Weave 3.2!

Weave 3.0k was the last version of Weave that needed to exist. However, there were some final discussions that had not yet been resolved, and there was a new version of Kevedit that permitted .CHR and .PAL loading on the horizon, so it was always possible one more version would emerge. This is that version.

What changed?

The main runtime discussions were around three features: KEYSPEED, .CHR loading, and custom sidebar counters.

KEYSPEED

The argument against KEYSPEED was that no one would ever want a slower key repeat, and after several years of developing Weave, this has borne out. Instead, the behavior will be as follows:

* 500ms key repeat delay for Compat mode (3.2 compatibility mode) to match ZZT's behavior exactly.

* 250ms key repeat delay for non-compat (modern Weave) games.

This matches the ideal behavior as expressed by all but one of the developers that expressed an opinion about KEYSPEED.

Additional .CHR loading

It is now possible to load a different .CHR file for each board, by including BOARDLBL.CHR files in the same directory as the .ZZT file, and :boardlbl; labeled boards in the game to trigger the loading.
While it technically breaks the Funky Monkey threshold (the point at which highly demoscene-y behavior becomes possible) two years of Weave development have produced exactly one game (Kunger Binb) that fell into the dual demoscene traps of (1) Graphics over gameplay and (2) Cleverness over controls. Weave developers could get a lot more demoscene-y with their stuff, but developers are not struggling to avoid this in their development efforts, so I do not consider it a high risk to add this additional feature, which is long requested and not highly disruptive to implement.

Custom Sidebar Counters

The argument was (rightly) made that forcing players to retool their worlds in order to avoid manipulating torches, ammo, health, score etc. so that they could be used to track relevant information in the sidebar was wasting a lot of developer time, and it wasn't until I considered the lengths I went to in developing ZOZ that I realized how true this was. As such, sidebar counters are no longer restricted to the standard Five (Six if you count TIME) builtins, but can instead occupy nearly any line on the sidebar. It is also possible to, if desired, track the board local counters in the sidebar, and these will automatically update when you switch boards.

Change Log

9/23/2023: Weave 3.2

Removed:

* KEYSPEED has been removed.

Changed:

* Key repeat is now set to 500ms in Compat mode and 250ms in all other modes.

Updated:

* OOP-QR has been updated to include descriptions of more of Weave's features.

* LOOMzzt can now load .CHR and .PAL files in Windows, Mac OS, and AppImage-installed Linux.

* You can now use international characters on the Windows/Linux LOOMzzt, if your keyboard has them mapped.

* Cycle can now be set to values over 255 in LOOMzzt.

Added:

* sidebar.N.counter - Adds a custom counter to the sidebar at row N.

* Board .CHR loading - will attempt to load BOARDLBL.CHR in the same directory as the .ZZT file when switching to a board labeled :BOARDLBL.