Rare minor release: v10.1

It doesn't usually happen, but this time we got a small but critical bug fix that comes with some unexpected goodies:

• Fixed VS Screen getting stuck when a previous player with pronouns but no socials was swapped with a player with pronouns and socials.
• Added new Skins:
  • Early to Bed Maypul
  • Genesis Zetterburn
• Added Champion to custom skin select to Mollo, Pomme, Olympia.
• Simplified VS SCreen / Scoreboard hide and show logic.
  • As it was intended, animations will play when browser source becomes active, but only after getting inactive first. This means that you really should deactivate Refresh browser when scene becomes active on OBS's source (which is off by default).

Patchnotes for regular v10 below:

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Ok so this one is pretty massive. Its been a while since the last one hasn't it? With this release, the main focus was to prepare the code for other next projects while also adding some really cool RoA features. The internal code was once again reworked all around and should be easier to develop with.

But anyways, changelog!

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Important change

• It is now recommended to uncheck Refresh browser when scene becomes active on the OBS browser source, as the code will now detect when browser is out of scene.
  • This is the default value when you drag n' drop the .htmlfile onto OBS.

General

• You can now add (up to 9) and remove commentators instead of being always locked to 2.
• Added new socials for players and commentators: Bluesky, Mastodon, Cohost.
  • Player and commentator presets created before v10 will need to be manually updated.
  • Updated Twitter icon. I'm sorry.
• Added tag and pronouns to commentators.
  • Through a new "Profile Info" menu, similar to player info.
• Added missing character skins since last release.
• VS Screen and Scoreboard scripts have been reworked, now using modules.

GUI

• Round input has changed into round select, reading from a list of rounds from a file.
  • Certain rounds can have an additional number input to specify round number.
  • You can swap back to text input round in the settings.
• GUI now supports plugins. It will now load any script found in the Resources/Scripts/GUI Plugins/ folder.
• Added files for custom css so its easier for users to add (and remove) some personalized styles.
• Added toggle to write to simple text files, default is off.
  • idk i just didnt want to write like 16 files to disk every time the scoreboard updates, i don't know if people keep using this feature?
• Fixed character shader returning empty images after changing bracket round too many times.
• Fixed player finder displaying presets with characters from other character lists (for example, workshop characters when using a base cast character list).
  • If a preset is found, but has no matching characters from the current list, it will display a "Random" entry so you can still apply player info.
• Improved notification system so that more than one notification can be shown at the same time.
• Updated tag icon.
• Updated Electron to v28.

VS Screen

• Added support for HD Recolors generated in real time by the GUI, active when "HD arts on VS Screen" is enabled.
  • Only 8 characters have HD recolor support: Etalus, Forsburn, Kragg, Maypul, Orcane, Shovel Knight, Wrastor, Zetterburn.
• Round info box will now dynamically scale with the text, instead of resizing it.
  • if no round info, the box will now dissappear.
• Commentator box will now dynamically scale with number of commentators.
  • In those dire situations where there are no casters, the box will now dissapear.
• Middle elements will now be vertically adjusted depending on what's visible.
• Commentator boxes are now slightly larger.
• Commentator icons will no longer shrink if text is too large.
• Team background gradient and text background are now generated by css.
  • Colors may be slightly different.
• Player info fade-ins are now properly calculated.
  • Before, it would consider socials with no text on them.

Scoreboard

• Round box will now dynamically scale with the text, instead of resizing it.
• 2v2 player names are now a bit smaller.
• Team colors are now generated through the GUI using a single image, instead of being many separate images.
• All ScoreUp and Intro .webm files have been removed in favor of pure CSS.
  • This means everything updates dynamically based on the colors sent by the GUI.

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Now, I think it comes as no surprise, but I'm pretty certain this will be the final release for this project. I personally haven't really played the game in a while, and interest is dropping in favor of the upcoming sequel. This project has had a long run anyways.

Does this mean this is the end for the Stream Tool? Absolutely not! The ST itself will continue to evolve, as there are still cool features that can be added, like SGG integration, some more GUI for presets, and ngl a Crews mode would be cool af. But as I said before, this release was focusing mainly on laying the groundwork for future updates.

For now though, my eyes are looking to the still WIP Pokemon ST project, and man that Melee ST code is old and awful, yet people keep using it, if only there was something to do about it...

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Don't forget to check those wiki pages for some good tips!

Any doubts? The Discord ST server is all you need to get support for this or any other Stream Tool! Join and say hi!

You can also support this project and get some cool stuff over at Ko-Fi and Patreon! All help is appreciated, and they say time is money! And I sure would like having more time to develop projects like this!

The 10th | Looking towards the next thing

Please download v10.1 instead!

The Ninth Release | The biggest one yet

It's been a while, but I can assure you I've been cookin. This release has many new cool features, but most importantly, an enormous GUI code rework with a focus on making this project more future proof, and every single fix and improvement that I could think of! It has been in the works for many months, so check this changelog (how do they keep getting bigger??):

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General

• Added a new Bracket.html view which will show a top 8 graphic, ready to be used in OBS like the other html files.
  • You can edit what appears on it with a new GUI button left of the update button.
• Added skins: Street Wave Wrastor, Genesis Hodan, Champion Mollo.
• Moved character image types to their own folder within their character folder.
• Removed most of the skin images, as they are now generated by the GUI in real time.
• Removed ALL trail images, as they are now generated by the GUI in real time.
• Replaced example workshop character included to Torga.
• Fixed browser views becoming unresponsive in OBS if left disconnected for too long.

GUI

• Huge code refactor/rewrite (modules are the new trend). It will now be easier and more intuitive to work with GUI script files.
• The GUI will now recolor skin images for all characters on demand. No more hundreds of skin images!
  • You can now input a color code for any character to generate a custom skin by selecting Custom Skin at the bottom of a skin list.
  • There's also support for Custom DLC Skins.
  • You can also save custom colors to player presets within the GUI.
  • Character icons are now recolored! Because it looked cute.
  • GUI is now generating them trail images. Because it can.
• Remote GUI now uses the same logic as the GUI. All functionality is now available in the Remote GUI (except window settings).
  • This means that using and saving presets inside the remote GUI is now possible.
• GUI executable code is now outside of the executable (except for path data), meaning you can now control stuff like http/websocket servers and window creation without building a new executable.
• Added new window settings to:
  • Make the window resizable.
  • Change window zoom.
  • Restore window dimensions to default.
• All finders now consider if they are out of view or not, and reposition accordingly.
• Player and Commentator finder lists are now generated on startup and when saving a new preset, instead of generating them on each keypress.
• Window default color is now grey (no more white theme jumpscare when booting).
• GUI will now remember current window dimensions when closing.
• Character list images will now maintain original aspect ratio (looking at you Maypul icon).
• Changed web console hotkey to F12.
• Fixed Ranked Pomme and Ranked Shovel Knight not appearing on their skin lists.
• Fixed Force W/L checkbox not properly resetting the W/L state.
• Probably more small stuff fixed with the big refactor that I forgot to document.

Breaking changes

• Characters now follow a new .json structure for skins. This means all workshop characters created before this release will need to be adapted!
  • You can now automatically generate an _Info.json file from a Colors.gml file. Read the wiki page about adding workshop characters for more info.
• Player and commentator presets now need the name value. This means presets made for previous releases won't work without it.
  • Player presets with previously saved custom colors will no longer work. Please remake them through the GUI.

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Of course, all wiki pages have been updated with new info!

Workshop creators!! Your old character folders won't work, but now the character creation process is easier than ever! We also even created an entirely new project/webpage that does the heavy lifting :)

What's next? Honestly, with most features done, and RoA getting less and less relevance as time goes on, it seems like this project's dev lifetime will soon be over, with the added possibility of me branching out onto other, new and not so new projects.

But that doesn't mean there aren't features I would like to see one day, like Crew Battle support, OBS Control through the GUI, or if we're getting ambitious, automated updating gathering data from the game. Will I end up coding those? Only time will tell!

New platforms

Starting with this release, there is now a Discord ST server, where you can get announcement updates, or get support for this or any other Stream Tool! Join and say hi!

You can now support this project and get rewards over at Ko-Fi and Patreon! This is very important for me, as it will determine the amount of development I can give to these projects.

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Anyways, I hope you enjoy this release! Go make awesome RoA streams with it 😎

Eight time's the charm | With many new goodies

Do you know what feature creep is? Because now I sure do. This release has many new features that each individually took a lot of time to create, like the reworked character selectors, numerical score, or remote GUI. You know, maybe I shouldn't make each release bigger than the last one, maybe I should go smaller for the next one, but for now, take a look at that sexy big changelog!

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General

• Added pronouns, Twitter, Twitch and Youtube info to players.
• Added Youtube info for commentators.
• Added "Best of X" score toggle for numerical score.
• Added skins: High Roller Absa, GoTE Maypul, Champion Olympia, Pool Party Pomme.
• The GUI now starts an HTTP server that allows you to remote update the stream tool from any device. More info on this here.
• The GUI now starts a Websockets server to connect to browser sources, instead of writing a file for it.
  • Because of this, updating is now instant instead of being on a delay of up to half a second.
• Browser sources will no longer read directly from local json files, instead this data will be provided from the GUI.
  • This means loading characters faster, and also indirectly fixes many cases where character images were not found, like VS screen hanging whenever image shown was meant to be "Random". This issue was actually caused by the latest OBS version.
• All SVGs are now local files instead of inline code, so its easier to modify them.

GUI

• Reworked character and skin selectors, now using images for visuals and a filter text-box.
• Added a player info button for every player to add info like pronouns, tag, and social media.
  • Tag input has been moved to the new player info menu.
• You can now create player presets directly from the GUI (through the new player info menu).
• You can now use commentator presets, and create them through the GUI.
• Added a new setting toggle to auto update on score hotkey press.
• Added a new setting toggle to make score hotkeys remove score ticks instead of adding them.
• Added sections to the settings menu for clarity.
• Added a vertical layout that activates if the window width goes below 600 pixels.
• Swap icon is now always visible.
• Color indicator now has rounded corners, because I felt like it.
• Gamemode selector is now text for clarity.
• Changed order of seasonal skins for the new 4 characters for consistency.
• Fixed a long standing bug where the GUI could not update pressing the Enter key after typing on a player name input.
• Fixed color dropdown not going back to left-align when changing the gamemode back to singles.
• Cleaned up a bunch of CSS jank. Customizations to the overlay should be easier and less broken.
• Electron updated to 20.0.3 man these exe sizes keep getting bigger

Scoreboard

• If there's no round text, round background will now fade out.

VS Screen

• Reworked commentator info rotation logic.
• Commentator social info shown will now be random on startup instead of always being twitter.

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As always, all wiki pages were updated accordingly with this release, so please take a look!

So what's next on the horizon? Don't think for a second that there are no features next to implement, because I have many ideas. Maybe a bracket view? Perhaps a crews gamemode? Built in recolorer? All of them sound ambitious, but for now, I will rest for a bit. This release has been big enough already!

If you encounter a bug, or have a feature request, please open up an issue!

v7.1 | With them new characters

This may look like a smaller release, but oh boy this required tons of work. So yeah, new characters, new arts, and a few tiny changes that I felt like including. Read below!

• Added new characters: Hodan, Mollo, Pomme, Olympia.
• Updated arts for all existing characters.
• Added missing skins since last release:
  • Steampunk Sylvanos, Zetterburn.
  • Golden Absa, Elliana, Forsburn, Wrastor.
  • Genesis Kragg.
• Character backgrounds are now located inside their character's folder so its easier to add/delete characters.
• Compressed all character images, final download size should be a bit smaller.
• Changed Custom 1/Custom 2 skin names to Default Custom 1/Default Custom 2 for clarity.
• Removed MainMenu arts. Implemented "alt art" functionality for workshop chars that used the MM system.
• Removed non-official workshop characters. except Mayu

Workshop creators! As you can see, I've made the decision of removing all workshop characters from the base download. I literally cannot keep up with all the updates made to the few characters already included, and as the recent changes have made it easier to externally add new characters, from now on only Guadua and Sandbert and Mayu will be included to serve as examples. Do you want to add more characters? Take a look at the workshop guide, where you can also see links to drive folders with many many already made characters.

Stream Tool VII | The Scoreboard Awakens

Hoo boy, it really has been 8 months since the last release. I would really like to have these out more frequently, but I'm a busy man. I was lucky enough to have this October free of commissions/projects so I could finally work on this again! I had to actually cut this release by half of what I had planned, or else I wouldn't have release this year. Anyways, here's the changelog:

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General

• Reworked animation system to use native animations instead of an external library (gsap).
  • This should mean performance improvements. Many animation timings have been adjusted.
• Character animations will now wait for all player char images to load so everything animates at the same time.
• Added LoA 2 renders, Heat Wave Clairen, Pool Party Etalus, Steampunk Orcane and Absa, updated Forsburn's renders.

GUI

• Now uses files external to the executable itself, meaning that you can now modify the GUI the same way you would modify all the other scripts.
• Added new shortcuts to help you when developing:
  • F5 to reload the GUI.
  • F6 to open the web console. This will also unlock free window resize.
• Added an Always on top toggle in the settings.
• Settings now save between sessions.
• Scrollbars now have some styling.
• You can now specify window width and height in a config file.
  • The GUI is now a bit more responsive to compensate.
• Finally added an icon to the linux executable.
• Updated Electron version (from 9 to 12.2.2).
  • I have not updated to a newer version since up until today (v15), all newer ones have a very ugly image downscale filter that I was not able to fix.

VS Screen

• No longer stutters when loading images for the first time thanks to the animations rework. Issue #4
• No longer dies if the trail image can't be found.

Scoreboard

• Reworked Scoreboard, now adapted for a cornerless design.
  • For this reason it is now strongly recommended to disable top HUD on the game's display settings.
• Simplified sponsor logo system. Just drop a logo into the Logos folder, then it will show up whenever a player has a tag like that image name.
• Player texts will now animate towards the same direction when fading in and out. Idk it just looks cooler.
• Player colors have gone back to being png files, since its generally easier to edit a png rather than an svg.

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Next release will probably happen around the same time RoA releases their next characters, so next year. I have some features I really want to add for next release, like extended player profiles (pronouns, twitter, etc.) and updating the character selector visuals. But I guess we will see then.

A new wiki page for customizing the GUI is now up! If you're interested, be sure to check that out.

And please, please, please, don't skip the setup instructions, be extra sure to have Refresh browser when scene becomes active enabled on obs, and to turn off the in-game top HUD on RoA's display settings!

Rolling the Sixth release | NOW WITH DOUBLES

Hoo boy, what a release. This is the biggest one yet, thats for sure. So the main objective here was to add doubles, but for that to work, basically 80% of the code had to be rewitten. But it has been done. There have been lots of changes under the hood, though don't worry, the visuals still look the same. I was going to add more stuff to the release but I had to cut some stuff or else I would never release. Onto the patchnotes!

General

• Added D O U B L E S.
• Massive code rework on every script, this should mean the browser sources in OBS now have better performance (character fade-in stutter stays the same).
• Workshop has finally been updated, with tons of new characters from the RCS legal list!
• Workshop and Base Cast files have been split so everything can look a bit more clean.
• Character list is no longer a single file, now the GUI will create this list internally, looking at each folder at Resources/Characters/, excluding the Random and _Workshop folders. This is to make it easier to add and remove characters.
• Character trails and info files have been moved to their respective Characters folder. This is also to make adding and removing characters easier.
• All character positions have been redone to support a new way of positioning the images in the Scoreboard and VS Screen scenes. Images can now be scaled down with no cropping.
• Animations for character images in VS and Scoreboard will now wait till the image is fully loaded (not much will change if your pc is decent enough).
• Game In.webm is now shorter (from 3 seconds to .5). I just removed the +2 secs of transparent nothingness.
• Finally changed the skin names for the default skin names from Normal to Default.
• Score .txt files have been added to the Simple Texts folder.
• Tons of file/folder cleanup.

GUI

• Added a "Copy match info to clipboard" button on the settings menu.
• Actually fixed W/L status not changing when swapping. Fix is from last release, but it wasn't included in the executable, whoops.
• Reduced the size of the Windows executable by half, I honestly have no idea how this happened.

VS Screen

• Added a score overlay. It will only stay visible if the score count is above 0.
• Fixed a long standing bug where some P2 VS character images would disappear for a few frames when moving the char's trail. Issue #3

Scoreboard

• Added support for Main Menu renders for all characters, can be activated in the GUI settings just like with the VS HD toggle.
• Colors will now smoothly transition when changed (color is now an svg).

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Workshop, creators! Do you want your character added to the Stream Tool? There's a guide to help you do that, don't worry! If you end up adding a workshop character, please let me know so it can be added to the main project. You can either create a pull request here, or contact me directly through Twitter or Discord Readek#5869.

I have tons of ideas for the next release, but plans tend to change. Even then, I will say I'm planning to focus on improving the GUI, so stay tuned! And please, if you know a bit about javascript, don't forget to check the issues page and see if you could help with those!

v6 pre-release for RCS WS

This release was meant to be used at the NA RCS workshop stream. It includes all the legal RCS workshop characters, and characters that are not on that list are not present in this release.

Don't use this release, please use the stable release instead.

The Definitive Fifth Release

This release took longer than I expected! It's the first one for the Definitive Edition of the game, and as such, I've included all the new assets from it, and also took the chance to prepare the GUI for a new dropdown menu style, but for now it's only used for the new feature. In the next releases, I'll try to make the GUI a bit prettier overall. Also, tried to clean up the code and now it has more comments explaining things, just in case anyone wants to grab the code to make something themselves.

General

• Added all new skins from the Definitive Edition (milestones, infamous, champions).
• Code cleanup and optimization for all scripts!

GUI

• Added player presets, now player names will appear as you type in the player name inputs (oh my gosh this one took so long).
• Added a 'Force W/L' toggle that makes it so it always shows the W/L buttons.
• Now also available for Linux! I left that out of the previous release but turns out it wasn't hard to build at all.
• Allow Intro toggle is now back to off by default.
• Force HD toggle no longer gets disabled with workshop. Just in case someone wants to do HD arts for those?
• The swap button now also swaps the W/L status.
• The GUI clear button now properly resets the player text boxes width.

VS Screen

• The Force HD toggle will now also show the LoA HD skins if the skin selected is LoA.
• Skins containing LoA in their name will now show Aether High as background.
• Improved twitter/twitch change logic.
• Twitter/twitch change interval from 6 to 7 seconds.

Scoreboard

• Fixed W/L images not going back to show nothing. Apparently this bug has been there since v2, whoops.

I said before that I would update the workshop in this release, but with the release of the DE, I just couldn't find the time for it, so I'm sorry, next release it is!

As always, please use the issues page if you find any bug, or if you have any idea how to fix the ones open.

The fourth of releases - GUI REWORKED

So it finally happened. The Graphical interface has been completely reworked, dropping Qt for Electron. So what does this mean? In short, we now have a much sexier, crossplatform, easier to upgrade interface at the expense of having an executable so big it looks like I've put Denuvo in it. I will say though, I kinda rushed the last parts of the interface, and be warned, the code isn't pretty. But expect the interface to be improved in future releases! I just needed to make a public release once in a while.

Also, you may have already seen it, but the project is now called RoA Stream Tool! I disliked the original name since it was too similar to other things, and this new name reflects better what this project is about. Anyways, changelog:

• GUI completely reworked. And with it, new features:
• You can now see how the character/skin looks like when changing it in the interface. No longer will you wonder if that player has a custom skin or not.
• Player tag is now a separate text input. Now let's forget about that |.
• Added a clear button (Shortcut: ESC). Will clear player name, tag, character and score.
• Added Twitch labels for the casters, shown in the VS screen. If a caster has both Twitter and Twitch info, the info shown will keep changing every 6 seconds.
• In the all new settings menu, added a check to force HD renders on the VS screen, but not on the game scoreboard.
• You are now able to change to the workshop character list through the interface, without having to mess with the files.
• Added On The Edge Elliana and Champion Maypul skins.
• Updated Forsburn's BG video. A destroyed building was apparently added ingame some time ago.
• Added and deleted some player skins.

This time workshop has not been updated. Ages have gone by since the last release and the changes are so many I had to put that aside for the next release. Speaking of which, the next release will focus on workshop updates and changes! I really want to make a split with an optional download, so we'll see how that goes.

As always, please use the issues page if you find any bug, or if you have any idea how to fix the ones open.