BostonFIG Virtual Indie Games Fest

Happy New Year, everyone! With Makersmas coming to a close (and what a fun first Makersmas it was!) we're spinning our event schedule up for the rest of 2021. Obviously the world is still in flux, but we're going to do our best to keep up with some kind of consistent event schedule in Mondrian itself, and attend any digital or real expos we can.

First up is the BostonFIG Virtual Indie Game Fest THIS SATURDAY! The event runs from 10am-5pm EST, and features Mondrian - Plastic Reality and tons of other indie games. The event is Pay What You Want and takes place on Gather.Town, an almost Zelda-like web game for social meetups, digital offices, parties, and more! Our plan for the day is to demonstrate the Museum's capabilities as a digital gallery, with the goal of opening what we're calling the PopBlock Gallery sometime this Spring. Take a tour of the space right here, and sign up at the link above to not miss out!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The PopBlock Gallery is a new endeavor we're trying out with the game, and will play host to independent artists from around the world. It will include custom Museum spaces, new Museum decorations, exclusive levels, stories, and links to find out more about the artists involved. These galleries will be our DLC, and will cost between $2.99 & $8.99 USD, depending on the size of the exhibit, the number of artists involved, etc. The DLC will go to support the artists/organizations and they will be a great way for you to support the arts and our continued development of Mondrian - Plastic Reality.

Learn more on our website!


The next update will be focusing on the game's Gallery Mode. The plan is to give it a proper UI, accessible via mouse & controller, with the following functionality:

• Change Frame Size
  
• Rotate Frame 90­­°
  
• Change Background
  
• Toggle Background On/Off
  
• Toggle Frame On/Off
  
• Toggle Negative Space
  
• Toggle Crop Marks
  
• Change Primary Color
  
• Change Color Scheme
  
• Capture Thumbnail (dynamic with frame, crop marks, and negative space)
  

Once this is ready to go, uploading your levels to Steam Workshop will be that much easier, as you'll have all the control you need to capture the perfect Thumbnail, and the game will do it for you AND save it to the right place with the right name! For now you can always check the game guides for our tutorial on how to capture & save a Thumbnail until we get this update out (figure on February).


Finally, we've pushed a small update to bring about the end of Makersmas and start the New Year off on the right foot, so here are the patch notes:
[h2]Game[/h2]
[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Main Menu: Turned off the snow
  
• Museum: Took down the Makersmas decorations. Thank you all for a wonderful, artsy Holiday celebration! We’ll absolutely be doing some other events like this during the year and of course Makersmas 2021 will be even better
  

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Main Menu: Levels you’ve already downloaded & are in your Levels or Inactive Levels folder will no longer re-download
  
• Museum: Fixed the cursor staying as a hand outside of the Difficulty selection buttons in Lightbox galleries
  

[h2]Mondrian Maker[/h2]
[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Updated the workshop tag to “BostonFIG” to coincide with Saturday’s expo. Will be updated again in a couple weeks!
  
• Increased the width of the Share Window text box to prevent cutoffs
  
• Added a check for Steam Connection before displaying the “Share to Steam” button
  

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed Mondrian Maker not going to Testing or Gallery Modes when Save & Play or Save & Exhibit was clicked
  

As always, please let us know if you run into any issues and we'll get them fixed up ASAP. Thank you for playing, and have an excellent BostonFIG!

- Danny