Construct 0.97 released

Download 0.97 now

Construct 0.97 is a major update including theming, better family support, a new Plasma object, mesh distortion in Sprites, several other new features, and many significant bug fixes.

This is one of our biggest releases ever, with the most changes - exercise usual caution if you have projects you are worried about (back them up, or wait a few days to ensure there arent any new bugs). However, I'm hoping everything has gone smoothly!

Construct is developed free of charge by volunteers. You can support Construct's development by donating via the button on the main page.

Here's the full changelog:

Behaviors

• [ADD] Turret: predictive aiming (uses the LinearAim engine to aim at moving targets)
• [FIX] Physics: destroyed objects still colliding
• [FIX] Physics: editing collision masks for rotated objects
• [FIX] Physics: objects getting stuck when stopped and then using Set Velocity

Families

• [ADD] Family manager: can add and remove private variables to and from families in one go. This will be expanded in future to allow for the same thing with behaviors and effects.
• [ADD] When adding an object to a family, you are prompted to add the family variables to the object. This prevents objects with no variables wiping out family variables when adding them to a family.
• [ADD] Add/remove variables dialog: when removing private variables, you are prompted if any families are using the private variable.
• [FIX] Expression type checker could have accepted non-existant family private variable names in some circumstances
• [FIX] You now cannot mix plugin types in a family. If you try to add a button to a family of Sprites, a warning is displayed and the object is not added.

General

• [ADD] Theme selection from Preferences dialog. Affects entire interface. The three coloured 2007 themes are not yet finished - some dialogs will appear unthemed and there seems to be a drawing bug with the ribbon - but the other themes work OK.
• [ADD] Application properties: Text rendering mode (Aliased, Antialiased, Cleartype). Cleartype seems to produce the best quality results, especially for large font sizes.
• [ADD] Ribbon 'Events' page: Find
• [FIX] Properties bar: Locale settings where comma was the decimal separator always was interpreted as an integer. Comma is now supported as a decimal separator as per locale settings.
• [FIX] More consistent theming of dialogs throughout the IDE
• [FIX] Undoing an add/remove private variable to an object corrupted the application. These actions cannot be undone until a solution is found.
• [CHANGE] Ribbon: Removed add/remove layout buttons (they did nothing and you may as well use the project bar)

Event sheet editor

• [ADD] System object: LayoutName, LayoutNumber, Sign, Qarp expressions
• [ADD] System object: On Collision (advanced) and Is Overlapping (advanced) conditions. Allow you to specify the exact objects being picked.
• [FIX] Passing private variables to plugin expression parameters was sometimes rejected as invalid expression
• [FIX] 'ceil' expression was not working
• [FIX] Find & replace dialog: Event numbers of results were sometimes wrong, and dialog did not resize properly. Slightly tweaked layout of dialog.

Layout editor

• [FIX] Grids: snap movements/snap resize now working properly
• [FIX] Grid settings are now saved

Picture editor

• [ADD] Status bar tips for all buttons/tools
• [ADD] Toolbar button for "wrap mode" (allows easily drawing seamless tiled images)
• [FIX] Some tools not working properly (eg. Flip)
• [FIX] Problems with opacity
• [CHANGE] Shift+Crop leaves a 1 pixel transparent border around the image. This improves image quality for rotations & scaling.

Plugins

• [ADD] Plasma object
• [ADD] Sprite: mesh distortion (enable with set distort map size action)
• [ADD] DirectSound: Set/Get Master volume
• [ADD] Window: Get window client X/Y
• [ADD] Particles object: Can now scale and rotate individual particles (construct only uses the fast method if theres no scaling and rotation)
• [FIX] DirectSound memory economy: frees memory when an autoplayed channel stops (this was not a memory leak, but the memory would still be in use until another sound was played on the same channel).
• [FIX] Particles object: respects timescaling properly
• [FIX] Combo box: sort and type options were not working correctly
• [FIX] 3D Box: crash when using 'Change display resolution'
• [FIX] List box: 'Add line' did not accept numerical expressions
• [CHANGE] Default image size for Sprite is larger
• [CHANGE] DirectSound: Positional sounds engine now more realistic, obeying the inverse square law. New rolloff controls and minimum distance to customise.

Runtime

• [ADD] New runtime application properties under 'Advanced': Override TimeDelta, and Timer FPS. If override is enabled, TimeDelta returns a constant value, regardless of the real value. The value given is 1 divided by the Timer FPS (eg. if you enter 50, TimeDelta is always 0.02).
• [FIX] 'FPS in caption': gave multiplied framerate values when motion blur enabled.
• [CHANGE] System: 'Timer' expression now respects timescaling, incrementing more slowly with lower timescales. Timer is now higher resolution (previously was to nearest ~10ms, now to 1ms) and more accurate.

First

(haha i bet everyone is angry)

Nice work

Great looking update.

Excellent work guys. Thanks as always! Plasma object huh....

Excellent!

Going to download this first thing in the morning!

Now I'm off to bed, 2:36 AM here.

Woah! At last, new build \:D/ And we're getting closer to 1.0. Let's test it right away ->

Awesome update... downloading now!

The Wrap mode on the image editor is pretty slick. The Find feature is neat too, but I get a blank "OK" box when I click on the Find icon:

<img src="http://i34.tinypic.com/29ze6w2.png">

Clicking either OK or the X will then bring up the find window. Oh, and the Find window is also labeled "Find and Replace" even though there's no Replace (I know you're probably just thinking ahead though )

Awsome! I've been checking this page a few times a day for a new update lately!

I chuckled a bit, seeing the warning message for overriding time delta, though it's certainly true. Thanks -- I probably won't get to play with it for a bit though (though I'm going to try).

One thing though that I don't like is that, as far as I can tell, I can't set the override at run time. I'd reallyreallyreally like this feature eventually, though I don't really need to worry about it yet...... Though, I could just use Set Timescale to get the same effect, couldn't I...? I'd test it instead of asking, but I'm in the middle of the woods right now.

Either way it'd be nice to have it seperate -- for organizational purposes, though it could easily be worked around. Thanks though, I'll be glad to be able to get back to work on the engine.

great update!

only new concern i have is strictly cosmetic.

i first noticed it in the last version. not sure how long its been like this since i dont use construct that much, but the autohide side bars are annoying.

it only displays the currently selected tab and all the others are tiny smashed tabs. not good.

<img src="http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b121/comeon666/untitled-16.png">

Cecil: that's not meant to happen, try deleting the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Construct\ folder in the registry and start up Construct again.

uninstalled, deleted the scirra program folder, deleted the registry, and reinstalled construct. no dice.

i noticed this on the last version and that was before i recently system restored my computer because of clutter. so its still happening on a fresh install.

Must be a bug in the UI library. I'll follow it up with the developers.

Nice update. Some excellent new features in there.