It was a long time in coming, and then a long time in coming again, but now it's finally here, as promised: Edge VN 1.1 is now live, and a massive update to 1.0. Nearly 50% of 1.0's code was edited or rewritten, and many new features now join the roster as well. Edge VN 1.1 is the fastest, easiest, and best visual novel engine yet! If you're a new Edge VN user, you can pick it up from the Marketplace now. Existing users should delete Edge VN 1.0 from their projects' 'Extensions' folder and download/import the new version from the Marketplace Beta > My Library section of the Game Maker Studio IDE. Because so much has changed, you'll also want to give the documentation a read to see what's new and how to update old projects to the new version of the engine.
The features of Edge VN 1.1 have already been discussed in a previous blog post, but there is one omission to make note of: backtracking. It was only ever subtly advertised, but nonetheless because it is a feature that some users might be expecting, it deserves a little mention now. To be clear, Edge VN 1.1 does not support backtracking as was planned. While this would have been a powerful feature, it would also have required significant further rewrites that would've complicated Edge VN code across the board, and likely made it less efficient from a performance standpoint. Because Edge Engine is designed to be as simple, human-readable, and lightweight as possible, backtracking simply was not a feature that fit with the vision for Edge VN--at least at this time. Of course, Edge VN's text log is still an excellent alternative, and even better in version 1.1 thanks to improved code resulting in better performance. And if backtracking is still a feature you'd really, really love to have, please say so! If the feature is requested enough, it may make a return in the future.
For now, all near-future efforts will be going into Edge UI and Edge VN 1.2, both of which will bring some very exciting things to the table for Edge Engine. More information on those projects as they develop. Stay tuned!
