This update is a big one and deserves its own post because hell yeah two new features !
The first brand new feature is a backup system, the second is a hard mode for her little fight. There are new dialogues and a few new responses and Azura migrated from AYA to YAYA (that’s the language she is using, the only big changes would be her core .dll, her shiori and her saving file, renamed, and me having access to more functions to develop stuff mwahahah). Azura shouldn’t repeat twice the ending communication dialogue when she is talking with an other ghost either.
How does the backup system work ? Well, it’s simple, once you picked up a folder, Azura would save into it a little file containing the path to an other folder you pick up too. There is written if you want the first folder to be saved into the second or the second into the first or synchronizing both each other. If there is already a file with the same name but with a different size or date in a folder, she would overwrite it depending on your settings, so comparing the dates or the size in priority or asking you between the two files which one you keep.
When you connect a device to the computer, she would check for this little files and ask you if you want her to do what you indicated her, so saving from one to an other folder or synchronizing. There is an explanation about how it works the first time you enter the backup menu too.
There are other settings, she can search in a list of repositories or in a list of drives. By default, those are not activated. Though it’s highly advised to limit her researches. Searching for the little files can take time, the more repositories and files there are, the more time it would take. And during this time, Azura freezes, entirely. She doesn’t crash, but you can’t interact with her anymore while her researches aren’t done and for those who are having Windows, it would say she doesn’t respond (my record before closing her is 20 min, she would have continued if I didn’t stop her).
And it isn’t working with android devices. They are a mess pretty well hidden by the explorer so I didn’t find a way to access them.
The second new feature now, the hard mode. Until now, Azura had a little battle AI easy enough to beat. With this update, you can now choose an other type of battle, a lot less easy. It’s now an actual challenge to win. The mode can be changed in the config menu.
It’s been a long time I didn’t do an real big update and there are a fair amount of new stuffs.
I had a lot of fun with SSP voice recognition feature. I found it pretty useful to be able to change a song and to control the music player without having to touch or to be near the computer. So I implemented a menu for the voice recognition. It’s a simplified menu with short commands. Only the settings part isn’t simplified yet.
There are three modes too :
- the full mode : Azura would react to every command you said such as her name, the music player or any choice that is currently displayed and selectable.
- the disabled mode : she won’t react to anything.
- the partial mode : only the music player would react.
The purpose of this modes was allowing people to sing loudly in front of the computer without having Azura reacting at all. People who use voice recognition know what I mean (it’s quite annoying when it reacts for nothing because it didn’t understand correctly what has been said).
Since some song name can be too much long and complicated to be said at once with the voice recognition, I added a renaming feature. So people can rename their songs. It won’t rename their file, only the way Azura call them in her playlist. This nicknames are saved when the playlist is and are restored when it’s loaded.
The AI now, I progressed with the self-learning feature. I implemented the responses for the self-learned words for the normal sentences. So it still misses the questions but she shouldn’t say an error message for the normal sentences.
Still for the AI, when a sentence wasn’t having a verb such as simple greeting, Azura was saying an error message. She shouldn’t anymore.
And the last new stuffs added are new dialogues. I completed the dialogues I started to implement last update.
A dozen of days ago, Azura got an update for her birthday. It's been two years she has been released.
This update is, as a lot of her updates, a big one, but it's a milestone too. The first part of the development of her AI is done. Almost all of the responses are implemented, the only ones missing are some from questions that require a yes or no answer. The next step is her improvement, making the responses more accurate and implementing a memory system to improve Azura's understanding, to make communication better and looking more like an actual conversation.
There is more about this update changes in Azura's update notice.
Azura got less updates this year and her development is slower. That's because I started two new ghosts and have been working on them. In the contrary of her, they won't be released with unfinished features.
The first one is already working, its shell is bigger than Azura's one (the biggest shell I've ever done lol) and almost all the current pools of dialogues are completed, even if they're only having a few dialogues for some of them. Its relationship system is implemented and working and it's having its own balloon. There are still new pools of dialogues and events to do though. The second ghost is only at the beginning of its development, dialogues aren't done but the shell has already most of its pictures and this ghost will be simpler anyway.
Otherwise, not a lot changed in one year. Azurtale will resume "soon" (soon can be a long time for me lol). I've done good progresses on the new pages.
It was supposed to be a small update at first since she hasn’t been my main occupation those last months but it turned out I did a lot of stuff on her. Heh, couldn’t really stop working completely on her.
So for this update, there is a bad news. As you may have noticed, the website has stopped working. It has been deactivated again so I migrated it to github definitely. The new download link is this one. Azura will ask you to check the github repository for her update. Her old link has been removed so she will update normally again after this one. Her report option won’t be working anymore.
For the features, something quite invisible but still important. The way she handles the different events changed so it should be easier for me to add more animations in the dialogues. I’m slowly adding the battle surface into the normal ones to possibly have one day Azura fighting in pajama. I did more responses for the AI, ones for the ‘what‘ and ‘how‘ questions. She can now handle properly multiple propositions in the same sentence.
For the bugs, a lot of surfaces issues has been solved. In first, one that was making Obsidian and Azura’s normal arms appearing at the same time. Azura wasn’t opening her computer when she offers to play a song just after having added some to her playlist. There was a surface issue with the name teach dialogue that is now solved too. And there aren’t any error in her normal outfit error log anymore ! (There are still some when she is in pajama and warnings but one log clear of actual errors is already something, even if those didn’t impact anything.)
Her backup feature was broken so it’s fixed now.
When Azura is switching to an other ghost, she is supposed to put Obsidian down when she is holding her. But it was interrupting the change of ghost. She will now force the change of ghost anyway.
Otherwise I may have started an other ghost.... again !
Since I had an issue with the website, I preferred taking my precautions in case it’s shut down so now there is a mirror on github. If an update fails, Azura will now offer you to check the github repository.
Otherwise it’s not a big update, Azura just has some new animations and some communication with other ghosts.
