Hey everyone. Today I'm updating pixelbasher to version Transience. This update brings several cool new w.i.p. features to the application. Symmetry mode and a basic version of user-textured brushes.

I almost forgot to mention it, but this update also has a Linux build! Like the MacOS version, this is experimental. I only have a Steam Deck to test this build on. So far it seems to be working correctly. But with so many Linux distributions out there, most likely it will not work on all of them. For now it's just a folder with an executable and it's dependencies. However in the future I'll look into providing something like an appimage or flatpak (currently I'm not even sure what these things are exactly haha).

I've also been working on the PixelBasher website a bit. Recently I got annoyed with Wordpress (which the website was running on) because it's so bloated. I wanted a fast loading website which doesn't require any cookies or other useless junk. So the new PixelBashser website is just a simple static manually typed html project. It loads really fast and looks a lot better than the old one to boot. Moving forward it will be a lot easier to maintain and add things that do not fit into a 'theme'. The last week I've been adding documentation pages in markdown format. It still needs a lot of work, but it's certainly a good base to work from!

But let's get into the features of the update:

Symmetry

The symmetry places a vertical mirror axis in the middle of the document. Whatever appears on the left side of this axis will be mirrored on the other side. By using symmetry, you can quickly kitbash symmetrical objects. Often useful for buildings, machines, etc.

Symmetry can be toggled with the symmetry button in the top bar.

 Early Acces Notes & known issues

•  In future versions of PixelBasher it will be possible to exclude individual objects from being mirrored. Allowing for placement of non-symmetrical details. For example, a building will probably only need one door.
• Bug: Currently the mirrored axis 'drifts' when the canvas falls out of rendering bounds. This is more apparent when zoomed in.
• Bug: Image exports using the symmetry function currently do not clip transparency correctly.

Custom 9-slice brushes

This feature allows users to supply their own textures for use as a 9-sliced kitbashing object. The functionality is far from done, but rather a proof of concept. Because of the 'Early Access' nature of the project, users can test it in this early version and expect improvements in coming updates. Also because this is one of the most requested features I'd rather just ship the w.i.p. and show you all 'look I'm working on it!'.

Early Acces Notes & known issues

• Currently limited to 5 user-brushes
• Library of user brushes is not saved
• User brush settings window can sometimes bug out
• A GUI is planned to be able to drag & drop and drop the margins of the custom objects

Misc

• A small thing that was added: the application maximize button now stretches the window to full like other apps do rather than completely hijacking the screen. The 'full-full-screen' mode will be added back at some point, but not on the maximize button.
• Some new cool machine parts have been added!

Cheers and have fun with the update!