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.