Shadowy goings-on

Look closely at the image above, and take note of two things.

First, the blackboard on the wall isn't casting a shadow on the floor. This is something that's been irritating us for ages. Now, with the interior lighting setting switched on, objects mounted on walls don't cast shadows when the walls don't cast shadows.

Now compare the two pictures on the right. (This is a bit subtler; you may need to click on the image and see it a bit larger.) The left-hand picture casts a shadow on the wall, but the right-hand one doesn't. That's because they're placed in different ways. The left-hand one is actually fractionally in front of the wall, and was placed there with the gizmo. The right-hand one is attached to the wall normally, and so has no shadow.

This now means you have the ability to have shadows if they're important to you, or lose them when they're not working as you'd expect.

Autosave

There is nothing more frustrating than having Moviestorm crash, the power go out, or accidentally press "don't save" when quitting, and finding that you've just lost everything you've been working on. It's happened to all of us. In fact, it probably happens to us more often than most, since we're frequently working with half-written code.

Well, those days will shortly be at an end, with the new autosave feature we're putting into the next release.

And it's controllable too... ain't that sweet?

And then you can restore from whichever backup you want when it all goes horribly wrong.

Development blog, May 19, 2010

Watch this and then go ooh, ooh, ooh!

And then you'll have to wait till next week to find out more, because we love to tease you.

The pictures on the wall this week are a promo still from Iain Friar's Clockwork, and a drawing of Boris Karloff that Chris did for me ages ago in, I think, ArtRage.

Micro-patch

We just shipped a micro-patch to the Moviestorm launcher to fix a problem with login error messages.

When you start up Moviestorm, it will download a tiny update, and then restart. You can then use Moviestorm as normal.

This patch introduces no new functionality.

Developers' diary, May 7, 2010

We've had a busy month.

In early April, we released the Metro Style pack. We followed that up with Moviestorm 1.3, which included the new Cutting Room and filters, and, of course 3D. A week later, we shipped the first filters pack plus the 1.3.0.1 patch, and then yesterday, we gave you the Dark Romance pack.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, we launched the lifetime subscription and we've been working on those nagging PayPal and issues.

The rest of May should be somewhat less hectic for us. We're aiming to ship the Dining pack in a couple of weeks (assuming, as always, we don't have any last-minute calamities), and we've already started work on Moviestorm 1.3.1. We have several more packs in development, including a second filters pack, but we're not certain exactly in what order those will be finished. We'll have a better idea towards the end of May.

We're also looking at quick and easy solutions to make it easier for you to find your way round the growing number of user-generated packs and mods that are out there. We've seen a huge rise in the number of new mods, peaking at one a day at the end of April. Most of them are free, which means there's a huge selection of extra content instantly available to every Moviestorm subscriber. The programmers are focusing on 1.3.1, so we're just going to do something simple for now.

Darkly Romantic

We're just putting the final touches to the new vampire pack. It's got the provisional title Dark Romance, so that gives you an idea of the sort of vampires we're talking about here.

We're hoping to get this out to you later this week.