Dear Friends of Pixelmash,

Great news! Pixelmash v1.2.00 is LIVE and ready for you to download.

The update is FREE for all current Pixelmash license holders. Get the update wherever you purchased Pixelmash originally: via the Mac App Store, Steam, or the Nevercenter website. Additionally, the trial period has been reset for those who have not yet purchased.

Here are some of the new things you'll find:

• Added tools to draw rectangles and circles
• Holding Shift while rotating in the transform tool snaps to 15 degree rotation increments
• In all brush tools, holding Shift while in line-drawing mode (accessed via right click) snaps to horizontal, vertical, and 45-degree lines
• New custom dither pattern option in dither effect
• New option to position dither patterns relative to layer position
• New outline-only option in outline effect
• Improved speed, particularly on retina displays
• Dragging in image files now prompts for import or open as new document
• Now use Alt+Shift (rather than just Shift) to temporarily enter erase mode in brush tools
• Hi-dpi support has been added for Windows OS
• Other bug fixes

Enjoy! As always, we love to hear from you--send us an email to pixelmash@nevercenter.com, or reach out via Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. Let us know if you find a bug we can squash, if you have a great idea to add, or show us what you are creating!
Best,
Nevercenter

We've decided to start up a fun game project to work on as we develop Pixelmash (nevercenter.com/pixelmash), our pixel art/animation tool. Pixelmash Ghouls is a simple side-scrolling game, inspired by one of our favorite series of the retro era. All the art assets for Ghouls will be made in Pixelmash, and we'll release all the asset files for anyone to play with and modify, and submit their own art if they desire. At the moment we're not aiming to make a full releasable game; our main goal is to develop and refine Pixelmash (and to help get the word out about it). We find that working on a real project brings out all sorts of ideas to make the tool better. Project updates may be a little irregular as this is not our primary focus, but we'll be sure to post new assets as they become available.

Let me emphasize something here: WE ARE NOT ARTISTS. We're developers, so our art may be a little on the programmer-y side. But that's also part of the point: we have a lot of fun using Pixelmash, and we think others of all skill levels will too.

As you can see in the video above, we've already made some good progress. We've created a simple platformer in Unity with some custom physics in order to easily run our character around on curved surfaces (getting the movement right while standing on the turtle was trickier than it looks), with jumping and double-jumps. We've got in some projectiles which aren't shown yet. We've added a few key animated art assets made in Pixelmash, and for the moment we've made it so levels loop indefinitely.

We'll start posting assets, dev updates, and maybe a playable build soon!

Again, we're not intending this to be a full released game, just a fun side project for people to play with. If you want to follow along or contribute, you can subscribe/follow in all the usual places.

Facebook: facebook.com/nevercenter
Twitter: twitter.com/nevercenter
YouTube: youtube.com/nevercenter
Newsletter: nevercenter.com/pixelmash/#newsletter

-John

Thought we'd put a post here to keep you all updated. :) We've been working on some fun things!

1) Experimenting with modeling/rendering uses for Unreal Engine
2) Working on custom dithering patterns in Pixelmash: https://youtu.be/e50f-isTgw8
3) Making a free, fun collaborative side-scrolling pixel art game project in Unity (using Pixelmash assets) that we’ll make public soon!

Sneak preview of an upcoming feature in Pixelmash! Custom dither patterns.

As always, likes/shares/comments/follows over there are much appreciated!

Just added another Pixelmash video to our YouTube channel. This one shows how to easily make an animated Darth Vader, including a lightsaber and glow, in Pixelmash. Enjoy!

(Also--please comment/share/like/follow over there! It helps us out!)