Sproooing: dot big bang v0.9.17

The latest update to dot big bang is out – and it’s a big one for gamedevs.

Firstly, we’ve added a key component of our engine to the Scripting API for the first time: AUDIO! With this update it’s now trivial to play sounds, both spatialized in the world, and not from your code. Along with a myriad of other options this unlocks a great deal more flexibility for adding life to your game with sound. We can’t wait to see what you all do with this – there’s some tutorial material on the way to show you how to use it.

For the gamers out there we’ve added a bunch more free cosmetic items to celebrate Lunar New Year, updated the avatar customization scene with a springtime feel, and fixed a whole heap of bugs!

Read on for more details.

Games & Creator Content

• Spring has come to the avatar customization screen!
• Spring Emotes have been added to the Template Toys.
• We have added a number of Lunar New Year cosmetic items to wear.
• The player template in the Obby Kit now lets you use the Jetpack Template Toy.
• Spatialized Audio scripts are accessible to users. Note that some are now deprecated by the new API.
• Fix to the disappearing platform in the Obby Kit so that it now works correctly.
• Improvements to prevent z-fighting across our starter games.
• Example games for the new Scripting API version!
  • New UI functions: https://dotbigbang.com/game/30a8150596134fcdaa09a72fede77f76/api-demo:-ui-functions
  • New Audio:
    • Footsteps: https://dotbigbang.com/game/b75a9ea6ad2147a78a4e67677a1d049b/audio-example-footsteps
    • Pitch: https://dotbigbang.com/game/6b7d064c72d04bce89b57df59d714433/audio-example-pitch
    • Duckies: https://dotbigbang.com/game/ae11ef495ec341fca798928aacf1c1ec/audio-example-duckies

Engine

• We won’t drop the game down to simple rendering mode if the game window is not visible.

Game Editor

• Fixed Movement Rounding Step so that it is always in world units and isn’t affected by the scale of the entity being moved.
• When selecting multiple entities, the Entity Panel will now say “Multiple (X) entities selected”.
• Copy-paste and drag-copy of parented entities now correctly duplicates them.

Scripting API

• Random.numberInRange now supports having the same upper and lower bound and will return that value instead of throwing (e.g. Random.numberInRange(5, 5) returns 5).
• New user script API version 0.1.3 released!
  • New APIs for playing audio:
    • Play sounds from script without requiring a SoundComponent on the entity.
    • Play sounds that can be spatialized to a specific world location or to emit from an entity.
    • Options for setting sound lifetimes and limiting how many sounds play at once.
  • You can now control whether SkeletalObjectComponents are visible in the depth pass and whether they cast shadows
  • Convenience methods for our generic controller input method so you can see whether Action 1/2 was pressed on this frame, and how long it’s been held for.
  • A deeper API for our UIElement‘s that allows finer control of positioning and look.
  • A JSONSerializable utility type has been added that will typecheck an object to ensure it’s convertable to JSON.
  • A debugging utility for drawing lines added under the Debug namespace. You need to enable Debug Drawing in the Debug options in the editor to see the rendered lines.

Platform

• Added a dedicated route to the store page at https://dotbigbang.com/store.

If you have any questions about any of the new features, you can hop into our Discord, where the devs are happy to help. You can also follow our social media to stay up to date.