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.