Worldbuilder Version 0.1.1 Release

2015/04/15 by Andy Gainey Comments (20)

The first follow-up version of Worldbuilder is released, Version 0.1.1! This is admittedly a minor version, but comes with some very nice usability improvements, a few new features, and better error detection and messaging, as well as some miscellaneous bug fixes. (Click here to purchase. There is also a demo available. If you have already purchased it, you may proceed to the download page.)

The usability improvement has to do with camera controls. Previously, the only way to change the view was using the primitive controls on the left pane. With version 0.1.1, you can now do the natural, controlling the camera using the mouse and keyboard within the viewport itself. Click and drag, zoom in and out with the mouse wheel, or use the keyboard (WASD/ZQSD and arrow keys for panning, number pad +/- and page up/down for zooming). Far more convenient than sliders.

If you would like to do something with the raw data procedurally generating that Worldbuilder is presently unable to do, you can now get at that data in the JSON format. Under the File menu is an option to dump all of the data to a file. Warning: The generated files can get rather large. This export will need to be improved in the future, to be smarter about what data gets dumped. But for now, I figured too much data is better than none at all.

For situations where Worldbuilder is being uncooperative, I also added better error detection and reporting. Fewer things should cause a crash, and error messages will be reported in the status bar. If you’re looking for more information, under the Help menu you’ll find debug options, including the ability to turn on various logging which will be displayed within the Lua console (also accessible through the Help menu). These debug options also include Lua compiler settings which can be adjusted in case various compiler optimizations aren’t playing nice with the scripts.

Change Log

Added mouse and keyboard controls for controlling the viewport camera.
Added ability to export a dump of all raw data to JSON.
Made significant improvements to error detection and messaging.
Added options for controlling log output to the Lua console.
Added options for disabling various Lua compiler settings, for diagnostic purposes.
Released memory resources whenever a new world generator is opened or created.
Fixed incorrect latitude calculations when projecting a planet onto a flat map.
Fixed the Braun stereographic map projection, which had previously included a scripting error and completely failed to work.
Miscellaneous minor user interface improvements.

20 Comments

Comment by Alex — 2015/05/18 @ 08:11

Hello, Andy.

Thanks for your great work!

Are you planning irregularity tiles?
Sorry if already answered this question.

Comment by Andy Gainey — 2015/05/18 @ 08:23

@Alex, yup, it’s on the list of things to do! I don’t have a target date for that feature, but it is entirely possible that I squeeze it into a release this summer, given that it is fairly isolated from other implementation details and should therefore be doable without notably impacting anything else.

Comment by Brennan — 2015/05/24 @ 08:32

Hi Andy,

Okay, so I got up this morning with the goal to fire up my windows instance and run this…

Boom. It blows up on the standard wgen generator around the plate tectonics generation. App crashes hard. No real error info. What can I do?

Thanks,
Brennan

Comment by Andy Gainey — 2015/05/25 @ 15:06

@Brennan, sorry to hear that. One thing that you could try is to go to the Help > Debug Options menu item, and in the dialog either reduce the Lua compiler optimizations, or turn off the compiler altogether. It will run more slowly, but there is a possibility that the generator is confusing the Lua compiler in a subtle fashion and causing it to execute an invalid operation.

I had noticed this type of error intermittently in the past, and thought that I had worked around it. But only last week did I do some deeper investigation and figured out the specific flaw in my code that was causing the problem, so I might have that same problem scattered around elsewhere. Since it’s very finicky, some instances of the flaw might never manifest on my computers, but could on someone else’s.

I’m going to be working on some other tech support issues this week, so I’ll also scan through my code and try to fix all instances of this flaw. If fiddling with the compiler settings gets you up and running, then when I release the next version, it will possibly also fix the problem you’re encountering, allowing you to run at full speed again.

Comment by Brennan — 2015/05/26 @ 22:02

Hi Andy,

Nope, still tanking. I shut it off and it while it did run slower it promptly bombed out as soon as it got to the “Build Tectonic Plate Model” action, approx 59.72% into loading standard.wgen.

I tried with the low res as well and it’s bombing in the same place.

Could you contact me via email (hopefully you can see it when I enter it, if not it’s with my payment info) I’d like to help you figure this out.

Thanks,
Brennan