MasterPlan News

Hello!

Here's a quick set of hotfixes and other minor improvements being brought to alpha 4.1!

One nice new feature here is that menus are now able to be anchored to the sides or corners of the window. When anchored, they'll generally try to stay in the same location even if the window changes size.

Anyway, here's the changelog below. Thank you for your patience and participation in the community!

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QoL: Menus can now be anchored. By dragging them to a side or corner of the screen, they will stay there even after resizing MasterPlan's window.
QoL: The main menu can now be moved from the top-left corner and positioned wherever you want.
QoL: Either of the Find Next or Find Prev. keybindings now open the Find menu. Related to this, there is no longer a need for the keybinding to summon the Find Menu, specifically, and so it has been removed.
QoL: Using Find Next or Find Prev. to cycle through found Cards now highlights the text to search for, making it easier to quickly look for several cards in sequence.
QoL: Adding keybinding to remove all links from the currently selected Card.
FIX: Removing a joint in a link now properly generates an undo state.
FIX: Creating a joint just creates one undo state (after dropping it).
FIX: Some menus' buttons were largely invisible with some themes (internally, this was due to IconButtons defaulting to white). This is now resolved.
FIX: MasterPlan no longer crashes when presing the Clear button in the Find menu when first summoning it.
FIX: Find menu now properly loops through all found Cards when searching (previously, it would loop erratically, sometimes selecting the same Card twice).
FIX / QoL: You can now use the Find menu to search sub-pages (previously, it only searched the current page).
FIX: MasterPlan no longer crashes when loading projects featuring subpages that were created out of order (i.e. if you created two subpages, deleted them, created one more, and then saved the project).
FIX: MasterPlan no longer crashes if a card was in a stack when linking (via a line) to another card above in that stack.
FIX: Don't log "Deleted 0 Cards." when pressing delete without having a card selected.

Catch you guys later~

It's been awhile; very very sorry about that!

I got sick for a few days back in December, which threw off my schedule and workflow.

I was working on a boards menu / hierarchy, but found it unsatisfactory. After some more work on MasterPlan, I thought, "Well, since I'm already late, I should make this update a big bigger," and kept working on it to try to make it even better. That was probably not a great idea, since I'm so late now, haha. Apologies, again!

In any case, here's, finally, another update for MasterPlan - huzzah! There's a few cool features in this update.



Firstly, you can color your Cards now!



As of this new version, coloring your Cards is easily done on a per-Card basis, simply by using the new Edit > Color menu. You can either select the color using a color picker, or type (or paste) in a hexadecimal color code (like #FF002A). You can color (or reset the color of) multiple Cards at a time using this same menu.



You have access to Sub-Pages now!



Sub-Pages are Cards that transport you to new boards. You can open them up and place Cards within them (including other Sub-Page Cards). If you copy a Sub-Page Card, the pasted Card will reference the same underlying sub-page, which might be a pleasant side effect if you want multiple ways to get to a specific location. (Note that I still want to implement a system that allows you to jump to a card on-command; this is just an additional little feature that seems fine to leave in for now.)

When you are finished populating a Sub-Page with cards and exit it, the Sub-Page card itself will display what's inside that sub-page - specifically, what's underneath the two origin axes (where the grid's center is).

Feel free to use Sub-Pages to help organize your project even more effectively!



There's a Help wiki now!

It will serve as an easy-to-access central repository where I can write up documentation on how to use MasterPlan effectively, and will contain helpful illustrations and GIFs when necessary. The wiki is currently hosted on the GitHub repository for MasterPlan - while it could be hosted on another wiki hosting service, I find GitHub's Wiki section easy to read. It's also ad-free, so it should be perfectly fine (at least, for now).

The wiki is also easily accessible from within MasterPlan itself, right from the File menu.

Also, RAM / VRAM usage also shouldn't be nearly as bad now! Huzzah!



[h3]Branch Movement[/h3]

Also, as of this update, v0.8 will no longer be on a beta branch, but will rather be placed onto the main branch. The older original version of MasterPlan (v0.7) will instead be pushed to a new branch that you can opt into to use (so I'll just be effectively reversing the current situation, where v0.7 is on the main branch and v0.8 is on a beta branch).

This way, existing users who want to use the older version of MasterPlan can continue to do so, while those who want the current version of MasterPlan can also do so while expecting to see updates coming through regularly.

This is being done because I feel like MasterPlan v0.8 is easier to use, more intuitive, is more indicative of the finished product, and is just more polished than v0.7. I also want to use it more for marketing purposes, thereby allowing people to see, not the rough gem that 0.7 was, but the much more polished product that 0.8 is and continues to grow to be.

To use the old v0.7 version of MasterPlan, simply right-click on MasterPlan in your library, go to Betas, and select the alpha_0.7 branch. To use the latest, v0.8 version of MasterPlan, simply leave the beta section set to None, and update when you have the opportunity (or uninstall and reinstall).

*Note that v0.8 still doesn't load v0.7 projects yet, but I would still heavily recommend v0.8; it's pretty sick (in a good way)!

[h3]Price Change[/h3]

In other news, the price for MasterPlan has gone up a bit - from $18 to $20. This is mainly because the longer I work on MasterPlan, the better it gets, and the more effective of a planning tool it becomes. It only makes sense, then, to raise the price to remain compelling with what you, as a user, receive. That said, I'm never going to make the price prohibitive; it probably will max out at around $25, and even then will go on sale periodically (like it currently does).

Overall, it's been quite a wild ride working on MasterPlan, but I'm finally getting to the point where I personally feel like it's actually comfortable and nice to use. I'm proud of it, and I enjoy using it, which is a good sign, haha.

[h3]Ubuntu Support[/h3]

Oh, also, due to changes in the way I've built MasterPlan, it should now work fine on Ubuntu (specifically) without you needing to build it yourself. This is because previously, it was built on my personal machine, which has a newer libc version than the LTS version of Ubuntu. Just be sure to install SDL2 and an X11 dev package for clipboard support (libx11-dev, xorg-dev, or lix11-devel, as is available on your OS), and you'll be good to go.

I'll need to tackle M1 Mac development next; I might have a few ideas on that front, as well.

____

Anyway, here's the full changelog:

IMPROVEMENT: Adding sub-pages. A sub-page is a card that allows you to access another page, thereby giving you more means of planning and organizing your project.
IMPROVEMENT: Adding a "Help" link to File menu. The help link takes you to a wiki, located on the Github repo for MasterPlan. The Help wiki will serve as a useful online central reference on using MasterPlan, and will be updated as MasterPlan grows.
IMPROVEMENT: Adding customizeable colors. Cards' colors can now be customized using the Edit > Set Color menu.
IMPROVEMENT: Sounds can now trigger other Cards on playback completion when placed in a vertical stack, or when connected via links.
IMPROVEMENT: Line arrowheads now will have a black outline if they have a white fill color (like images).
IMPROVEMENT: Adding buttons to shift map elements around from the palette menu.
IMPROVEMENT: Adding Stop All Sounds keybinding.
IMPROVEMENT: Shadows are no longer transparent and aren't as dark.
RE-IMPLEMENTATION: Reimplementing the ability to take screenshots (defaults to F11).
RE-IMPLEMENTATION: Reimplementing the borderless window option.
RE-IMPLEMENTATION: Reimplementing the option to automatically load the last opened project.
RE-IMPLEMENTATION: Reimplementing loading a plan from file system by double-clicking on it in Windows when MasterPlan is associated with .plan files, or by passing in the path to the plan as the first argument when starting MasterPlan.
QoL: Cards and menus are now resizeable from all sides, not just the right and bottom.
QoL: Cards can now only be resized when selected (which makes selecting cards easier, since you no longer have to worry about accidentally resizing a card when you mean to click on it).
QoL: Messages that repeat are now combined (i.e. spamming Ctrl+Z becomes "Undo event triggered. x10" instead of creating 10 individual "Undo event triggered" messages).
QoL: Line arrowheads now use the main color, rather than the outline color (again).
Reeeeeeeeal quick QoL: Resizing multiple cards now requires holding the new resize cards shortcut (left-shift by default), which means moving multiple cards is easier.
QoL: Adding Deselect all cards shortcut (Left Ctrl + Left Shift + A).
CHANGE: Focus on Cards now defaults to Left Shift + F.
CHANGE: Removing overview devlog button (as the overview video is old).
CHANGE: Adding Moss, Terra Cotta, and NS-DOSS themes.
CHANGE: Focusing on Cards now zooms into the Card as well.
FIX: Sound play button now properly changes back to play when the Sound is stopped.
FIX: Changing fonts no longer causes maps to turn invisible.
FIX: MasterPlan internally refreshing textures (i.e. when resizing the window on Windows or changing fonts) no longer leaks RAM / VRAM like a son of a gun.
FIX: Short messages (that appear at the bottom-left) now appear long enough and are timed properly.
FIX: The keybinding to unlock the aspect ratio when scaling an image now properly works when holding the key.
FIX: The Menu close button no longer is always white, but rather changes color according to the theme.
FIX: Maps no longer internally each create their own palette menu (whoops). They share one menu now, of course, thereby lowering memory usage.
FIX: Undoing now works correctly when loading projects.
FIX: You can no longer open the context menu (right click) while a fullscreen prompt is open.
FIX: You can now undo and redo while editing text or with the context menu open.
FIX: Themes refresh every second when the Visual Settings menu is open.
FIX: Loading projects should no longer set the project's modified status.
FIX: Pasting cards from the context menu pastes them from where the menu opens, rather than from where you click on the "Paste Cards" menu.
FIX: Numbering is no longer broken, displaying a variety of 0's, for when a card is underneath a non-numberable card (like a Note).
FIX: Non-numberable cards (like Notes) placed between a parent and its numberable children no longer break dependency in a stack.
FIX: Projects should no longer save links between cards incorrectly. Again. Internally, this was because it was previously possible to create cards that shared IDs, thereby making them link incorrectly when the project is loaded. This should fix the issue. (Although you will need to re-create the previously broken links and resave your project. Sorry!)
FIX: MasterPlan is now built using Ubuntu 20.10, so if you're running Linux (particularly a stable distro like Ubuntu), you should be good to use MP directly from Steam or itch, rather than needing to build it yourself due to libc issues.

Welp, that's about it - thanks a lot for your patience! I hope you enjoy using MasterPlan, and I hope to keep getting updates out, and more regularly, at that.



- SolarLune

Yo, 'sup!

It's been almost three weeks since the last update - apologies for letting time get away from me!

I've been cracking away on both MasterPlan, and a cool 3D software renderer that I've written from scratch in Golang named Tetra3d! Check it out if you want something slow (but useable) and jank (and awesome) for gamedev, lol



In any case, here's MasterPlan v0.8.0 Alpha 3! This one is a bit of a minor update, but it's kind of important because I've finally gotten the text to not be so manky! Huzzah!!!



I definitely spent hours over the past several months, trying to figure out exactly why the text looked so bad. As it turns out, it was just a single line of code that was doing something I hadn't considered. Just change a couple of numbers and the text doesn't look thrashed anymore.

That's coding, I guess, haha. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This fix should apply to any font displayed within MasterPlan, including custom fonts, which is cool. Other than that, this update also has some fixes / optimizations and quality of life improvements, like searchable keybindings and the old Load Recent menu (so you can easily access recently loaded projects). Anyway, here's the full change-log:

• Double-click settings (save previous task type, double-click to create a card) have been combined into a single dropdown.
  
• Adding option to search for keybindings.
  
• Adding confirmation dialog on creation of new project or on project load if the current project has been modified.
  
• RE-IMPLEMENTATION: Saving a project now also saves the camera location and zoom level.
  
• RE-IMPLEMENTATION: Adding project name and "MODIFIED" status to titlebar. The modified status is set when something in the project changes that necessitates the creation of an undo state.
  
• RE-IMPLEMENTATION: Adding "Load Recent..." menu to easily access previously loaded projects. The maximum number is 10 (this is arbitrary).
  
• FIX: Lines between cards that are directly next to each other no longer glitch out and point to the top-left infinitely.
  
• FIX: Text on cards no longer looks trashy on the edges for some characters.
  
• FIX: Undoing no longer deselects the current tool for Maps.
  
• FIX: You can no longer partially undo the loading of a project (i.e. undo right after loading).
  
• FIX: Lines from Cards that have no color (like from images) now have black outlines.
  
• FIX: You can now more easily click on line endings or nodes that are on top of Cards.
  
• CHANGE: Line arrowheads are now colored instead of white.
  
• FIX: You no longer accidentally click on something in the background by clicking on a button in a menu that then closes.
  
• OPTIMIZATION: Cards no longer attempt to render if offscreen.
  
• Rewording some shortcuts.
  

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Anyway, that's about it this time. Thanks a lot - I hope to have something more substantial for the next one, hopefully sooner than three weeks from now!

- SOLVRLUNE (we're in 2021, so everything has to be spelled like this now, sorry, it's the rules)

​Hello!

Here's another update for MasterPlan, bringing it up to v0.8.0 Alpha 2! Huzzah~

This version brings a few major features, as well as some QoL improvements. One major new feature in Alpha 2 is the ability to create joints in lines. ​This has been a fairly well-requested feature, and I'm a bit excited to have finally got it working acceptably. It should help to make using lines more comfortable and make the project's flow easier to visually comprehend.

To add a joint, simply click on the circle in the center of a line / between existing joints, and then drag it around. You can delete a joint by double-clicking on it. Joints move with their Cards if both Cards at the end of a line are moved together, as well.

You also now have the ability to link Cards to indicate dependency. ​Specifically, lines indicate that the starting card depends on any linked cards for completion. In the GIF below, the main Checkbox Card entitled "Complete the Challenge" is complete only when its three linked Cards are. As can be seen, this also works for Cards in a list that depend on completion of their children as well. Dependent cards changes icon to show this, going from the normal circular icon to a set of squares.



Unfortunately, while lines have been improved, I had to change how they are saved and loaded, which means that lines saved in the previous 0.8 alpha will not load properly in this one (though the project should load properly otherwise). Apologies!

Another, more minor, new feature is the ability to resize multiple Cards at the same time - simply select multiple cards, and then resize one - the others will follow.



As you can see in the above GIF, another minor improvement is that now the first line of text on Cards is the title (and so has a line drawn below it). This means that you can easily make a title on a Card by simply typing your title, and then creating a newline underneath for any descriptive bits.

​​

This line existed in the previous version, but simply was at the bottom of all of the text on the Card. By moving it up to be under the first line, it serves double-duty as visual flair, as well as content segmentation.

Custom fonts were also re-implemented - simply go to the Visual Options in Settings, and select a custom .otf or .ttf file to use it in MasterPlan. Note that it might not look right unless you restart MasterPlan after changing the font (for now).

There's also bugfixes including panning no longer feeling like garbagio, and Windows no longer crashes when loading JPEG files! Hooray~!

Installation: To download and try out MasterPlan v0.8 on Steam, all you have to do is right-click on MasterPlan in your library, go to Properties, Betas, and enter the beta access code: "alphamasterplan" (without double-quotes). Click on Check Code, and you'll gain access to the v0.8 alpha branch. This is done so that people aren't surprised by this sudden change while they're trying to use MasterPlan on a daily basis. Please do let me know if things don't work properly, or if you have any questions or feedback.

​___

Anyway, let's take a look at the detailed changelog:

• Adding ability to create joints in links between Cards. To create joints, click on the circle at the center of a link. To delete a joint, double-click on one. You can move all joints in a link by simply moving both cards at the ends of the link.
  
• Lines have been visually simplified; they no longer have "dots" traveling from start to end, but are rather simply lines that have arrows that point to the ending Card.
  
• You can now indicate dependency with links between Cards. For example, you can link a Checkbox to a Numbered Card to indicate that the Checkbox will be completed when the Numbered Card is completed.
  
• Adding ability to resize menus and Cards from bottom and right, in addition to just the bottom-right corner.
  
• Adjusting area around Cards for resizing. Previously it wrapped around the Card's right and bottom completely; now, it leaves a small gap at the left and top edge, allowing for the resize border of a neighboring card to be easily reachable. Conclusion: It's now easier to consistently resize cards that are in a stack, despite the area being smaller overall.
  
• Adding option to reverse panning in the Input menu.
  
• It's now possible to resize multiple cards by simply selecting multiple cards and then resizing one of them. The others will copy the one you're resizing.
  
• The line underneath editable text now draws underneath the first line of text. By entering a newline, you can create a "title" that sits on the line.
  
• Selecting Cards by any means will now visually raise them to sit on top of others; previously, this only happened when clicking directly on them.
  
• Messages now take longer to display in proportion to their length, making them easier to read.
  
• RE-IMPLEMENTATION: Whatever card you previously created will be what is created when double-clicking. Also adding a setting to turn this off - if off, double-clicking will simply create a Checkbox card (unless you simply disabled double-clicking entirely).
  
• RE-IMPLEMENTATION: You can now use a custom font for use in MasterPlan by specifying a .ttf or .otf file. Note that doing this rebuilds the font glyphs used for displaying text, and so text may not display correctly until restarting MasterPlan. This is planned to be improved, though it's not a pressing issue.
  
• RE-IMPLEMENTATION: Checkboxes are now able to serve as parent Tasks / Cards by having them at the head of a stack. An indicator of its childrens' completion will appear at the right-hand side, and the icon for the parent Card will change to a set of squares. All children and grand-children are included in the count.
  
• RE-IMPLEMENTATION: You can now properly paste todo lists in as plain text and paste them into MasterPlan as Cards. For Checkbox Cards, use [ ] at the beginning of the list. For Numbered Cards, use the same format, but with numbers inside ( like [13/209] ).
  
• CHANGE: Reworking the Checkbox icon for the umpteenth time.
  
• CHANGE: Resizing rectangle size is now 16 pixels large; it was previously 32 pixels large.
  
• CHANGE: Linking cards now uses the color white as opposed to the menu color if the linking card has no color (like images).
  
• CHANGE: Lines are now a smidge thicker.
  
• FIX: Panning has been fixed. Previously, it was both way too sensitive or not sensitive enough depending on how slowly or quickly you moved the mouse.
  
• FIX: Lines anchor to Cards more naturally.
  
• FIX: Lines are now copied properly when copying Cards.
  
• FIX: Lines between Cards should be tied together properly now.
  
• FIX: The Numbered Card's text is now properly centered.
  
• FIX: Undoing and redoing handles card link creation or deletion properly.
  
• FIX: Pasting a Card with a filled background bar (like a Numbered card or a parented Checkbox card) no longer has the bar start at an infinite length.
  
• FIX: Cards no longer draw their number even if they're deleted.
  
• FIX: Targa (.tga) image files are now properly loaded and displayed.
  
• FIX: MasterPlan no longer crashes when loading JPEG files on Windows - this was due to a missing DLL file (libjpeg-9.dll).
  
• FIX: MasterPlan should no longer crash when loading TIFF files on Windows - if it was happening, it was probably due to a missing DLL file (libtiff-9.dll).
  
• FIX: Timers should trigger properly now.
  
• FIX: Timer mode, trigger mode, and maximum time are now properly saved.
  

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Welp, that's about it. As an aside, ideally, I'd like to stick to updates every week or two now - I feel like an update every week would be great, but giving me an extra week in case something comes up (either in real life or in development of MasterPlan) helps to give me some breathing room to deal with it.

Anyway, that's it. Thanks a lot, as usual! - SolarLune

TL;DR: MasterPlan v0.8 Alpha is out, beta branch code is: alphamasterplan. I'm working on it, it's feeling a lot better. Huzzah!

Phew!

It's been quite a few months (over six, I reckon!!!), but finally, here's the first public alpha for MasterPlan v0.8!



I've reworked the program from scratch to get to this point, and while it is indeed still an alpha and is not as full-featured as v0.7 just yet, I believe it is largely improved in fundamentals. MasterPlan has gotten more polished, more visually appealing, and is easier to use and read than ever before.

Thank you very much for your patience so far as I've taken quite a bit of time to get even here - without that patience, I wouldn't have been able to stick with it for all this time. However, I should now be able to push out updates more frequently as it's easier to deploy smaller builds once I get bugfixes and major releases (like this one) out of the way.

Please note that MasterPlan v0.8 is, indeed, alpha software, and so will be unstable or not work quite right sometimes. Please be patient as the kinks are ironed out. MasterPlan v0.8 also currently cannot load v0.7 plans; only v0.8 plans will load for now while I work on attaining feature parity between the two. After this is done, 0.7 plans will load in v0.8, unless the community deems the backwards compatibility unnecessary. Finally, If you want to use MasterPlan v0.8, you are encouraged to do thorough backups of any plans created with it.

To download and try out MasterPlan v0.8 on Steam, all you have to do is right-click on MasterPlan in your library, go to Properties, Betas, and enter the beta access code: "alphamasterplan" (without double-quotes). Click on Check Code, and you'll gain access to the v0.8 alpha branch. This is done so that people aren't surprised by this sudden change while they're trying to use MasterPlan on a daily basis. Please do let me know if things don't work properly, or if you have any questions or feedback.

There's still a ton to reimplement, even just to get MasterPlan to the level of v0.7 in terms of features. However, I believe MasterPlan is a great tool, and am willing to keep on cranking away on it. (It also shouldn't take quite as long to redo things I've already done for v0.7; time is mostly taken improving, not reimplementing.)

Anyway, here's a video showing an overview of the new v0.8 update, because it's kind of a lot for now (I'll document changes in text as we go on):

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hope you all enjoy it, and thank you so much, again, for the support you've given so far. I really do appreciate it! - SolarLune



EDIT: One last thing before I forget, the new version of MasterPlan is built on SDL2. This means that for Linux users who want to run MasterPlan v0.8, you'll need to install libsdl2, libsdl2-image, libsdl2-ttf, and libsdl2-gfx (or their equivalents on your distribution). Thanks!