Alpha 3 released for all to enjoy

[gorilla nest]

Alright everyone, Alpha 3 is here! Enjoy a number of new parts (including lasers!), and a bunch of usability improvements. Rope and belt selection/attachment is greatly improved and much less frustrating.

This build has some little part changes as well as some big physics determinism fixes. It would be a good idea to check your current contraptions and see if any of them need updating. Some changes are small like the fuse on the cannon being moved to the back. However, the determinism changes (assuring that contraptions always run the same), may affect a small number of contraptions out there.

If some of your contraptions can't be fixed because it's just to finite of a change, I apologize! These types of changes will be happening less and less until your contraptions will never break. It's not fun to lose progress on a big contraption (I deal with it a lot in the office), but don't let it stop you. I say this a lot, but we are super amazed by everything you guys upload to the workshop, and it's really awesome to see!

Please give your feedback on this latest build, and report any new bugs if they have cropped up. Thanks, and enjoy!

New Parts

• Repeater: Extends the reach of a laser. It can also have a delay applied to how long it takes to turn on and off.
  
• Egg: The egg can roll around and be thrown around your contraptions. If it falls too far or gets hit to hard it will break. Try to throw it as far as you can without breaking it.
  
• Egg Timer: Set a time and then hit the button on the top or bottom. When time is up, the hand will give a poke.
  
• Lawn Mower Motor: Attach a rope and pull the starter. The mower will run forever.
  
• Bellows: Hit the bellows with a ball to give a one time gust of wind.
  
• Steve the Crocodile: Steve just hangs out and eats whatever comes his way. If he can't eat it, he will toss it up in the air.
  
• Phil the Fish: Phil swims around in his bowl. If you break the bowl, it will attract Waldo.
  
• RGB Lasers: Standard lasers come in red, green, and blue. They must be plugged in to turn on.
  
• RGB Inverse Lasers: Inverse lasers turn on by default. If the sensor on the back is hit by another laser, it will turn off.
  
• Mirror: Bounce lasers around with mirrors.
  
• Splitter: This will split one laser into two.
  
• Laser Outlet: An outlet powered by laser input.
  
• Mixer: Mix two lasers to make a new color.

New Puzzles

10 New easy official puzzles. We have watched hundreds of people play the game, and a large number of them want easier puzzles to help ease them into the game. These 10 puzzles aren't very hard, but it doesn't mean they aren't still fun!

Part Adjustments

• Made Recycling Box animate when something heavy is dropped into it
  
• Made Waldo work correctly on active Conveyor Belts
  
• Added new Generator animation artwork
  
• Added new Toaster animations and support for selecting how much toast should be toasted
  
• Tweaked max velocity for Bouncy Ball
  
• Adjusted locations of rope attachments on Teeter-Totter so it is more balanced when things are hanging by ropes off both ends
  
• Fixed snap points for flipped Hamster Cage and Jack-in-the-Box
  
• Toaster can now be flipped
  
• Made Vacuum affect a larger area
  
• Made Domino less bouncy
  
• Made Wood Crate, Recycle Box, Cardboard Box, and Dripping Bucket affected by explosions
  
• Made deadlocked belt attachments correctly set deadlocked state and speed
  
• Waldo can see a little farther
  
• Moved fuse on cannon

New Art

• New mountain scenery
  
• New underwater art
  
• New larger forest art
  
• New message dialog
  
• Added new artwork for Hamster Cage to fit with the overall art style

Usability Improvements

• New rope/belt selection interface. Ropes and belts can now be selected directly instead of having to select the parent part first.
  
• Ropes & Belts now show all points they can be attached while selected
  
• Improved deletion of parts when dragged out of a window. Now parts will not delete unless they are dropped outside of the window
  
• Fixed mouse offset when rotating parts
  
• A locked rope with a dangling attachment will become unlocked when ran as a puzzle (avoids broken ropes)
  
• Allow movie framerate to be set.
  
• Use white selection lines for dark backgrounds.
  
• R key runs and stops the contraption (custom key bindings coming soon)
  
• Part controls can be seen and used if they fall outside of the puzzle window
  
• New move to back / front buttons for scenery
  
• Display feedback when refreshing stash.
  
• New tab grouping for parts
  
• More accurate part selection
  
• Selection boxes follow the wall orientation
  
• Make new contraption windows position themselves in a cascaded fashion
  
• Make sure that the part context buttons don't overlap when the scaling gets too small
  
• Made context buttons around selected parts not scale with the scene.
  
• Make most recent the default browse option in the community
  
• Levels can be deleted from the stash
  
• Change cancel button to OK in movie complete dialog.

Bug Fixes

• Added routine to set the slack on each side of a pulley joint in chipmunk
  
• Made Fishbowl break correctly when hit by explosion
  
• Fixed bug so Remote Bomb Plunger uses the correct collision normal value
  
• Fixed chipmunk cpPulleyJoint so that positional constraint is not applied when there is slack in the rope
  
• Fixed the bug where the scenery would disappear if you deleted the last animation frame and then hit play.
  
• Fixed the bug where the one-shot animation would jitter on the last frame.
  
• Fix flicker when scrolling the animation panel
  
• Cleaned up bugs connected to switching bodies on attachments
  
• Fixed bug where knot sprite wasn't being deleted when rope attachments were deleted
  
• Fixed bugs with ropes that were keeping around pointers to deleted bodies
  
• Intermittent crash fix
  
• Multiple physics determinism fixes. Contraptions should run the same every time
  
• Made the rehash function for efficient so it doesn't waste time doing a remove and then add back to hash set.
  
• Fixed an infinitely stretching rope bug
  
• Fixed a few parts so that they didn't have shapes with the same ids.
  
• Fixed issue with incorrectly selected belt endpoint if you attached a belt right onto an anchor when dragging it into the scene.
  
• Fixed issue with disconnecting endpoints correctly by just dragging over an attached point.

[MacBernick]

Nice !

[4LT]

I don't like how rotating/resizing of wall/floor/ceiling/diagonals causes the piece to "jump" to the cursor's position, it makes slight adjustments difficult.

[keithj2]

Ruca - I agree, the cursor jump when adjust walls is jarring. I'll see if we can fix that in an update.

[Pyren]

Alpha 3 Build v0.075 is now released. This update has some minor Alpha 3 fixes that we wanted to get rolled out to make sure the new content is working properly.

Bug Fixes

• Deleting items from Stash no longer causes a crash
  
• Animation Tool Crash fixes
  
• Laser can emit while touching  other parts
  
• Laser Outlet now only triggers for correct colors
  
• Laser Splitter can now split multiple lasers
  
• Mouse no longer jumps when resizing walls

[4LT]

There's a bug with hit detection on laser inverters
(unless it's supposed to work that way)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=196538715
(see bottom inverter)
Moving the incoming laser a little to the left fixes this

[Pyren]

That definitely looks like a bug -- we'll have to clean up the hit detection once we've got better art on the lasers.

[Evilworm]

I have a wish for this game. Can you guys make small floating hints on what the different parts is? Other than that, a very nice game. Btw, did write your own engine from scratch or do you use a premade one?

[Pyren]

We'll take a look at the tooltips.

As for the engine, it's pretty heavily customized, but we are using some premade tools (also modified at this point) listed on the splash screen.

[gorilla nest]

Postat inițial de Evilworm version 4.0:

I have a wish for this game. Can you guys make small floating hints on what the different parts is? Other than that, a very nice game. Btw, did write your own engine from scratch or do you use a premade one?

We will eventually make it easier for new players to figure out what all of the parts are. For now, if you place a part into play and select it, there is a question mark that you can click. This will bring up a short looping demo to show what the part is and how it works.

We started development on the Loom game engine which is based on Cocos2d-X. We have some of our own stuff thrown in there as well.

[Evilworm]

Ok. Studying gamemaking in Unity 3d (and some other, Construct, Flash etc.) myself. Great stuff anyway. Love this game, just as the other similar games.

[FroBodine]

Is another update in the works any time soon? I am really looking forward to the rest of the puzzles.

[Pyren]

We'll have another release before Christmas. No promises about more puzzles, though.