Sokoban YASC 1.685 has been published

Brian Damgaard has published a new version of his great and widely used Sokoban YASC program.

The release notes for this new version:

• Access to music player
  
The main gameplay window has been equipped with direct access to the built-in music player, meaning it's no longer necessary to open the

"Settings" window to perform basic music player tasks. 
Once the music player is enabled in "Settings", a discreet button appears on the status bar in the main gameplay window.
The button supports the following interactions: Left-click: Play/Pause. Mouse wheel: 
Previous/Next track. Right-click: Select music folder.

• Minor changes.
  

Sokoban YASC 1.684 has been published

Brian Damgaard has published a new version of his great and widely used Sokoban YASC program.

The release notes for this new version:

• New feature: Puzzle-specific backgrounds
  This feature allows each  puzzle to have its own unique backdrop as seen, for instance, in the Christmas-themed "Santaban" Sokoban clone.
   Using "Santaban" as a running example, to implement such a mission pack in Sokoban YASC, the puzzle file header must include the key-value pair
  Skin: Santaban
  The specified skin file must be placed in the "...\Skins\Common Skins" folder. 
  The skin sets the option "Graphics - Board - Background - Level-specific backgrounds enabled" to "Yes" and makes walls, floors, and goals transparent to reveal the artwork.
  The individual puzzle background images are stored in the dedicated subfolder "...\Mission Packs\Santaban\Assets\Graphics\Backgrounds".
  Puzzles and  background images are paired based on names; for example, a puzzle named "Santaban 01" has a matching background image named "Santaban 01.png".
  
  For a limited time following this release, the Santaban mission pack is available for download here: 
  https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8bkb6hmu3p1iuqwysbcd7/Santaban_1-04-2026_Setup.exe?rlkey=mc9qx4sx3aiklarrqrsqxv23t&st=zqrp74li&dl=1
  This dual-installer bundles the legacy program-featuring an integrated keyboard compatibility workaround-with the Total Conversion for Sokoban YASC.
  Please note that the Total Conversion is currently an active work-in-progress; remaining puzzles await conversion in future updates.
• The original Sokoban YASC music player has been resurrected.
  While reintroduced primarily to support mission packs like "Santaban", the music player is also available for general use.
  In "Settings", a new "Music" section has been added with two options: "Music enabled" and "Music folder".
  This feature is intended as a lightweight background audio solution rather than a substitute for a dedicated media player.
  It automatically plays the tracks contained within the selected folder as background music during gameplay.
  Thanks to Matthias Meger for providing a reproducible scenario needed to resolve a vicious music player instability issue.
• As a side effect of the puzzle-specific background feature, it is also possible for regular puzzle collections to force a specific skin selection.
  By adding the key-value pair "Skin: " to the puzzle file header, the specified skin from the "...\Skins\Common Skins" folder will be loaded regardless of whether the collection utilizes individual background images.
  Use of this feature is generally discouraged for standard collections, as the choice of skin is typically left to the user's discretion.
  This functionality should be reserved only for cases where a specific visual style is essential for the intended experience.
• Renamed the "KenBri - Directional Player" skin to simply "KenBri" to establish it as the default variant of this skin.
  The "KenBri - Walking Player" skin remains available as an optional variant.
  

• Minor changes.
  
  

Sokoban YASC 1.683 has been published

Brian Damgaard has published a new version of his great and widely used Sokoban YASC program.

The release notes for this new version:

• Improved the support for Asian languages a little. 
  Before the emergence of the Unicode text encoding system, languages like Japanese and Chinese used a text encoding with both 1-byte characters and 2-byte characters.
  Sokoban YASC processes all texts as having single-byte characters only, with the result that cleansing puzzle titles for unwanted and illegal characters (e.g., quotes) often caused the program to mistake the second half of a 2-byte character for a single character to be deleted.
  This caused spelling errors and garbled puzzle titles on the screen. 
  Now the text cleansing routines make an effort to handle 2-byte characters correctly.
  Users of multibyte languages may also need to adjust several program font settings, such as those found under:
  "Settings -> Graphics -> Open window -> Window font" and
  "Settings -> Graphics -> Tools -> Window font". 
  Thanks to Minoru Yoshitani for suggesting and testing this feature.
• When displaying the player's legal moves, directional avatars now revert to their neutral direction if the skin lacks a dedicated "highlight player" animation. 
  For humanoid avatars, this typically means facing the spectator.
  This replaces the previous behavior where the avatar maintained the direction of its last move. Thanks to Matthias Meger for this suggestion.
• Bugfix (1.682): Importing skins in the "Sokoban for Windows" format had stopped working.
• Minor changes.