VNext 0.8.0

What's new

• Every menu works with the mouse, the keyboard and a controller: the arrows, the d-pad or the left stick go to the next button (a ring shows which), and Enter, Space or A press it, else go on with the story. Lists that scroll (History, the saves, Endings...) scroll with them, an input opens an on-screen keyboard for a controller, and Settings' Keys rows have a keyboard box and a controller box.
• New built-in controls (Library > Controls): move_up, move_down, move_left, move_right and press for menus; skip (Tab, RB) and auto (A, LB); quick_save (F5, with a Saved notice) and quick_load (F9). A key the game gives one of its own controls is taken from the built-in ones.
• The built-in textbox has Menu, Skip, Auto, Q.Save, Q.Load and Phone buttons in a row that closes up when the game has no pause menu or phone; Skip and Auto stay lit while they're on. The Phone button shows whenever the player has a phone, also in games where new messages open the phone. menu_button and has_quick_save are new built-in values, and + New screen has Saved.
• The built-in choice menu sits lower, clear of a character's face and the textbox.
• Saves keep the history and a choice's question; the save slots' and the flowchart's confirm= asks now ("Overwrite this save?"); a chat waiting for a message waits again after loading; messages and calls wait while a menu is open; the ready-made menus' backdrop no longer shows the menu under it. After loading, rollback reaches the loaded line, and rolling back to before a chat or call puts the phone away.
• The developer tools have three tabs: Story (with its map), Screens and Library (with Translations and Settings at the end of its list). The Log tab is gone: what matters shows in a window, the rest goes to log.txt.
• No menu bar: the tools' own buttons are at the window's foot (Story, Screens, Library; Play, Play scene, Next line, Stop here; Undo to Select all; New game, Look again, Reload, Pack, Folder; Layout, Reset; the tools' languages and Translate; About, Quit), grey when they can't be used, and a tab with mistakes has a red mark. Their keys are built-in controls too (tools_undo, tools_copy, tools_story...), so a game can change them.
• Every part of a tab is a sub-window with a title: Layout moves and resizes them (they snap to each other, never overlap, and a border two parts share moves both), and Reset puts the tab back.
• Empty boxes say what they mean in grey everywhere: a part's Style (the one named after its kind), its other styles (the part's own), the game's glide, scrollbar and fading-edge settings, a screen's own animations on an open line, At once for a named sound's fade out. Mistakes on new lines say what's missing in the form's words ("What to check is missing.", "Which image to send is missing.").
• A chat's text lines are edited in the phone form like its other lines (Direction, From, Action...), and Enter starts the next message from the same person.
• • New atlas starts cut from one of the game's images; Variables have As text; the Library's image list and Settings show their labels whole at 1024 wide; "Closes itself after" is "Closes after (seconds)".
• An atlas named as its image no longer hides the image file: the Library shows the whole file, and sub-images are cut from it, in the game too.
• The downloads are named with their version: VNext-0.8.0-Windows.zip and so on.
• Removed: the menu bar, the Log tab and the notice box; Find and Replace; + New file; the map's + New scene; The usual menus under + New screen (make the menus one at a time); the helper texts in the tabs.
• Fixed: the developer tools' keys did nothing without a game; importing a translation spreadsheet hid a failed save and added an undo step when nothing changed; Play from line's second try started from the first try's reads and variables.

Download

Download the zip for your computer, unzip it and open VNext. With no game next to it, it opens in developer mode, where you make one. To play a finished game, put its game.vnext next to VNext: the game keeps its players' saves and progress in that file.

• Windows (10 or newer): VNext-0.8.0-Windows.zip. The first time, Windows may say it protected your PC: click More info, then Run anyway.
• macOS (13.3 or newer, Apple silicon and Intel): VNext-0.8.0-macOS.zip. The first time, macOS won't open it because Apple hasn't checked it: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
• Linux (64-bit, as new as Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12, or newer): VNext-0.8.0-Linux.zip. VNext in it is an AppImage, VNext-Linux.AppImage, one file that runs as it is.

licences.txt, in each zip, lists the software built into VNext and its licences; About shows it too. VNext itself is under the zlib licence. How the players are signed: code signing policy.

VNext 0.7.0

What's new

• Time: Settings' Time gives a game the story's own clock and calendar, the player's real ones (the story waits for them), or days and parts of the day, with when it starts, its parts of the day and a 24- or 12-hour clock. A Time line goes on to a moment (18:30, evening, saturday) or lets time pass. The phone's clock and date and the backgrounds (an image named after a part of the day) follow it, + New screen > Calendar shows each new day, and conditions and texts read time_day, time_hour, time_part, time_weekday, time_clock, time_date and more.
• Music and sound lines have Fade out: how long the song before (or the sound of that name) takes to fade.
• Players have no built-in keys but F10: every key is a control (Library > Controls) that players change in Settings' Keys rows. Controls can point at the next part of a menu, press it, scroll, put back what's dragged and choose an option. A button takes several keys (keys=), so the Key part is gone.
• • New screen > Input asks the player to type into a variable (the story opens it with open input). The ready-made Settings has Keys rows and scrolls when it's long, its sliders say their units and the text speed's fastest says At once, and every ready-made screen uses the developer tools' colours with fewer parts.
• Lists that scroll (History, Gallery, Endings, Songs, Achievements, Tips, Flowchart) can show a scrollbar, and the Flowchart scrolls sideways too. A gallery image or a tip takes clicks only when a click does something. Skipping a line stops its voice.
• The developer tools: every form row is one line; text that doesn't fit ends in "..." and shows all of it in a tip; lists and forms that scroll have scrollbars; Esc closes an open list first; a list box shows its default in grey, as every box does; the text format buttons show the look they give; New line's buttons are grouped as Words, Stage, Sound and Flow; the Map draws a jump back to an earlier scene between the rows; mistakes say what's missing in the form's words.
• Renaming a character renames their chats, calls and phone lines and keeps their pictures, and renaming a scene follows a character's Chat or Call scene.
• A part's look is its style alone: size=, colour=, align= and the other style settings on a part are errors now (give it a style). Lists take only the item size and spacing settings they use (History and Page: spacing; Pages: item_width, item_height and spacing; Flowchart: no columns), and glide only where they scroll.
• The players' slider settings are numbers in conditions and {texts}: {master_volume} is 80 (write "{master_volume}%"), and text_speed is 0 at its fastest. {speed N} is letters a second and a whole number, and a {speed}, {pause} or {appears} with a wrong value is an error.
• Removed: the ask, chapter, flowchart, unlock (ending, achievement, tip and gallery NAME: set persistent.ending.NAME and so on instead), textbox, hide textbox and new page lines; notices (the Notice line, part, screen and setting: a screen of the game's own does it, with story=goes_on and close_after=); the Key part; show ... as NAME; the Story tab's preview and the Screens tab's Try it; F6 and the error screen's Esc; arrow_keys and the built-in keys on menus, choices and the history. Scripts that use them need updating.
• Fixed: a camera move without a zoom (a shake) did nothing; the flowchart's labels spilled out of their boxes; the ready-made screens' texts sat higher than they were laid out; the Map's help ran into the scenes in a narrow window; Starts at's suggestions with a time in them; an option could be dragged into a chat, and pasting into a chosen chat put the line under it.

Download

Download the zip for your computer, unzip it and open VNext. With no game next to it, it opens in developer mode, where you make one. To play a finished game, put its game.vnext next to VNext: the game keeps its players' saves and progress in that file.

• Windows (10 or newer): VNext-0.7.0-Windows.zip. The first time, Windows may say it protected your PC: click More info, then Run anyway.
• macOS (13.3 or newer, Apple silicon and Intel): VNext-0.7.0-macOS.zip. The first time, macOS won't open it because Apple hasn't checked it: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
• Linux (64-bit, as new as Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12, or newer): VNext-0.7.0-Linux.zip. VNext in it is an AppImage, VNext-Linux.AppImage, one file that runs as it is.

licences.txt, in each zip, lists the software built into VNext and its licences; About shows it too. VNext itself is under the zlib licence. How the players are signed: code signing policy.

VNext 0.6.2

What's new

• Fixed: a chat opened again on the same person stayed scrolled up, so its new messages and a choice's options came in out of sight. A list that keeps to its end (position=bottom) now starts there each time its screen opens.
• Fixed: the call screen showed a stand-in when the caller had no avatar for their expression. It shows their usual avatar instead, as the phone's lists do.

Download

Download the zip for your computer, unzip it and open VNext. With no game next to it, it opens in developer mode, where you make one. To play a finished game, put its game.vnext next to VNext: the game keeps its players' saves and progress in that file.

• Windows (10 or newer): VNext-0.6.2-Windows.zip. The first time, Windows may say it protected your PC: click More info, then Run anyway.
• macOS (13.3 or newer, Apple silicon and Intel): VNext-0.6.2-macOS.zip. The first time, macOS won't open it because Apple hasn't checked it: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
• Linux (64-bit, as new as Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12, or newer): VNext-0.6.2-Linux.zip. VNext in it is an AppImage, VNext-Linux.AppImage, one file that runs as it is.

licences.txt, in each zip, lists the software built into VNext and its licences; About shows it too. VNext itself is under the zlib licence. How the players are signed: code signing policy.

VNext 0.6.1

What's new

• A chat gives the player options only with a choice, whose options show on the phone. Answer lines (quoted lines ending with a colon) and the Chat form's + Answer are gone: scripts that use them need a choice instead.
• The phone screen's list of a choice's options is now called options: list=options, with {option.text}, option.on, option.locked, option.note, option.kind and option.number (answer.of is gone). The ready-made phone uses the new names; phone screens made with 0.6.0 need updating.
• Fixed: an atlas's message about a wrong frames_in_a_row still called it columns, its name before 0.6.0.

Download

Download the zip for your computer, unzip it and open VNext. With no game next to it, it opens in developer mode, where you make one. To play a finished game, put its game.vnext next to VNext: the game keeps its players' saves and progress in that file.

• Windows (10 or newer): VNext-0.6.1-Windows.zip. The first time, Windows may say it protected your PC: click More info, then Run anyway.
• macOS (13.3 or newer, Apple silicon and Intel): VNext-0.6.1-macOS.zip. The first time, macOS won't open it because Apple hasn't checked it: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
• Linux (64-bit, as new as Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12, or newer): VNext-0.6.1-Linux.zip. VNext in it is an AppImage, VNext-Linux.AppImage, one file that runs as it is.

licences.txt, in each zip, lists the software built into VNext and its licences; About shows it too. VNext itself is under the zlib licence. How the players are signed: code signing policy.

VNext 0.6.0

What's new

• The phone is rebuilt as one "phone" screen beside the game, made from ordinary screen parts, and + New screen has a ready-made one: a lock screen, a home screen, Chats, Calls, People and a Settings app where players change its owner, passcode and wallpapers. Each app says so when it's empty.
• Chats: a chat line brings up someone's chat on the phone, and the story waits while the messages come, as they're typed or each after a click. People send images, stickers and voice messages, type, delete or edit their last message, react and read the player's. A choice in a chat shows its options on the phone, and the one picked is sent as the player's message.
• Calls ring until the player answers or declines them, or their time runs out, and the lines under "missed:" play when nobody answers. The phone is put away after every chat and call.
• Players can chat with and call people themselves: Contact when puts a character in People, and their Chat scene or Call scene plays when the player opens their chat or calls them. A choice there waits on the phone while the story goes on.
• The phone goes by variables: Has a phone when (in Settings) and each app's Shown when say when they're there, and its owner, wallpapers, passcode, clock, date, signal and battery are variables that Settings starts and the story sets like any other. The phone locks whenever it's put away: with a passcode, the lock screen asks for it each time.
• New messages (in Settings) says how players hear of one: the textbox's Phone button counts them, the phone opens, or a notice shows. Controllers vibrate when a message comes and while the phone rings (Vibration, in the players' settings).
• Screens: a container can repeat its parts for each item of a list, stack its parts down or across and fit itself to them, and keep a scrolling list at its end as more comes; a text can wrap at a width and stop after a number of lines. Clicks on an open screen that lets the story go on stay with that screen.
• A choice has no words of its own any more: the line before it asks it and stays up meanwhile. Repeats brings a choice back after an option's lines, and a jump goes under an option.
• Mistakes that used to pass are errors now: a name in a condition or {value} that isn't a variable or a value, and a line starting with a lower-case word that isn't a command (words like that go in quotes).
• The Settings tab has a row for each setting, time boxes say their unit, and the developer tools' previews show the game as it is, with nothing made up.
• Script words are the developer tools' words, in British spelling: scene (was label), background (was scene), setting (config), place (position), notice (notify), flowchart (chart), gallery (unlock), width and height (w and h), when (if), colour, centre and grey, among others. Sounds go in sounds/ (was audio/). The old words are errors, and 0.5.0 saves don't load.
• Removed: the message line and phone on/off (chats and Has a phone when do it now), the phone and contacts screen parts, and choices' words, screen= and -> jumps. Scripts that use them need updating.
• Fixed: notices didn't show in games without a notice screen of their own; a character's name colour and text colour never took effect; the Story tab kept showing the last scene's lines after choosing another.

Download

Download the zip for your computer, unzip it and open VNext. With no game next to it, it opens in developer mode, where you make one. To play a finished game, put its game.vnext next to VNext: the game keeps its players' saves and progress in that file.

• Windows (10 or newer): VNext-0.6.0-Windows.zip. The first time, Windows may say it protected your PC: click More info, then Run anyway.
• macOS (13.3 or newer, Apple silicon and Intel): VNext-0.6.0-macOS.zip. The first time, macOS won't open it because Apple hasn't checked it: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
• Linux (64-bit, as new as Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12, or newer): VNext-0.6.0-Linux.zip. VNext in it is an AppImage, VNext-Linux.AppImage, one file that runs as it is.

licences.txt, in each zip, lists the software built into VNext and its licences; About shows it too. VNext itself is under the zlib licence. How the players are signed: code signing policy.

VNext 0.5.0

What's new

• Animations do everything that moves now. In the Library, an animation has a timeline: each change is a bar, dragged to when it starts and stretched to how long it takes, with easings that bounce, wobble or overshoot; it plays once, looping or a number of times.
• • New animation has ready-made ones to start from: fades, fade through black, a flash, slides, wipes, pop in, hop, shake and float.
• Animations can wipe things in and out: from the left, or in the shape of a picture.
• Characters, images, backgrounds, screens and the camera all play them. A line plays one with "with" (as something comes, goes or opens, or on the camera) and keeps one going with "animation="; Settings has "Animation on show" and "Animation on hide" for characters and images. Any part of a screen can play one while it's pointed at.
• The camera plays animations: it zooms, pans and turns, and fades or wipes the whole stage. It stays where an animation leaves it, and the next one goes on from there.
• Players can turn animations off (Animations, in their settings): everything then shows as it ends.
• Stop here and Next line: the story stops just before a chosen line when it's played, and Next line goes on one line at a time.
• The developer tools can be translated: a translation is a file in "editor languages" next to VNext, and About makes one ready to fill in.
• The editor does less work each frame (fewer checks on disk, its texts kept ready).
• Removed, as animations do them now: transitions (with fade, with dissolve...), the move, animate, shake and flash lines, and the camera's zoom, place and rotation settings. Scripts that use them need updating.
• Fixed: "at left", "center" and "right" put characters and images half a screen off; the Library's style sample was blank; the Story preview said "not reached" for a scene's first line; long values in some boxes wrapped onto a second line.

Download

Download the zip for your computer, unzip it and open VNext. With no game next to it, it opens in developer mode, where you make one. To play a finished game, put its game.vnext next to VNext: the game keeps its players' saves and progress in that file.

• Windows (10 or newer): VNext-0.5.0-Windows.zip. The first time, Windows may say it protected your PC: click More info, then Run anyway.
• macOS (13.3 or newer, Apple silicon and Intel): VNext-0.5.0-macOS.zip. The first time, macOS won't open it because Apple hasn't checked it: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
• Linux (64-bit, as new as Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12, or newer): VNext-0.5.0-Linux.zip. VNext in it is an AppImage, VNext-Linux.AppImage, one file that runs as it is.

licenses.txt, in each zip, lists the software built into VNext and its licenses; About shows it too. VNext itself is under the zlib license. How the players are signed: code signing policy.

VNext 0.4.2

What's new

• VNext.exe now carries its name, version and copyright, which Windows shows under Properties → Details.
• The Windows build is ready to be signed through SignPath Foundation, which signs open-source projects for free; the players aren't signed yet. The code signing policy, linked below, says how signing works.

Download

Download the zip for your computer, unzip it and open VNext. With no game next to it, it opens in developer mode, where you make one. To play a finished game, put its game.vnext next to VNext: the game keeps its players' saves and progress in that file.

• Windows (10 or newer): VNext-0.4.2-Windows.zip. The first time, Windows may say it protected your PC: click More info, then Run anyway.
• macOS (13.3 or newer, Apple silicon and Intel): VNext-0.4.2-macOS.zip. The first time, macOS won't open it because Apple hasn't checked it: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
• Linux (64-bit, as new as Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12, or newer): VNext-0.4.2-Linux.zip. VNext in it is an AppImage, VNext-Linux.AppImage, one file that runs as it is.

licenses.txt, in each zip, lists the software built into VNext and its licenses; About shows it too. VNext itself is under the zlib license. How the players are signed: code signing policy.

VNext 0.4.1

What's new

• On Linux, VNext is now an AppImage: VNext-0.4.1-Linux.zip holds VNext-Linux.AppImage and licenses.txt. The AppImage is one file that opens as it is once unzipped, on 64-bit Linux as new as Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12.
• The AppImage plays the game folder or game.vnext next to it, and a packed game's saves and progress go into game.vnext, as on Windows and macOS.

Download

Download the zip for your computer, unzip it and open VNext. With no game next to it, it opens in developer mode, where you make one. To play a finished game, put its game.vnext next to VNext: the game keeps its players' saves and progress in that file.

• Windows (10 or newer): VNext-0.4.1-Windows.zip. The first time, Windows may say it protected your PC: click More info, then Run anyway.
• macOS (13.3 or newer, Apple silicon and Intel): VNext-0.4.1-macOS.zip. The first time, macOS won't open it because Apple hasn't checked it: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
• Linux (64-bit, as new as Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12, or newer): VNext-0.4.1-Linux.zip. VNext in it is an AppImage, VNext-Linux.AppImage, one file that runs as it is.

licenses.txt, in each zip, lists the software built into VNext and its licenses; About shows it too. VNext itself is under the zlib license.

VNext 0.4.0

What's new

• The editor fits any window size. It lays itself out in the window instead of being scaled to the game's size, so a bigger window gives more room and the text keeps its size; in a window smaller than 1024 x 640 it shrinks evenly to fit. In a narrow window, the tools at the top go on a second row.
• The editor is laid out the same way on every tab: the same columns, headings, form titles, margins and previews.
• New line (Story) and New part (Screens) are the same named groups of buttons. New part now sits under the screen, with Goes in to put the part on the screen or in the part chosen.
• Resizable window (Settings, Game): whether the window can be resized by dragging its edges, one setting for the game and the editor.
• Pack the game says how it went in a window of its own, with Show the folder after a pack.

Download

Download the zip for your computer, unzip it and open VNext. With no game next to it, it opens in developer mode, where you make one. To play a finished game, put its game.vnext next to VNext: the game keeps its players' saves and progress in that file.

• Windows (10 or newer): VNext-0.4.0-Windows.zip. The first time, Windows may say it protected your PC: click More info, then Run anyway.
• macOS (13.3 or newer, Apple silicon and Intel): VNext-0.4.0-macOS.zip. The first time, macOS won't open it because Apple hasn't checked it: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
• Linux (64-bit, as new as Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12, or newer): VNext-0.4.0-Linux.zip.

licenses.txt, in each zip, lists the software built into VNext and its licenses. VNext itself is under the zlib license.

VNext 0.3.1

What's new

• A packed game keeps its players' progress in game.vnext too, with their saves: what's kept between games (the gallery, endings, achievements...), the lines they've read and the flowchart. Settings and the log stay in each player's own folder.

Download

Download the zip for your computer, unzip it and open VNext. With no game next to it, it opens in developer mode, where you make one. To play a finished game, put its game.vnext next to VNext: the game keeps its players' saves and progress in that file.

• Windows (10 or newer): VNext-0.3.1-Windows.zip. The first time, Windows may say it protected your PC: click More info, then Run anyway.
• macOS (13.3 or newer, Apple silicon and Intel): VNext-0.3.1-macOS.zip. The first time, macOS won't open it because Apple hasn't checked it: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
• Linux (64-bit, as new as Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12, or newer): VNext-0.3.1-Linux.zip.

licenses.txt, in each zip, lists the software built into VNext and its licenses. VNext itself is under the zlib license.