now uses its own custom path for user directory
  • user:// will point to <OS-user-data-directory>/arrow

  If your files are not listed anymore, you have been using the old default path for your workspace. You need to move your documents from that path (./godot) to the new default ./arrow in the same parent directory.

  Any path you wish (including the old default) can as well be set for work-directory, by changing the respective configuration form Preferences panel.

New Features

This version (v2) comes with many quality-of-life improvements, and new features as well. Most notable ones are:

• Customizable User-Input nodes (e.g. number range, string pattern, etc.)
• Auto-play control in the console (and the official runtime as a global constant)
• Branch selection using Shift + Selection (and Shift + Alt + Selection for waterfall mode)
• New Sequencer node
• New Character Tag System with full console, inspector, and runtime support (including resource exposure)
• New Tag Edit and Tag Pass nodes to dynamically interact with our new Character Tag System
• New Monolog node to ease creation of conversations with much longer content
• New string operations for Variable-Update nodes, including find-and-replace
• List filtering and alphabetical sort for the resource inspectors
• History System (undo/redo) with variable memory size

  History system is experimental and disabled by default. You can activate it by choosing any history size higher than 0 from the preferences panel.

For more information, browse the repository's wiki.

v1.6.0

• Binary saving is deprecated

  Now both .json exports and .arrow-project save files have the same JSON format. But the .json files are exported as purged (without editor's meta-data and nodes' developer notes,) which makes them more suitable for distribution purposes.

  • All existent (binary) save files can still be opened and will be converted to textual format on save.

  If you need binary saves anyway, it's still revivable for custom builds by USE_DEPRECATED_BIN_SAVE setting.

• Progressive Web App

  From this version forward we'll support HTML5 (web-app) export as well. You can try this new release online in your browser. Find the link in the repo.

  The official build is intended to be optimized for desktop (-mode/ and) screen size.

  • Full import and export support.

v1.5.0

• New built-in Frame node
• New shortcuts with some existent ones being remapped, including:
  • CTRL+E for quick re-export
  • Node removal with Del instead of CTRL+Del
  • Moving selected nodes on focused grid using CTRL+Arrow-Keys
• Tracking and restore window state from configuration file
• Revising project regarding recent Godot updates
• Jumping to target nodes or underlying macros by double-clicking on Jump or Macro_Use nodes.
• More fixed issues and minor improvements

v1.4.0

• New Features:

  • Connection Assist

• Enhancements:

  • UI Retouch
  • New Quick Preferences

    ... for connection assist and quick node insertion

• Updated License

v1.3.0

• New Features:

  • Quick Node Insertion
  • Generator (New Built-in Node Type)

• Enhancements:

  • Better negative number handling
    • New Absoulute operator for Variable_Update
  • Query scope option

    Now you can set if you want to search within the open scene or project-wide.

• Other minor improvements

v1.2.0

• Enhanced Continuum Safety

  Now Arrow takes care of continuum safety for exposed/parsed variables in content-oriented nodes as well.

  Caution! We can't use curly brackets, dots or spaces in variable names anymore.

v1.1.1

• New Feature:

  • Official HTML-JS Runtime: Hybrid Styling

• Enhancements:

  • New project filename validation and suggestion
  • Snapshot editing feature is back

• Documentation (wiki) revision

• Other minor fixes

v1.1.0

• New Features:

  • New quick preference: Auto-Node-Update

    • In-memory history of node modifications (fairly stable)
    • UI & keybindings Ctrl + I|U|P

  • Variable parsing in playable exports

    Variable parsing existed in the Arrow's console but, was missed from the official HTML-JS runtime

  • We can now remove snapshots (useful for huge projects)

• Some other minor fixes

v1.0.2

• Better New Blank Project Handling

  When the new (blank) project is modified and unsaved, if user tries to create another blank project, open a saved project or close the app, a heads-up will be shown.

  Importing a project won't affect the state of the open (new) project.

• New Release Checker

  A button linked to the archive of releases shows up, indicating availability of a new release

  • Updating third-party license to comply with the MBedTLS Apache license

• Other Minor Changes

  • Comment cleanup, in favor of more detailed wiki
  • Fix typos with word 'match' and its plurals
  • playable|auto indicator for dialog nodes

v1.0.1

• Clarification on Project File Path and Work Directory

  • Fix: The Browse button opens the current work directory
  • Absolute file path is shown for new projects (on prompt)
  • Heads-up when the selected filename is already used and will be renamed

• Renaming Inspector::Project::More button to Export

• Textual Save Preference

  • Now Arrow prefers text/json to format saved project data by default
  • Users can override this default unchecking Prefer Textual Save in the Preferences panel
  • The setting USE_JSON_FOR_PROJECT_FILES now accepts three values

    null | false | true
    Default is null which activates and follows the Prefer Textual Save preference

    Note: Though it's much more portable and VCS friendly, JSON save and open processes may be a bit slower on huge projects, due to the project data refactoring on io (integer type conversion for UIDs.)

v1.0.0

• First Release