🎄 New #Stickmas2023 Event Is Underway!

By arcionek 112 Comments

Hey guys. I overtook the site again! Nah. Just kidding, my hired hotdog assassins are still tracking Ralph’s location, so it’s still work in progress.

The #Stickmas2023 Event

For this holiday season, we decided to change up the formula. If you have ideas for a Christmas animation/art, this is the time for it.

Every week throughout the month of December, we will be giving spotlight to a bunch of festive-themed animated shorts that use the hashtag #Stickmas2023. Yes that’s right, shorts – those on the YouTubes!

But even if you don’t have time to make animations, post art too! It could be on X.com (Twitter) or right here on the /activity/ page. We’re having extra spotlights for misc stuff each week too! Even your festive stickfigure/movieclip submissions can use the hashtag and get it on the action. Basically just make Christmas stuff with Stick Nodes, and post it with the hashtag #Stickmas2023.

The Prizes

Shoutout to those who skipped all the above text to just get to this part. There’s no cash this time!

We wanted people to take it easy this holiday and have the people make their stuff at their own pace, instead of another hardcore competition amongst one another on a short-notice collab.

This is more of an experimental event to get y’all into more Christmas-sy… Christmas’sy? Christmarsley mood. As there will plenty of “winners” throughout, we genuinely don’t know what the prizes could, or should be. So for the time being, consider this as a way to get your animations and art to be featured at the main page.

When should you begin?

Now! The weekly roundups are posted on Sundays starting December 3rd showcasing things from the week before. So if you want to snatch that early Week 1 place, post before Dec 3rd!

As time goes on, I believe it will get wilder each day. Although if you feel like setting yourself up for a challenge, maybe try making onto every week? I make the rules anyway, so feel free to make as many #Stickmas2023 posts as possible.

Although, if you want lil something-something, something on the /activity/ page is coming on Dec 1st too!

Just make sure to hop on the site a day before that for better chances.

New Version (4.1.0 – 4.1.5) – The “Curves, Holes, and Fills” Update

By Ralph (Developer) 93 Comments

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.

Stick Nodes: Stick Idol Collab – Winners Announced!

By Ralph (Developer) 54 Comments

Watch the full collab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Jnz5Oys60M

Ah yes, this opening bit will never get old.

As is usually the case, choosing winners was nearly impossible. There was something like 250 entries or so, and narrowing them down to fit in a not-too-lengthy collab video was very difficult. As a result, the quality threshold was raised as the entries poured in, and we simply could not include all of the entries that we wanted. So please do not feel sad or offended if your entry did not get in. We will take things like this into consideration in future collabs.

The Winners

After much deliberation, here are the final winners! An extra slot was added to “best animated” and “most entertaining” because of the sheer amount of amazing entries. A lot of thought was put into who should win what category, with some entries easily able to win in multiple categories. It was structured in a way to allow for the most fairness and allow a wide range of animation/creativity styles to win.

All winners receive $50 and a slot on the Stick Nodes splash screen if they do not already have one. I will be reaching out soon, but feel free to DM me on Twitter X first with your name (if it’s not obvious) and payment method. Preferably Paypal, Steam gift, or a gift card if in the USA.

Best Animated

Most Entertaining

Best Visuals

Most Creative

Honorable Mentions

Credits

Shouts out to SquiSN for suffering through the pain that was receiving, organizing, and eventually compiling all entries into the final product. Also shout out to Inactive Studios, led by Darkboy. This team were the lead cutscene and asset creators. They did what they had to with limited time to put out an above-and-beyond job and resulted in a fun and cinematic collab video.

Happy 9th Birthday Stick Nodes!

If you stuck around to the post-credits scene, you’ll have seen some behind the scenes birthday party action celebrating the ninth anniversary of Stick Nodes’ release. Things got extremely crazy, as you saw in the clip. The release of this collab and its premise (how the Default became the Default) was timed purposely, of course. So happy birthday Stick Nodes! Another year down, more features added – wonder what the 10th anniversary will bring?

Tune in again in about a month when something fun should start for Halloween. It won’t be a collab but something smaller and more accessible to the community as a whole!