Hey @here @Epic Notification Bell Club - I just deployed a new engine update!
New Flowlab Release: HONEYDEW
This release is focused on improving the Sound behavior, making collision shapes more flexible, and improving messaging.
Sound Updates
Changes
- Sound will now continue to play when the sound is paused, if the object is not
- Sound will continue to play between levels if the object is set to “keep between levels”
- play output now outputs when the audio playback starts, not when the sound is triggered
- new settings panel
New Settings
- stop playing on despawn controls whether the sound stops when the object is destroyed, useful for explosions/etc
- play mode controls whether the sound in streamed (music mode) or loaded completely (sound effect mode)
- preload available in sound effect mode, preloads the sound on game start so it plays back instantly the first time
- pan (this is also an extended input) - left/right stereo, available in sound effect mode only
- overlap enables sounds to overlap instead of restarting on playback
- extended options shows extra inputs & outputs
- start position selects the starting point of the playback (in seconds)
New Inputs
- pause pauses the sound (play will resume it)
- url allows you to select an mp3 url
- pan sets the stereo value (-100 to +100), sound effect mode only
- pos sets the starting position
Collision Shape Updates
Now when selecting a physics collision shape, you get a popup where you can tweak the collisions.
- Circle: you can scale the circle to adjust it
- Rectangle: You can scale the x & y axis of the rectangle
- Capsule: You can scale the x & y axis of the rectangle
- Polygon: You can deselect the “auto” checkbox, which will allow individual vertices to be modified, and the shape can be dragged as well. The collision system operates on convex polygons, so that’s one restriction
Object Targeting Updates
In this version, these behaviors now target objects by name instead of id:
- Collision
- Proximity
- Extract
- Message
The goal is to resolve the following issues:
- Reusing objects with these behaviors between levels is difficult (or impossible)
- Copy / Paste logic between games/levels is extra painful since behavior settings must be changed
- Opening the settings for these behaviors in levels where the objects don’t exist causes the settings to be los
The “new” approach is to target by name, so that individual objects can be referenced even if they don’t exist.
This change should be backwards compatible, and should fall back to using the old ids in previous engine versions.
Please check it out, and let me know what you think about this behavior, and if you encounter any issues.
Typed Messages
This should be fairly self-explanitory, but the general idea is now you have to create a message before using it, similar to how Globals and Object Properties work. Messages can now send:
- Numbers
- Text
- Text Lists
- Number Lists
New Sprite Assets (Indie Only)
A bunch of new great-looking & super-flexible sprites added by our own @PixelPizza!
Misc. Fixes
- Prevent duplicated links when copying behaviors
- Various behavior settings panel layout fixes
