Hey everyone! After months of work and many delays, Creatonaut 2 is now available on its own page! With it brings many changes, with the most important that we haven’t covered yet being:
Automaton
Automaton is a new feature which can take in the guides and vocabulary lists written by translatonauts, to generate questions. The translatonauts can then add their own questions, or proof-read and fix the generated questions. This is NOT done by AI, it’s done algorithmically which is possible due to NautML.
NautML wasn’t built with this in mind, but we’ve gotten lucky that it just so happens to be compatible with what Automaton is going to be. Automaton will be able to both generate non-open questions and open questions, so like translate questions where you have to type it yourself.
However I must warn Translatonauts that the open questions will be highly simple and generated using only single phrases. Ideally those will be placeholders that you can then modify to be more complex and ‘whole’
It may also make mistakes so please double check your work, Automaton will attempt to make questions by pulling from your guidebooks, so make sure what you put in them is accurate!
Secondly, to aid with collaboration, CN2 now supports
Instant Sharing
I’ve implemented an export feature that allows translatonauts to conveniently package their projects for easy sharing with other Creatonaut instances. When the export button is clicked, the system instantly bundles all project assets, excluding image files, into a .cn2 archive. It’s important to note that this file format is not compatible with older .cnaut and .cn1 formats. Once the project is successfully packaged, it’s uploaded to a file host (not us, we don’t have the bandwidth for that sort of uploading and downloading) and you get an easy to share link that’ll import your project into someone else’s creatonaut should they want to.
I’ve encountered issues in the United Kingdom, where our chosen file hosting provider has been blocked. As a result, translatonauts in the region may face difficulties utilising the export features. If you’re affected by this, a simple copy paste of the repo is still possible like before!
Simulator
Preface: To avoid rewriting what I said in the last post, I’ve copied the simulator explanation segment in its entirety here for your convenience. You can also view it in its original context here.
The latest new Creatonaut update is bigger than all of the previous put together, and is something we’re extremely proud of. When we began work on Creatonaut we promised that volunteers would be able to see how their course contents might look like within Lingonaut on an actual device.
However, after numerous rewrites and hours of code, I’m pleased to announce that we have Full virtualisation of courses in Creatonaut, meaning instead of just seeing a static view of your question, You can test, audit and run your course directly within Creatonaut as if it was running on an iPhone within the Lingonaut app. I can’t overstate how much of an improvement this is over our original promise and how helpful it’ll be not just to volunteers wanting to check how their questions and guides look within Lingonaut, but to everyone else who might want to make or do custom or community made courses. It’s not just a preview window anymore, it’s fully functional, error detection, all question types, sound effects & all, with your mouse serving as a substitute for touch.
Edits you make will be available immediately within the simulator (If you’ve used xCode before you’ll feel right at home!) and whilst there are UI differences between the simulator and what will be the final released app on iOS, we hope that the simulator will give you a good idea on how courses will look and run, help you spot mistakes or errors, and serve as a gap-filler whilst we finish work on Lingonaut. Screenshots below:
Whilst full virtualisation of courses is supported, hardware acceleration and internet features are not. Therefore things like UI elements and animations may look considerably more janky (though better than if the simulator was built without GDIu) and are not a final or complete representation on how the app will look and behave once it releases. Secondly your progress on courses done within Creatonaut won’t be saved to the Lingonaut platform or carried over to the lingonaut app. Likewise, there isn’t a way to login to your Lingonaut account or access any of the internet features. Virtualisation is restricted to the course content only.
It was an immensely difficult task to add full virtualisation for our six existing question types, and it’s been great to see Creatonaut turn from just a small companion app to a fully featured IDE but that’s not all we’ve done!
Revamped Settings
The settings screen has now been revamped with multiple tabs and simulator settings
We’ve added an XP count and Lives counter as well just for extra fun when taking screenshots!
Analysis
You can find the VirusTotal analysis for Lingonaut.app and Creatonaut here: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/domain/lingonaut.app/relations
New Wiki!
I’ll soon roll out a significant enhancement to our wiki system, making it context-sensitive. This feature is designed to provide Translatonauts with immediate context relevant information wherever they are in the application. When you’re engaging with a particular section of Creatonaut and encounter difficulties, Just click the wiki button in the side bar. The app checks if you’re using a specific page, UI element, or feature—and retrieves the most useful (hopefully) wiki page for your situation.
I’ve also expanded on the wiki content to enhance its usability. Each page now includes detailed images and step-by-step directions to guide you through doing things as clearly as possible, and I’ve annotated where I can too. While I believe these improvements will make using Creatonaut even more intuitive and problem resolution straightforward to reduce intervention on my part, I’m always open to feedback and ready to help if you’re stuck on something. If you find yourself needing further clarification, feel free to reach out to me directly on Discord.
Some other significant additions can be found below:
- Added support for .cn2 format.
- Added voice to missing word
- Added TTS and voice to almost every question type.
- Added new notification system and associated sounds.
- Added new sounds to Simulator
- Added error correction coverage to more question types and inputs.
- Added support for more unicode characters
- Added new images to Symbols gallery
- Added context sensitive Wiki search.
By now almost everyone should have been inducted into the Translatonaut program, and a link to the Czech template course should be available soon via instant sharing!
Additionally I’ve been populating the wiki with everything you might need to know about how to use Creatonaut to create courses.
Thanks for your patience and I look forward to working with you!
Creatonaut and the wiki can be found in their new homes below.
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