Remember the splash art competition from like, forever ago? Yeah me neither. But there was one! And the winners WERE chosen! I just kinda sorta accidentally deleted them all. So I had to redraw the winners from memory but hey, it only took me six months…and they came out pretty good. Proud of self.

And also, Stick Nodes has officially turned ELEVEN years old – the first version of Stick Nodes released on Android on August 19th, 2014 (read about it here lol).

Stick Nodes is actually older than some Stick Nodes users which is…actually no that can’t be true. Can it?

Changelog 4.2.6 (November 6)

Oh you thought we were done? Nah not yet, this is another minor update to this 4.2.X branch. The main goal of this update was some boring behind-the-scenes stuff that was necessary. This includes upping the minimum-supported Android version to comply with new Google standards and replacing FFmpeg as the primary audio-encoder for Android exports as well.

• Upped minimum-supported Android devices from Android 5 to Android 6 and replaced FFmpeg as the primary audio-encoder for Android
• Bug fix: Non-circular figures were able to have “radial” gradient applied which didn’t do anything but broke their appearance when flipping
• Bug fix: Setting “Background on top” when in Movieclip Mode made the background disappear
• Bug fix: When previewing a stickfigure in the library, the actual stickfigure would scale itself down permanently if it was too large
• Bug fix: Drawing new trapezoid in Creation Mode from a trapezoid with 0-thickness would give wacky results
• Bug fix: The setting for “Show only main nodes” would get reset after playing the animation
• Bug fix: Recording undo/redo actions for “Polyfill curve precision” change fixed
• Change: Polygons can now have “radial” gradient setting as well

4.2.6 (November 6) – Is it out yet: ✅Google Play, ✅App Store, ✅Amazon

While nothing should appear different on the surface, these changes are at the very core of the app, so some instabilities and issues were discovered and fixed during development. Everything should be good to go now (famous last words).

The removal of FFmpeg was due to it seemingly being no longer supported/developed for Android. It’s been replaced with native Android code to encode the audio for exported MP4s. (This took forever to get working.) Any change in the quality and sound of the audio should be unnoticeable, but exports may take a second-or-so longer per-sound when exporting. However as a nice side-effect, the download size of the app has been significantly reduced without the bloat of FFmpeg so that’s cool I suppose.

Upping the minimum-supported Android level will now exclude Android 5 devices from installing Stick Nodes anymore. Now, Android 5 came out in 2015 and according to Google only has about 2% market share worldwide so I doubt many of you are affected.

Also, between all these changes, a long-present issue where newer Amazon devices could not install Stick Nodes Pro has been resolved, so that’s neat.

Changelog 4.2.5 (August 23)

• Fixes iOS keyboard backspace issue, and other minor corrections

4.2.5 (August 23) – Is it out yet: ✅Google Play, ✅App Store, ✅Amazon

Changelog 4.2.4 (August 20)

• New splash screen characters, thank you to all who made art for the event!
• New mode for the Quick Tools, “Docked”, which allows for quicker and more useful access to a lot of commonly-used tools – turn on/off in “View Options”
• New “Tween Mode” setting added to figures to change the type of tweening (linear or easing) on a particular frame
• Added option for haptic feedback (vibration) in “App Settings”, if your devices has that functionality
• When creating a Polyfill, it is now much easier to select nodes and also move around the existing Polynodes (use the new “Precise” toggle)
• Added different gridline patterns to the Camera
• The “Save Reminder” windows now shows you how long since your last save
• New toggle in “View Options” to “Show all nodes of active figure” which may be useful when “Only main nodes” is turned on
• Circle gradients can now go horizontal/vertical and also half-circle shapes can be reversed
• Added a lot of new sounds (Pro only) – search for “424” in the “Import Sound” window
• Moved around some buttons and new icons, and some other bug fixes and tweaks

4.2.4 (August 20) – Is it out yet: ✅Google Play, ✅App Store, ❌Amazon

– – –

New Splash Art

Not gonna spoil the winners here, but the roster has been finally updated!

Many hundreds entered, and it was a tough back-and-forth approval process selecting the best of the best. Thank you to everyone who entered, and don’t be discouraged if your character didn’t make the cut, it was a hard-fought contest.

Docked Quick Tools

Replacing the old “Quick Resize Tools” is the upgraded docked version. In this context, “docked” meaning the menu is no longer just a floating mess of buttons at the center of the stage, but rather columns of commonly-used tools aligned along side the edges of the screen.

The point of updating these tools was two-fold, one to make them much more robust and responsive and two to get them out of the way of the your view of what was being worked on.

You can stick with the legacy version if you wish, it’s available for toggle in “View Options”, but getting used to the new docked version will vastly improve your work flow imo, what with the quick and intuitive UX options such as dragging/incrementing, double-tapping to reset, quick-rounding via tapping, etc. Play with the buttons and see what they all do.

Tween Modes

This is a somewhat minor change, but could have very useful…uses. On a per-object basis, you can change how that figure tweens in that particular frame to the next one. No longer just always a linear tween, you can do ease-in or ease-out (or both).

This will likely be more useful in frames that are held for a longer period of time, via either a delay or “slow motion” (aka more time for the tween to actually tween) – like when panning a scene or something. Eventually I’ll likely add some interpolation customization option via a curve graph but right now this is all you get.

Polyfill Precision

Something that may fly under the radar for some but I find incredibly useful is the massive update to the polyfill creation menu. Now it is exceptionally easier to create/edit existing polyfills by using “Precise” mode to select nodes more, well, precisely, before setting them to be a polynode.

Similarly, it’s possible now to select polynodes and see/adjust their ordering in the polyfill (polyfills should always have their nodes added in clockwise-order, else you may get visual glitches).

Many Other Things

Aside from the above major changes are even more changes such as different camera gridlines, linear-gradient circles and upside-down half-circles, and haptic feedback toggles (vibration).

I’m tired of making images and GIFs but there’s also:

• Show/don’t show nodes when tracing toggle
• Easier to quickly change or “scrub” the traced frame
• New UI icons and subtle changes (sorry you’ll get used to them)
• Changed the way the connector lines indicate which direction they are going
• Added Mansion of Mayhem badges/winners to the splash screen
• Many bug/crash fixes

And that’s that.

Sorry this update took so long. Not gonna lie, lots of unexpected irl events took up my time these past few months. It’s also why there was no summer collab this year, but there will be something later in the year likely to peak/release around Christmas time if the collab team can synchronize for that.

Oh also there’s a Discord where people talk about stuff and things.