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.