Wednesday is a state of mind.

Fancy new inputs - Jimmy
Ive added two features to the input system that have been on my wishlist for a while: theres now proper support for gamepads or other analog input, and MIDI inputs now Just Work as if they were keyboard keys.

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Building Enhancements - Jimmy
Ive made a few additions to the building mechanics that help with the mass placement of components and wires.

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Yet Another Flag Video - Jimmy
I really love Flags, and I couldnt resist adding one or two more features to them

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Texture Optimization - Jimmy
Last week I mentioned that I was hoping to optimize the loading of Flag textures by converting them to DDS. Well, I decided to go a different route and use dynamic texture loading. Instead of loading all textures on startup, the game now loads textures only when theyre actually needed. The fastest texture is no texture. Tiny thumbnail images are loaded for the menu where you select a flag texture, but the full-size images are now loaded into memory only when you place a flag that uses them.

The RAM usage, VRAM usage, and startup time of the game is now almost identical to before I added 400 hi-res flag textures to the game files. In fact, its a little smaller. I am pleased.

Save file error handling - Jimmy
Ive completed the work I started three weeks ago on an overhaul of the save loading code and UI. The game can now detect and deal with errors in save files before theyre loaded.

Saves with issues have little notification symbols on them, which you can hover over for more information. Ive also added a UI in to explain when a save cannot be loaded due to an error.



And finally, Ive added UI for when a save can be loaded, but there might be problems with it. Ive furthermore added the code for dealing with those problems when you decide to load the save anyway.



Back That Save Up - Jimmy
You might have noticed in the above image that the button says backup and load. Well, that meant I had to code a proper backups system this week. It works like this:

• Both sandboxes and saved boards are automatically backed up
  
• Backups are stored in a unique folder for each item that can be backed up
  
• There is a configurable number of backups to keep per item before old backups of that item start getting deleted -- by default this number is 10
  
• Backups of deleted items will be kept for a while, then deleted. By default, backups of deleted items will be kept for 50 days.
  
• Sandboxes are automatically backed up while youre playing in them; by default this happens every 5 minutes
  
• Saved boards are backed up if they are being overwritten with a new saved board of the same name
  
• Sandboxes and boards are backed up before they are deleted
  
• Sandboxes and boards are backed up before they are loaded if there was a potential issue detected before loading
  

• Fixed not being able to place things very close to the top of Flags
  
• Fixed flag hotbar rendering being based on the wind direction at time of render
  
• Fix unnecessary lag while grid-placing Chairs
  
• Fixed incorrect grid placing dimensions on Inverter, XOR Gate, D Latch, Oracle, Relay, 3-way AND Gate, and 4-way AND gate
  
• Fixed sandbox title input field sometimes being way too small
  
• Fix sandbox list order not updating when sorting by title and renaming an item
  
• Fixed build pipeline being broken in several ways