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.