Sketchy Maze v0.7.0 Released

A new alpha version of Sketchy Maze has been released, which brings several improvements to the game. This is also the first release in which the “free version” drifts meaningfully away from the “full version” in terms of features. The full version includes the ability to publish your level, bundling all of its custom doodads inside the level file for easy sharing. The free version can still use custom doodads, but they must be managed manually.

• Brush Patterns for your level palette. Instead of your colors drawing on as plain, solid pixels, a color swatch can sample with a Pattern to create a textured appearance when plotted on your level. Several patterns are built in including Noise, Marker, Ink, and others. The idea is that your brush strokes can look as though they were drawn in pencil graphite or similar.

  

• Title Screen: the demo level shown on the title screen will leisurely scroll around the page. The arrow keys may still manually scroll the level any direction.

• Attach Doodads to Level Files: this is the first release that supports truly portable custom levels! By attaching your custom doodads with your custom level file, it will “just play” on someone else’s computer, and they don’t need to copy all your custom doodads for it to work! But, free versions of the game will not get to enjoy this feature.

• Settings UI: a “Settings” button on the home screen (or the Edit->Settings menu in the editor) will open a settings window. Check it out!

• Horizontal Toolbars option: if enabled in the Settings window, the toolbar and palette in the Editor will be horizontal instead of vertical, along the top and bottom of the screen. This may be better optimized for smartphone-sized screens like the Pinephone. If the program is started with -w mobile the first time, it will use horizontal toolbars by default.

Some small bits of polish in the game’s user interface:

• Some buttons are more colorful! The “Ok” button in alert boxes is blue and pressing Enter will select the blue button.
• When opening a drawing to play or edit, a blue Browse… button is added so you can more easily find downloaded custom levels and play them.
• In the Level Editor, the “Level -> Attached Files” menu will let you see and manage files attached to your level, such as its custom wallpaper image or any custom doodads that were published with the level.
• The keyboard shortcut to open the developer console is now the tilde/grave key (`) instead of Enter.

Bugs fixed:

• The WASD keys to move the player character (as an alternative to the arrow keys) now works more reliably. Previously, they were affected by key-repeat so Boy would do a quick hop followed by a longer one when pressing W to jump. Also, his animation would not update correctly when moving via the WASD keys. Both bugs are fixed in this release.
• Shortcut keys advertised in the menu, such as Ctrl-N and Ctrl-S, now actually work.

Get the new version on the Download page!