xGestures 1.9.2

Golly gee whiz! There's a new version of xGestures, version 1.9.2! As always, you can download it here: https://briankendall.net/xGestures/download.htm

This update doesn't add any new features, but it fixes a bunch of important stuff, some of which had been bothering me for years. Why I waited this long to fix these bugs is a mystery to me. I know that people have a way of tolerating and getting used to little bugs and annoyances in apps that they love, and I think I was doing that with xGestures. But then a little while later I had this "lightbulb over the head" moment where I was like, wait a minute, this is my app, why don't I just fix the damn thing?

This version also seems to work just fine in macOS Sonoma, at least according to a friend who's been running the beta for a few months now.

Here are the fixes:

• Fixed application Exposé in macOS Ventura
• Perform Keystroke action can now type keystrokes involving the numpad or navigation keys (e.g. arrow keys, home, end, etc.)
• Fixed bug where sometimes a gesture would get "stuck" down
• xGestures no longer freezes indefinitely when interacting with apps that have unresponsive UI
• Fixed rendering bugs when drawing a gesture path
• Fixed gestures being misdetected due to small movements from certain mice with high refresh rates (e.g. the MX518)
• Fixed erroneous rocker gesture that could occur after switching away from an app that has gestures disabled

The big one for me is the whole "gestures getting stuck" thing. That was quite annoying, and there was no real rhyme or reason to why it happened. That should be fixed now. The other big one is xGestures becoming unresponsive as it tries to interact with an application that's locked up. That shouldn't really happen any longer either (though xGestures might still lock up for a half second or so before its query to the aforementioned locked up app times out). Overall this seems to make it a lot more pleasant to use. Enjoy!

I made a game: Blah Blob!

I nearly forgot to post about this on this blog! But I recently made a game! In HyperCard, no less, which means it's in glorious monochrome. It's called Blah Blob!

It's a platforming game complete with scrolling levels, which is something of an absurdity to make in HyperCard. To those who are familiar with HyperCard then it should come as no surprise that this game requires a PowerMac G3 or better for it to play at full speed, which makes it something of a silly game to have made in HyperCard, because no classic Macintosh from the era when HyperCard still widely used can actually run it at any sensible speed. But this game wasn't about being sensible. It was about having fun making a game in HyperCard like the sort I used to make when I was a kid. And it was a ton of fun to make!

It has 20 levels of increasingly devious difficulty. Be warned, the game gets pretty difficult, though those who enjoyed games like Super Meat Boy or Celeste might find themselves right at home with it. Just note that you have to get the timing of bounces right. There's no jump button in this game, though you'd be forgiven at first for thinking that there is.

Here's a link to where you can download it: https://bribrikendall.itch.io/blah-blob

The modern macOS, Windows, and Linux builds all come prepackaged with an emulator so that you don't have to worry about the business of figuring out how to run it. Just download them and run them! But if you are the sort of person that would be able to run the stack on classic mac hardware, the standalone stack is available for download too!

And for those who follow this blog for xGestures news, I have a new version in the works that fixes a bunch of old and annoying bugs. I'll release it soon, as soon as I'm convinced it's in good shape!