It's finally here! Edge VN 1.2.0 was first teased all the way back in June, and now it is published to the Marketplace for your downloading pleasure. While it may not be the biggest update in sheer quantity of changes and additions, what 1.2 does feature are a few critical pieces to the Edge VN puzzle that really round off the module and make it more or less 'feature-complete'. I put 'feature-complete' in quotes because this will by no means be the final update to Edge VN--in fact, there are already a couple new line-items on the to-do list even now--but with version 1.2.0 it is practically everything the original vision for Edge VN aimed to be. All of the basic elements of visual novels are there, and they're fast, efficient, readable, and powerful.
So what's new in version 1.2.0?
First, as promised dynamic characters have returned, fully re-written. With the new primitive-based dynamic character system it is easy for Edge VN users to create real-time animations for their characters with a simple keyframe-based animation system. Two demo animations are included with the new release, and serve as a template for other animations. All you need to know is how to work with X and Y coordinates. This new feature was carefully designed with future additions to the Edge Engine family in mind, so stay tuned!
Second, but perhaps more importantly, due to popular demand Edge VN now has a built-in branching dialog options system! This was a feature that was planned from the beginning to be included as a function of Edge UI (which currently remains in-development), however I've received many, many requests to bring an official solution to Edge VN and so an effort was made to port a 'lite' version of existing Edge UI code to Edge VN specifically for this purpose--and now it's finally here!
Edge VN 1.2 also features a handful of the usual code cleanups and the addition of an optional 'continue' sound effect.
