Alice 2.4 Release (Dec 6, 2013)
Gallery Update
- Added set of Garfield© characters: Garfield, Odie, Arlene, John, Liz, Nermal, Pooky. There are two different object models for all characters but Odie and Pooky, with either different facial expressions or different postures.
- Created a checkbox in Preferences menu to allow users to show/hide He/She builder in Gallery. Recreated some of the He/She builder's textures.
- Reorganization of Gallery - removal of duplicates - if you cannot find a model where you expect it, do a Search
- Walking People models have been moved into the People gallery, removing the corresponding People objects that did not have the walking built-in methods
- ScienceObjects gallery has been renamed to Science
- Models in the Spooky gallery have been moved to Objects, People, and Buildings galleries
- number cube, bar chart, spinner, calculator have been moved into a new Math gallery
- Redid some Gallery thumbnails
Feature Modifications
- Double-click to open an .a2w file
Added a file listener to allow users to double click a file to open it in Alice. Modified plist to register file type with OSX. Added icon to Alice file.
Alice will now check the filename before saving/exporting the movie to make sure that it is a valid file. If user does not have permission to save the file at the current location, Alice will issue a warning and request for the user to choose a new directory to save the file.
When saving a file, Alice will now save a preview of the world.
- Added more keys selection to "when <key> is typed, do <method>" event
- Saving Preferences file at a relative path
Users can now specify relative path. The working directory is the Required folder, so all paths must be relative to this location. This new feature will allow users to run Alice from a removable drive and still have the preferences file save correctly on the drive -- considering that the removable drive will have a different drive letter when running on other computers.
- Created a smaller file for Mac OS X download
Bug Fixes
- Int <a> function evaluation error
An Int <a> function in an if/else statement is not evaluated correctly when written as "if Int <a> == <a>". This statement for all whole numbers was always false, but has now been fixed.
Alice could not load a world containing an object that uses the pointOfView property in the editor window. Alice throws a "No such class - Javax.vecmath.Matrix4d" when encountering this error. This bug has been fixed.
The Other... parameter/variable did not update correctly causing Alice to insert a wrong type for the parameter/variable. This bug has been fixed.
This bug covers multiple events:
- <When a key is pressed>
- <While the mouse is pressed on something>
- <Let the arrow keys move subject>
- <Let the mouse move the camera>
- <Let the mouse orient the camera>
In all these cases, if the key or mouse button is held down and a Question box pops up requesting for a user's action, then after the action, Alice will not notice that the key or mouse button was released during the popup request. This bug has been fixed.
- "Say" bubble causing lighting problem
When playing a world containing the "Say" bubble, the world will appear as if the light was turned off right when Alice displays the "Say" bubble.
- Tabs on the Editor window
Previously the tabs on the editor window were glitching, often causing the non tabbed area to the right to be filled with the same color as the tab. Now, the tabs stand out and have the proper blue (default) color as the background.
Camera could not get a good look at some models because the point of view was returning NaN value. Saturn and Uranus are 2 examples of such models. This bug has been fixed.
- Fixed StackOverflowError when copying recursion statement
- Gallery Drag and Drop (Mac OS X only)
When dragging an object from the gallery to the render window, the object was placed in the middle of the window rather than where it was dropped.
- Backwards compatible (Mac OS X only)
Has been recompiled Alice with jdk1.5.0_22 to allow Alice to run on some older MAC OS.
Updating or changing some preferences in Alice required the user to restart Alice and there was not a restart button in Alice to allow a quick restart in the Linux version. This button was added to this version so users do not need to launch Alice from the executing program on the terminal.
Alice 2.3.5 Release (Aug 2, 2013)
Feature modifications
- After changing the atmosphere and / or ambient light colors of a scene, the user is now able to reset these values to the original default settings (the will appear in the history section of the popup list when changing the color value)
- Methods can now be copied on to the clipboard
Bug Fixes
- Alice 2.3.5 will now execute for MAC OS 10.7 using Parental Control support.
- Fixed a null pointer exception error when user clicks on more... in a method tile.
- Made the Other... combo box non-editable in the Create New Parameter dialog box.
- Fixed List contains <value> statement, where the value was not evaluated correctly.
- Gallery Problems
- Fix the Fridge model (Model throwing error)
- Redo thumbnail for Planets and ScienceObjects (Remove background to make it look like the other thumbnails in the gallery)
- ClipBoard
- clipboard will no longer indicate you can drag a model into it. Models cannot be copied using clipboard)
- Object Visualization bugs
- User may now undo a Set Object command.
- Fixed a bug that was causing multiple undos for setting an object in Object Visualization.
- System fixes
- Alice can now use non-ascii characters, including in file, folder, method and objects names.
- Fix a heap memory error on MAC.
- Update Alice libraries (dll) so it does not depend on any visual studio libraries. (This was causing Alice to now work on some computers)
- The new dll also fixed a bug in say and think bubbles not displaying non-ascii characters properly.
Alice 2.3.4 Release (May 7, 2013)
Feature modifications
- Restored Take Picture feature.
- Restored Screen Capture tab from Preferences menu.
- When saving an object, and adding it to the Alice Gallery, a thumbnail of the saved object correctly displays in the Gallery
Bug Fixes
- Saving objects now works correctly
- Export Code for Printing menu item now prints any lists in a world
- The print control tile now correctly prints user input text to console (not "none")
- The Mac version correctly handles graphics with transparent elements in the images (for example, the wings of the faeries no longer have a black box around them)
Alice 2.3.3 Release (March 4, 2013)
Feature modifications
- Replaced function "int(a) as String" with "int(a)".
- Removed Take Picture feature.
- Removed Screen Capture tab from Preferences menu.
- Added a menu item to view Alice license.
- Change the output text of "Print" statements.
- Removed "Export As A Web Page" feature.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed loading world or models with Spanish characters
- Fixed layout of start up window.
- Fixed the start up "CastExceptionError".
- Fixed "Null pointer exception" error thrown by the Color class.
- Alice creates model's thumbnail when saving model
- Fixed a bug that was caused while using keyboard keys to move an object that is passed in as variable
- Fixed a bug that was preventing Alice from loading the Spanish default world
- Fixed a bug that was preventing Alice from saving the preferences.xml file
Alice 2.3 Release (August 5, 2012)
Spanish Language
Alice 2.3 has been released with a Spanish language option! To select a Spanish display, open the Edit/Preferences menu and on the General tab, select Spanish as the Display Language.
Then, restart Alice. After restarting, Alice menu items, methods, functions, and property names will be displayed in Spanish.
The original installation files for Alice 2.3 contain only the English language gallery. (See instructions below on how to install the Spanish gallery.)
Once the Spanish gallery is installed, the Alice objects and subparts will be displayed in Spanish.
Worlds created and saved under one language setting may be opened and will run under the other language setting. However, the object names and subparts will remain in the language in which the world was originally created.
Alice Updates and Gallery Installation now from within Alice.
Alice 2.3 now allows users to update to new releases of Alice 2.x, and to install another language gallery from within Alice. Users no longer have to do a compete download and re-installation of Alice 2 with every new bug fix and / or system update.
From the Help menu, select the Update Software menu item.
A dialog box will appear. If there are new updates for the Alice software available, the option to download will be checked. This is also where download for automatic installation of the English and / or the Spanish gallery is available. There are new models for Alice 2 being developed, and when they become available, download the appropriate gallery.
Alice will not automatically send a notification when updates are available. You may wish to check the Software Updates menu periodically, watch the Alice website (www.alice.org), or watch for notifications from the Alice Educators Mailing List and the Alice Facebook page.
When the Update button is clicked, Alice will connect to the download servers to begin the download and installation. The computer must be connected to the internet for automatic updates.
When the update is complete, Alice should be restarted.
Note: It may be good practice after a complete download and installation of Alice 2.3 and subsequent versions, to run the Update Software option to make sure that you have the most current version of the Alice .jar file.
Bug Fixes
The following bugs were fixed in this release.
- Added a Spanish gallery which is available for download from within Alice 2.3 through the Help/Update menu.
- Created new Splash screen and About Alice screen images.
- Change the encoding method for Alice to allow Alice to correctly display an extended character set.
- Fixed a missing function tag.
- Changed the name-checking method to allow for accents and other characters used in Spanish and other languages.
- Created a language pack (All the required files for translating Alice to other natural languages).
As always, please let us know of any bugs or problems you encounter. You may contact us at alice-help.
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