Surely this is an update name of all time. It’s inappropriately appropriate as it aptly describes the new features in Stick Nodes as of today (the update available on Android/IOS as of the time of this post going live!). If it’s not live it may take some minutes to process. Also, Amazon is the slowest of all the stores and may take up to another day to be live.

New Features

Changelog 4.1.4 / 4.1.5 (Android December 11, IOS: December 12)

So version 4.1.4 was released a few days ago to Android, but there was a UI bug with the “View Options” menu, so it was never released to IOS. Today, the new version fixing that is live on Android, and the IOS version will likely be live tomorrow.

• Add a toggle to the “View Options” menu to use the new neighbor-nodes feature where it shows joined nodes as neighbor nodes
• Update underlying framework to latest stable version
• Added a warning about uninstalling Stick Nodes (don’t do it, you’ll lose your files)
• Added a secondary prompt when submitting stickfigures to check if it should be a Movieclip submission instead
• Attempted fix for some devices having issues with the FontLoader, and as a result random crashes throughout the app

Changelog 4.1.3 (Android November 25, IOS: November 26)

• Fix: Smart-stretch was broken involving “Do not smart-stretch” nodes.
• Fix: App hanging when loading sometimes (due to the way fonts are loaded).
• When a joined node is selected, the neighbor nodes now accurately also draw lines to all joined figure nodes connecting to that node.

Changelog 4.1.2 (November 14)

• Fix: Anti-alias v1 would not export polyfills correctly.
• Fix: Early crash on iOS when failing to import a ZIP.
• Fix: Potential fix for rare stickfigure preview/import/backup crash.
• Added nodes on/off toggle when previewing a stickfigure.

Changelog 4.1.1 (November 7)

• Fix: Flipping sideways gradient turned it upside-down.
• Fix: Returned scale textfields to proper increments.
• Fix: Old stickfigures using trapezoids importing with black-gradient.
• Fix: Temporarily removed smart-stretch from affecting curves (added in 4.1.0).
• Fix: Some Android users were having unresponsive dialog issues. I reverted an update to the underlying framework that was introduced in 4.1.0 that may have been the culprit. Please report if this is fixed or if it still happens to anyone.

Changelog 4.1.0 (November 6)

• Big memory improvements, projects should use 25-40% less memory than they did before.
• Polyfills will now follow curved segments.
• Curved segments behave slightly differently and now have a toggle for “circular”.
• Segments and trapezoids now have a gradient toggle for “sideways”.
• Circles now have a toggle for “hollow” (no color inside).
• Nodes/lines are now rendered via a user-selectable Node Style (see “App Settings”).
• Added a tool to remove background color in the “Create Sprite” window.
• Arrows can now nudge less than a pixel.
• Max scale increased to 20x (vs 10x before).
• Splash Screen updated.
• Generally many small bug fixes.

One of the major things is curved polyfills of course. This required a bit of reworking in the way segments curve, so while I did try to get the behavior to be as similar as pre-4.1.0 curves were, it is slightly diffeent. This may result in your old figures with curves (especially 0-length segment curves) looking slightly different and needing to be edited. But it was a compromise in order to fix the improper thinning of curved segments near their peak in pre-4.1.0.

The second major thing is the memory improvement. This is done by having all the static nodes no longer take up additional memory storing their redundant data which can never change (their color or thickness, for example). Since they are static and unchanging, a lot of this data was duplicated for no reason – it remains constant throughout the project. Now instead, static nodes simply reference their library counterpart when it comes to their truly static/unchanging properties, thus freeing up a lot of memory in the process.

Upcoming Things

Things are definitely upcoming! What with Christmas time almost here, there will be some sort of a Christmas event held. No big collab however, but likely something animation-related. Check back in late November! Also, more Stick Nodes updates through the end of the year.