* New actions are available to save & load the game state, making Saving & Loading as easy as adding 1 action to your game!
* While it will work in most cases, it has a few limitations and hasn't been thoroughly tested on all types of objects/behaviors and games, so it is for the moment tagged as **Experimental** while we gather feedback and improve it
* Check out the wiki for more info: https://wiki.gdevelop.io/gdevelop5/all-features/save-state
* This adds two new settings, available in the Project Properties and in the Scene Properties dialog, to allow to specify the strategy for preloading resources of the scenes and unloading them. By default, a game will preload in background the resources of all scenes. It will never unload these resources (so scene switching is fast).
* You can now choose to unload the resources of a scene when the scene is left using the "Resources unloading" field. If the scene is launched again later, it will load its resources again.
* You can also choose to change the preloading to disable it for all scenes (by modifying the setting in the project properties) or enable it/disable it on a scene by scene basis. This can be useful for large or modular games where you anticipate the player to only play some scenes, or if you want to reduce the resources that needs to be loaded on a web game.
* This allows to fully release resources, textures and anything else that is linked to a gdjs.RuntimeGame. This can be useful if multiple games must be loaded/unloaded/changed in a single web page.
Only show in developer changelog
* This will allow to detect any bugs or crash in the game engine without relying on manual reports from users on GitHub. Note that exceptions and errors in JavaScript code blocks won't be reported. This can be deactivated in preferences if you prefer not to have GDevelop send these crash reports at all.
* Actions can be used at the beginning of the game or a scene, to define scene and global variables as synchronised by another player, or not synchronised at all
- Global or scene variables can be used with a unique action and condition.
- Object variables can be used with a unique action and condition.
- Variables need to be declared following the same logic as the new expression syntax.
- Local variable can be declared on events
- Extensions have their own variables
- Show a diagnostic report when a preview is launched and there are missing scene variables, object variables or behaviors.
- This is especially useful if external events are shared between several scenes.
* This allows to use animatable 2D objects created with Spine (purchase a licence on [their website](https://esotericsoftware.com/) if you're interested).
* 2D skeletal animation allows for very smooth animations, and keep resource usage low compared to animations made of frames like Sprite objects. It's perfect for 2D games and can be used for animated characters, avatars, UI elements.
* Many thanks to @f0nar and @LousyMolars for their work on this new feature and associated game examples!
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Co-authored-by: Vladyslav Pohorielov <vpohorielov@playtika.com>
Co-authored-by: Gleb Volkov <glebusheg@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Florian Rival <Florian.rival@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Davy Hélard <davy.helard@gmail.com>
* Only the first scene and global objects resources (images, sounds, 3D models etc...) will be downloaded during launch of the game. This usually allows for a very fast loading time.
* Other scenes resources will continue to load in the background. It has no impact on the game performance as this is done on other threads by the browser or the engine running the game.
* Scenes are loaded in the order they are listed in the project manager.
* You can also use actions and expressions to prioritize a scene (if it's known that a level will be needed soon for example) or read the current loading progress. This allows to create lightweight scenes that can act as custom loading screens. Otherwise, the launch loading screen will be shown if a scene is still loading when launched.
* Read more about this on https://wiki.gdevelop.io/gdevelop5/all-features/resources-loading/.
* This provides new 3D objects: 3D Box (perfect to create walls, floors, or billboards) and 3D Model (to import objects created in a 3D modeling app).
* 2D and 3D can be mixed in a same game. Each layer of a game can contain 2D objects, 3D objects or a mix of both.
* This allows to build 2D games, 2.5D games and full 3D games: platformers, racing games, FPS, hyper casual games. It's easy to start adding 3D objects to an existing 2D game.
* You can set up a light by adding an ambient light and/or directional light in the effects of a 3D layer. 3D objects can be configured to react to light or ignore it.
* In the future, support for 3D objects will be improved: light objects, animations, etc...
* Tilemaps made with [LDtk](https://ldtk.io/), a modern 2D level editor, can be now used directly. Make sure to save your map made in LDtk as a JSON file, create a new Tilemap object in GDevelop and in the Tilemap field, choose the LDtk file.
* Tilesets used by the LDtk Tilemap are automatically imported in your game - you don't need to import them separately.
* For more information, read about the [Tilemap object on the wiki](https://wiki.gdevelop.io/gdevelop5/objects/tilemap).
Co-authored-by: Davy Hélard <davy.helard@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Florian Rival <Florian.Rival@gmail.com>
* On desktop, the titlebar is now gone and replaced by the tabs and a button to open the main menu of the app.
* On the web-app, if installed (available on Chrome and Edge), the titlebar can also be retracted. Whatever your system or device, the menu can be accessed from the top left.
* The top toolbars have been entirely redesigned to be integrated below the tabs - which is more intuitive for new users. All the icons have been reworked to be cleaner, take less space, and be more modern.
* The debugger toolbar was also improved to display just Play/Pause according to the game state.
* Finally, the project manager was slightly redesigned to use new icons.
* It fixes a crash of the old Box2D library when a lot of objects with the Physics2 behavior were created.
* The same version of Box2d (2.3.1) is still used so there should not be any behavior change.
* This brings improved performance and compatibility for the desktop app with Windows, macOS and Linux.
* In particular, tilemap performance should be greatly improved both in the scene editor, the preview and exported games on Linux.
* This should also improve performance of both the editor and games on macOS when running on Apple Silicon (M1 cpus).
* Thanks to @nilaymajorwar for the ground work on this upgrade.
Only show the rest in developer changelog:
* More work is needed to isolate the Electron "renderer" process from the "main" process (both for the editor and for games), by using `contextBridge` and preload scripts (https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/tutorial/process-model). Your help is welcome to progressively do this migration.
Co-authored-by: Nilay Majorwar <nilaymajorwar@gmail.com>
* One or more preview windows can be launched and used with the GDevelop Debugger, like on the desktop app.
* To run the Debugger, click on the button next to the Play button in the toolbar and choose "Start Preview with Debugger and Performance Profiler"
* This is useful to inspect instances of objects, inspect internal messages or run the performance profiler.
* A right click on the Play button will also allow to launch a new preview, in a new window.
* Also fix the loading screen not shown in the preview on the web-app even when asked to be shown (using the game properties preview button)
* When launching the Debugger to inspect a game, open the Console to see internal messages sent by the game, JavaScript code or the game engine.
* This is an advanced feature that is useful to find issues in your game or to see if your game is displaying any internal error.
* This allows to generate interesting visual effects, which can be controlled by events. For example, you can use an outline on an object to highlight, make the player glow when launching a spell, blur objects, etc...
* A new "effects" tab is now present in the objects editor. From there, you can add visual effects, that were already available for layers, customize them from this editor.
* Actions and conditions are available to manipulate effects and change their parameters during the game.
* Learn more on the wiki: http://wiki.compilgames.net/doku.php/gdevelop5/objects/effects
Co-authored-by: Florian Rival <Florian.Rival@gmail.com>
* Allow to choose the style of the GDevelop logo (light, dark, colored or plain)
* Allow to choose the background color and an optional background image
* Allow to choose the size of the progress bar (with a minimum and maximum size)
* Allow to choose the duration of the fade in animations and the minimum time the loading screen is shown
* Use the **new preview button in the game properties** dialog to run a preview with the loading screen shown
* This allows to display texts on screen that use a "bitmap font", generated with softwares like [BMFont](https://www.angelcode.com/products/bmfont/) or [bmGlyph](http://www.bmglyph.com/).
* Bitmap fonts allow advanced effects and custom design of each character, with complete control over the appearance of the text. This is useful for making a custom score counter, titles, button labels...
* They also render very well in a pixel-perfect, pixel-art or retro-like game.
* Finally, these Bitmap Texts are fast and efficient to render on screen: useful for scores or texts that are updated frequently.
