I feel a very important and crucial feature for Pencil to have would be an option for the system to automatically save itself as well as the project you are working on. This would remove issues of losing some work while the system crashes or your computer itself shuts down while animating. Even if you consider it a less important feature to focus on, it’s definitely something that needs to be looked over and considered
@mikenunz1 Hey mike, the stable version 0.54b has an autosave feature. You can access it going to
EDIT > PREFERENCES> FILES (Icon) > Enable Autosave [] (click checkbox)
The “Number of modifications before autosaving” is pretty self-explanatory. After 15 marks you’ll get your file autosaved. You can obviously change that number. Also when you activate that without saving a first time, after 15 changes you’ll be prompted to save for the first time your file.
Hope this helps.
Why isn’t this feature enabled by default? I worked on a project for 7 hours and the pencil2d window just randomly closed as soon as i decided to delete a keyframe. I read about the autosave feature and thought it was autosaved but apparently we don’t have the technology to have autosave on by default.
Hi shaunak
The autosave feature currently requires you to save at least once, in order to activate.
There are situations where auto save causes problems when using Pencil2D. This is because it makes Pencil2D less responsive to inputted commands.
Because when it does its stuff, is controlled by Pencil2D and not the user. Sometimes the animation, that’s you, inputs several commands, which can cause Pencil2D to unfortunately crash!
I prefer not to switch this feature on and instead save my work manually. This has the added advantage, that I can change the filename occasionally, say from Project-5.pclx to Project-6.pclx.
Thus I have a series of files, versions of my work, which I can later refer to.
I would like to make a suggestion to the Pencil2D Team.
There is a procedure, to carry out the automatic save operation.
START
When the program, Pencil2D, enters this procedure, I think it should open a small window withe the message ‘Saving your project automatically’ preferably in BOLD RED LETTERING.
The main body of the automatic save procedure.
The procedure should then close the above message window.
Then clear the command buffer
END
This would set the command input buffer to a known state and tell the animation, you, that a save is in progress.