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NovelForge 2.2

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@sideeffects69 sideeffects69 released this 20 Sep 05:37
v2.2.0
2c3d8ea

A rebuilt map maker, a more modern look, an easier install, and a full website to go with them. Your novels and Word documents are untouched by this release - it only changes the program.

What's new

The map maker, rebuilt

  • Worlds that look like worlds. Coasts now wander into bays and headlands, islands are irregular, mountains form chains, forests and deserts form soft patches, and lakes fill real basins.
  • Rivers that make sense. Every river starts in the hills and runs to the sea, with tributaries. Before, they were short stubs in the middle of nowhere.
  • Roads follow the land - never through the sea, and around steep ground.
  • A better-looking map: shaded, snow-capped mountain ranges, tree stamps, riverbanks, pale shallows and ripples around every coast, and place names with a halo so they stay readable over coasts and rivers.
  • The same seed always rebuilds the same world - names included. (Before, the names were different every time.)
  • A new window: a tool rail with icons, palette and properties cards, the map lying on a desk, and Export and More menus in place of fifteen crowded buttons.
  • Much faster to use. Zooming shows at once, and nothing is rebuilt for a zoom, a selection or a pan.
  • Fixed: a lake drawn on the land used to vanish under it; forests reshuffled every time a map was opened; the map picker named the wrong map when the one on screen was unsaved.

A more modern look

  • Rounded buttons, fields, tabs and scroll bars in every theme, cards on a darker backdrop, and icons throughout. Every tool window and dialog now sits on the same rounded card.
  • Corkboard cards are rounded and easier to read; the Outline window shows all of its columns.
  • The NovelForge logo is used everywhere: window and taskbar icon, welcome screen and About box. Make Desktop Shortcut.bat puts an icon on your Desktop.
  • Fixed: the Sprint and Corkboard windows on scaled (125%) displays.

Easier to install

  • Write.bat now installs the two small libraries NovelForge needs the first time you run it (this needs the internet once), and says plainly what to do if Python is missing.

A website

Getting started

  1. Install Python 3.13+ - tick "Add python.exe to PATH" during setup.
  2. Download Source code (zip) below and unzip it anywhere.
  3. Double-click Write.bat. The first time, it installs two small libraries for you.

See the README for the full feature list, or the website for a quick look before you download.

Upgrading from 2.1 or 1.0

Your novels live in the Projects folder next to Write.bat, and your preferences in novelforge-settings.json. Copy both from your old folder into the new one before you start it.

Requirements

Windows 10 or 11, Python 3.13+. python-docx and Pillow are installed for you on first run (or pip install -r requirements.txt). On Windows 11 the title bar also takes on the theme's colour.

This release ships with an automated test suite that clicks every menu command, toolbar button and tool-window button, opens the Map Maker in every theme, tests the map engine, and checks the website (python -m unittest discover -s tests -t .).

Assets 2
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