Hi there, guys!
Today is a great day to publish the new version of Story Architect 0.4.2, in which we've redesigned the way we work with beats in the treatment, added the ability to isolate scenes for full concentration, and fixed a lot of bugs! Here we go!
Treatment or Outline?
The biggest change we've made is probably concentrated in our approach to working with the treatment.
The beat approach didn't appeal to everyone. We got a lot of messages from writers that it would be great to simplify it so that the descriptions added to the scenes wouldn't create extra lines in the script itself.
We took it in and looked for a solution. And it seems that it has been found. In the new version of the program, we came up with a way to combine both approaches in one tool and still make it easy to use.
Now the beats added to scenes in treatment are not visible in the script itself until you want them to be! You can simply add scene descriptions and not interact with them at all within the script (except checking the outline while working on the scene text).
Or, you can activate the beats display in the script (with the corresponding button in the toolbar) and add scene content within the beats so that you can manipulate them afterwards.
Isolating elements of text documents
Another new feature in Story Architect 0.4.2 is the ability to isolate a scene, or a group of scenes in a script, a page, or a comic strip panel, etc., in text documents so that you can focus on it as much as possible.
Isolation mode can be enabled in the toolbar, and then you can navigate between scenes using the document navigator, or the comment or bookmark navigator.
Other improvements
The application is getting more stable at a rapid pace. During these two weeks, more than 30 problems and defects have been fixed in total. Here is a detailed list of the most notable improvements:
- text formatting (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough) can now be applied without selecting the text
- context menu of spell checking now works for the words selected in a text editor;
- an ability to independently test translations for dev-versions of the application is added (more details at https://starc.app/translate);
- an option of forced opening of the project for cases, when a file you were working with was locked by another instance of the application, which crashed, is added;
- an option to disable the forced conversion of the paragraph style from a line to a remark when entering the opening parenthesis is added (Settings - Components - Script - Text Editor - use an opening parenthesis to switch to a remark in a line);
- the list of characters is now displayed in upper case of the script navigator;
- an issue of the cursor constantly thrown to the beginning of the script/last paragraph of the scene title, when entering text, is fixed;
- an issue with saving a script that had custom scene numbers and then the scene numbers were locked is fixed;
- an issue with loading beat display settings in the script navigator is fixed;
- an issue with moving local projects to the cloud if that project had previously been saved locally from the cloud is fixed;
- a crash when creating relations in the Character Relation Map is fixed;
- a crash when working with text, when a paragraph of text with an editorial note was below the cursor and moved to the next page, is fixed;
- an issue with the editorial note being highlighted in the list if you set the cursor at the end of the paragraph that is included in the note is fixed;
- an issue with the comic, play, and audio text breakdown after deleting lines is fixed;
- an issue with incorrectly pasting beat scenes from the clipboard is fixed;
- an issue with duplicate beats when moving scenes in the navigator is fixed;
- an issue with exporting specific scenes that contain beats inside is fixed;
- a crash in statistics when it is opened for an empty scene is fixed;
- a crash when undoing the last action in some situations is fixed.
That's it!
We've made a good job. You've made a good job. Which means that now we have to work even harder! :)
There's so much more to come - we wanted to add a fiction module in this update, but didn't make it in time. Now it will be a goal of the next update!
See you soon, dears! Send your regards and wishes, as always, on our email or social networks!