Tuesday 12 July 2011

BattleScribe 1.11.01b Released!

A bug was discovered that prevented you from opening old rosters created with version 1.10.04b or before. This has now been resolved and it is recommended you upgrade as soon as possible. Unfortunately any rosters created with version 1.11.00b will no longer open in this fixed version since they would have been created with the bug still in place. Your old 1.10.04b rosters should all open fine now however.

My apologies, and many thanks to Hewhowatches on the forums for finding the bug.

Sunday 10 July 2011

BattleScribe 1.11.00b Released!

The new version of BattleScribe is here (both for the desktop and mobile), and this one has a couple of really nice updates.

Firstly, it can now handle different "game types" that can have alternate category layouts and min/maxes. This means you can create rosters for variations of games, such as Planetstrike for Warhammer 40,000 where the force organisation chart is different from the standard.

A second major improvement is in the loading times of data files. This mainly helps in the mobile version, where loading times could be minutes for big files (!).

One more I'd like to mention is the addition of affiliate links to the toolbar. These are shortcuts to some of the more popular on-line stores, so you can go and make purchases for your army. Anything you buy via one of these links earns a small percentage of the sale for BattleScribe. Hopefully if this proves popular/useful, I can improve this so that the selections you make for your army will show up in the store's shopping basket/cart when you click through. This will take collaboration with the stores though, so it would have to prove worth it for them - i.e. enough sales via these links. The idea is to make this as useful for users as possible, and not just a cynical money-making exercise...

Anyway, enough of my babble, here's the full list of changes:
  • Support for different game types, e.g. Apocalypse or Planetstrike. This is added to the Game System file.
  • Performance improvements when reading data files. This should help especially for BattleScribe Mobile loading times.
  • Rosters will now update to reflect changes (e.g. points fixes) in catalogue/game system files when you open them.
  • Copy as BBCode option in View Roster dialog. It's the normal text output wrapped in a BBCode "code" tag, meaning it will keep it's indentation in forum posts.
  • Added affiliate links to several on-line stores so it's convenient to go and make purchases for your army. Purchases made through these links make a few bucks for BattleScribe.
  • BattleScribe will notify you if there is a new version available, and provide a link to download it.
  • Data indexer will ensure data files are in the latest file format, and that they are zipped before creating the index.
  • File size drastically reduced - I've gone back to using XML attributes wherever possible instead of elements, and removed indentation.
  • Fixed bug where min/max selections of root entries wasn't being ignored, meaning you sometimes couldn't remove root selections.
  • Fixed bug where error "You can have at most -x selections from y" was always shown for collective entries.
  • Various UI tweeks.

And a couple more, just for BattleScribe Mobile:
  • Added a "Save As" menu item, so you can save copies of the list.
  • Added a "first run" screen with some information on data files: where to get them and how to use them.
  • The screen will no-longer go to sleep when long-running tasks are happening, such as when it's loading files or updating the file format.
  • Improvements to some of the "loading" screens so they give a little more information and the animation always works.
  • Warning: BattleScribe Mobile can take quite a while updating your data files to the new format - especially if you have a lot of them. Be patient! Once it's done it won't have to do it again. An alternative would be to delete your data files and replace them with ones you've already upgraded.

Finally I'd like to thank Toreador13 and Mahlers from the forums for their invaluable help in testing this release. Cheers guys!

Wednesday 6 July 2011

BattleScribe 1.11.00b Pre-Release

The latest version of BattleScribe is almost done. As usual there's a pre-release version over on this forum thread. If you're feeling brave, give it a go - there may be some bugs in there still... If you find any issues, please let me know and I'll get them sorted out for the final release.

Enjoy!