Maze Creator 1.60 BETA 2 Available

[Maze Creator]

Hi All,

Brave PRO users can download the 1.60B2 BETA version to try and give feedback.  It can be found in the PRO download area, change the dropdown to select the BETA version.  Please leave feedback here on the new features or things that are broken.

New in 1.6B2:

• ADDED: Wrap maze Horizontally and Vertically
• ADDED: Mouse Gestures, command Maze Creator by mouse movements
• ADDED: Paste graphics into Foreground & Background from Clipboard (DIB, BITMAP, ENHMETAFILE)
• ADDED: Paste text into Text layer
• IMPROVED: Maze generation algorithm, closer adherence to generation rules should make more complex mazes
• IMPROVED: User Interface to help make selections more obvious
• ADDED: COLOR selection to over-ride the default Maze Creator Color scheme
  
  • Maze Pen Color
  • Solution
  • Blacken
  • Erased (Only during Design of Template)
  • Start/Stop colors both visible and hidden for design purposes
• ADDED: Opacity setting for TILER, now supports version TLE 1.50
• ADDED: prototype of 3D Maze Rendering (you will not see this feature)
• ADDED: start of Image Processing dialog (you will not see this feature)

A few comments about new features, etc:

Wrap Hor/Ver has been added to the Maze Style screen as two check boxes.

Mouse Gestures (major productivity improvement, and really cool) are initiated by holding down the CTRL button and drawing with the left mouse buttone.  Dots will appear showing you the gesture being recorded.  You will hear two different tones, one for recognised and one for unrecognised.  You will see the recognised gesture in the upper left of the screen (not all do something so you may see a gesture but no action happens).  Alternately, you can tap the SPACE bar and then the next Left click will start drawing a gesture.  There is a help guide include in this release of the known Mouse Commands.

Paste works into both text and graphic layers.  Please note, the text layer is ONLY FOR TEXT.  You can get some application such as Word to paste directly into the FOREGROUND/BACKGROUND layers as graphics.

COLOR changes can be found in the SETUP dialog, there should be a new tab for your to control the colors.  This does not change the TILER colors.

The other items, you are not really going to see at this point.

Let me know how it goes and any likes/dislikes.

Regards,
Greg Peatfield
Maze Creator Author

[Maze Creator]

Hi all,

One significant error you might get if you don't have the DirectX 9.0 DLL installed on your system "d3dx9_30 dll not found".

You can find the DirectX 9.0 Runtime here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en

This is related to the new 3D features as I am testing for compatibility.  This was a major find,  "Thanks Bud!".

-Greg Peatfield
Maze Creator Author

[Bud]

OK.  I did some testing and like the features, but as in all Beta I did find a couple problems.  I hope I am not being to picky but here they are.
1.   Text layer.  If you create a text box, and decide to delete it and immediately create a text box at another location on the page, the Font box appears, but the text layer goes black and remains so until you either cancel and click in the text layer, or click OK in the font box.
2.   In either the foreground or background layer, if you are pasting a picture, if you change your mind and click cancel, the picture will still paste onto the layer.  Just a note, it took me a little time to figure out that I hade to paste the graphic first and then create the position window.
3.   Reset doesn?t seem to work in the ?my solution? mode.  If you want to change your path, you have to start over.  (big pain)
4.   Not sure if this is a bug or not, but when you change the default colors the buttons on the maze layer don?t change to reflect the new colors.  Not a big problem, just a bit confusing.

This wasn't just a quick test, I did spend a few hours on it, but I am still not finished using all the new functions.

[Bud]

Found a couple more. 

1.   The ReRender function doesn?t seem to work.  If you click on ReRender, it functions the same as clear maze.
2.   After testing on the same maze for a while, and then trying to add text or graphics, I started to get duplicate windows in whatever layer I happened to be working in.
3.   The print function will not print the maze, only the complete grid.  If you go into the Print Preview window, you see a flashing window that contains the complete grid, not your completed maze.  When you close the print preview window, you have lost the maze and you are presented with a grid again.
4.   This might just be a question.  When you choose the Square Tiled: from the setup window, do the start and end indicators function the same as in other mazes.  I seem to be getting what looks like a small box containing some even smaller text for a start and end position indicator.

[Maze Creator]

Hi Bud,

Thanks for your observations.
1) I will try to duplicate this issue.  Are you running Windows 95/ME/or 98?

2) Let me look into that issue.  Also, I will see if I can get the tool to work the same way only if it sees data on the Clipboard, ask if you would rather use that than to load a file.

3) I am looking into another approach entirely.  That tool never worked out.  I even find it difficult and I designed it.  I am thinking of another Layer where you draw the actual solution on the grid.  It will only allow you to draw the solutions.  No one thought the other tool was a good feature (other than in theory).

4) It wasn't intended to change there, but I am going to look into what it would take (or figure out how best to have those displayed).

Regards,
Greg Peatfield

OK.  I did some testing and like the features, but as in all Beta I did find a couple problems.  I hope I am not being to picky but here they are.
1.   Text layer.  If you create a text box, and decide to delete it and immediately create a text box at another location on the page, the Font box appears, but the text layer goes black and remains so until you either cancel and click in the text layer, or click OK in the font box.
2.   In either the foreground or background layer, if you are pasting a picture, if you change your mind and click cancel, the picture will still paste onto the layer.  Just a note, it took me a little time to figure out that I hade to paste the graphic first and then create the position window.
3.   Reset doesn?t seem to work in the ?my solution? mode.  If you want to change your path, you have to start over.  (big pain)
4.   Not sure if this is a bug or not, but when you change the default colors the buttons on the maze layer don?t change to reflect the new colors.  Not a big problem, just a bit confusing.

This wasn't just a quick test, I did spend a few hours on it, but I am still not finished using all the new functions.

[Maze Creator]

Bud,

Thanks again...

1) I thought it was me, I will check that function, didn't seem to work for me either.

2) I will see if I can tighten up any GDI Resource (Text/Graphics) that might be causing this on your system, but you might have an older operating system or very low amount of RAM.  I will see what I can do.  Can you email me your computer specs?

3) #2 is pretty much my same response, let me look around to see what I can find.

4) This should be based upon the actual Tiler.  There is a feature I will be adding shortly and that is to default to the visible START/STOP on a TILER since most designs don't want this to be an open space like with the non-tiled designs.  For example, the train track has the start/stop as train stations.

Regards,
Greg Peatfield

Found a couple more. 

1.   The ReRender function doesn?t seem to work.  If you click on ReRender, it functions the same as clear maze.
2.   After testing on the same maze for a while, and then trying to add text or graphics, I started to get duplicate windows in whatever layer I happened to be working in.
3.   The print function will not print the maze, only the complete grid.  If you go into the Print Preview window, you see a flashing window that contains the complete grid, not your completed maze.  When you close the print preview window, you have lost the maze and you are presented with a grid again.
4.   This might just be a question.  When you choose the Square Tiled: from the setup window, do the start and end indicators function the same as in other mazes.  I seem to be getting what looks like a small box containing some even smaller text for a start and end position indicator.