Tile rotation and textures now available

[Markus W]

In every room, it is now possible to rotate the tiles. In addition, you can use custom tile textures in your room(s).

When you edit your room, you can choose a texture number from a range of user-created textures or create and upload your own custom texture.


Control of tile rotation

You can rotate the tiles with the mouse. Imagine each tile sitting on an invisible disk. After you have dragged a tile to its new position, click on some empty space next to the tile and drag this invisible disk in a circular fashion to rotate the tile.

Hold down the SHIFT key during rotation to switch from rotating to nudging. This is handy to nudge tiles into place that may be a pixel or two off after rotation.

You can also click the buttons or press the corresponding keys on the keyboard to rotate or nudge the last moved tile. Each click or key press rotates the last moved tile by 5 degrees (or nudges the tile by 1 pixel). You can hold down the button or the key.

Note: Holding down a key on the keyboard for long periods of time may cause the mosaic to freeze temporarily. To fix this, lower the keyboard repeat rate of your computer.

Pressing the "R" key will reset the rotation of the last moved tile to 0 degrees (straight up).

Tile snapping (holding down SHIFT while clicking on a tile) will also first reset the angle of the tile you're dragging to 0. When you release the tile next to another tile, it will align neatly next to it. Note that tile snapping only makes sense for unrotated tiles.


Tile navigation

You can use the cursor keys to navigate the tiles and then use keyboard controls to fine-tune them. The current active tile is indicated with a red ring around it.


Copy tile rotation

You can duplicate the angle of the last moved tile by clicking on a new tile whilst holding down the CONTROL key (Mac users: use the apple/command key). This also works for tile navigation using the cursor keys.


Auto-updating previews

In the mosaic rooms, the thumbnail preview updates automatically but always displays the thumbnail using the default tile texture. Click on the preview thumbnail to load a thumbnail preview with the current room texture.

The active rooms preview also updates automatically.


Replay of artworks

In the public gallery, the replay feature of each artwork has moved to a separate page. The replay feature now also shows rotation and tile textures.

Please note that when you make a change to the tiles in your room (including changing to a different texture or loading another frame or snapshot into your room), the replay data is reset and recording in that room begins anew.

----

Happy Brothing!

Sincerely,
Markus Weichselbaum

[MorningStar]

Most of the above information is now also available when you click on the "How to play" link in each room:

http://www.thebroth.com/howtoplay.html

[MorningStar]

Update: The "invisible disk" is no longer invisible. Makes it easier to "get it" even if you don't understand English. I totally love the effect!

Big thanks to David aka dr nick riviera who put in some extra time on a Friday evening to make this happen!

Dolph aka Zaphod B is also putting in extra hours, working from home, fixing a few things up that may have otherwise messed up new artwork replays.

Freaky Friday and I are still in the office too, and now I can't wait to get home and ... play and chat a little bit in TheBroth!