Mondrian - Plastic Reality News

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed controllers not being able to reach Copy & Save buttons in Mondrian Studio

The long-awaited Creators Update is here, and with it, we're introducing Mondrian Studio! This design suite is a major upgrade over the original Gallery Mode, and allows you to take control over the look of your Steam Workshop thumbnails, not to mention desktop backgrounds, postcards, or whatever else you want to turn your Mondrian Maker creations into!



Mondrian Studio is a toolchest you can access from the "Play Your Level" window in Mondrian Maker (select "Open in Studio," previously "Save & Exhibit"). By simply adjusting some sliders (and clicking a couple buttons), you can create beautiful artworks out of your level in no time! You can quickly adjust the frame size/rotation, color harmony, background artwork, visual effects, and logo visibility. When you're ready, you can save your image as a JPG file in the game's Thumbnails folder, or instantly copy it to your clipboard to paste onto social media, send to your friends in chat, or bring into other graphics editing software.



The original Gallery Mode was very barebones, and we felt it was important to lower the barrier to getting levels up on Steam Workshop, while also offering a variety of controls to exhibit your creations in ways the game never could, such as neon colors. There's a wide variety of possibilities for how you can show your level off, and we can't wait to see what you post both on Workshop and in the Community Artwork tab!



If you'd like to know more about how to use Mondrian Studio, we've put together an instructional video which you can watch right here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We've also added a few bonus goodies, including a new Porcelain Collection in the Museum, some Mondrian Maker adjustments, and Pause Menu optimizations. Check out the 1.0.9 Patch Notes announcement for the full list of what's new, changed, and fixed in the game.



Now that Mondrian Studio is in place, we're aiming to get back to more regular updates. In the meantime, we're super excited to see what you can cook up using the new toolset!

As always, thank you for playing.
- Danny

[h2]Features[/h2]

• Game: Introducing Mondrian Studio, accessible by hitting Save & Exhibit in Mondrian Maker. This toolset replaces Gallery Mode and gives you some sliders to adjust the frame size, crop, background, level colors, and more. It can also be used to quickly save JPG thumbnails with the right name and in the right directory to upload your creations to Steam Workshop!
  
  • Custom Framing: This tab gives you Sliders to access Crop Marks, Negative Space, Frame Ratio, and Frame Rotation
    
  • Color Palette: This tab lets you choose between the 12 primary colors, 10 analogous color scheme styles, scheme widths in 30° increments, and min and max brightness between 0% and 100%. Note that these changes do not happen in real time and you’ll need to click the Fill Button to change your creation’s color scheme.
    
  • Background Canvas: This tab lets you choose a background image, switch between Full Color, One Color, and Black & White variants, or switch the background off and on entirely. Note that One Color variants will take the Primary Color from the Color Palette tab.
    
  • Visual Effects: This tab lets you toggle the game’s various visual effects, including CRT Monitor, Film Grain, and Night Mode.
    
  • Snapshot Capture: Finally, the piece de resistance. The Snapshot Capture tab lets you save images of your creation based on the setup you’ve created in Gallery Mode. Capture Size lets you choose the size of the image, including the full Frame, Interior only, Frame + Crops, or the Full Window. You can also add various Mondrian and Lantana Games logos to the corners if you like. Use the Save function to save a properly named Thumbnail where the game needs it to upload your creation to Steam Workshop, or the Copy function to paste it directly into a chat, onto a social media post, or into external graphics editing software.
    
• Game: Added 3 new Achievements
  
• Museum: Added Porcelain Collection. This adds six new artpieces that can be placed on pedestals.
  
• Museum: Filled in some missing sound effects
  
• Museum: Added Over and Down states to inventory arrows
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Main Menu: Added version number to lower-left hand corner
  
• Game: Added a Scheme Width value to level color generation to help make adjacent color scheme values more accessible via the GUI
  
• Game: Reworked color generation to be more compatible with new Mondrian Studio controls
  
• Game: Tied Grayscale to Min and Max brightness values
  
• Game: Optimized and cleaned up code of Pause menu
  
• Game: Reordered Tetrad scheme widths to match Mondrian Studio’s color harmony slider. This has no effect in-game.
  
• Game: Remade control maps in Pause Menu to match the game’s UI more and include Mondrian Studio controls
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Game: Fixed a bug that prevented Grayscale, De Stijl, and Random color schemes from generating in-game
  
• Game: Fixed the possibility of a background image not loading when Backgrounds were still turned on
  
• Game: Fixed Triad 2 color 3 not generating on paddle, ball, or wall objects
  
• Museum: Fixed Y-Positioning on Tall Tapered Mahogany pedestals
  
• Museum: Fixed rendering on Chevron Wood floor
  

[h2]Features[/h2]

• Added Thumbnails to the Save/Load window
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• The “Save & Exhibit” button now reads “Open in Studio”
  
• Adjusted the wording on the “Play Your Level” tooltip to no longer make reference to a requirement to beat your level at all difficulties before sharing. This never got developed and has never been a requirement. Sorry for the confusion! The Tooltip now says what the individual buttons do in the Play Your Level window instead.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed Miniswatch Y-Positioning
  
• Fixed more Save/Play/Studio button issues
  

Piet Mondrian's 149th birthday is coming up on March 7! To celebrate, Lantana Games and SmartEgg Toys have teamed up to bring you a Stijlish giveaway event! From now through March 7, 10 winners be picked to receive copies of both Mondrian - Plastic Reality and SmartEgg's Mondrian Blocks tabletop puzzlegame!



To enter the contest:

• Visit our Gleam page - https://bit.ly/mondrian-birthday
• Use the green +1 buttons to follow Lantana Games on Twitch, Youtube, and Facebook; and SmartEgg on Twitter and Instagram, and visit their website
  

That's it! Winners will be picked shortly after March 7, and will receive a free Steam Key for Mondrian - Plastic Reality AND a copy of Mondrian Blocks in the mail!

Ready to play?



Share the link with your friends too, because Mondrian Blocks is even better with two players competing!

Good luck, and happy birthday Piet!

- Danny

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