Page 2 of 3 FirstFirst 123 LastLast
Results 11 to 20 of 29

Thread: Mamba Black Version 1.80 Now Available !

  1. #11
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Yorkshire, UK
    Posts
    4,585

    Default

    Hi there and welcome to the Forum.

    It's brilliant that you have taken the time to join the 'group' and read what real life users are saying with regard to the Mamba Black software.

    It would be really nice to think that you will take notice of what we are saying and perhaps talk with us about proposed improvements etc.

    I've emailed MediaLas a few times with bits and pieces regarding Mamba and the replies I get are in decent english, but not as good as your posting here. This would lead me to believe that the person who is responding to emails is not you

    How about you perhaps give us a clue as to your whereabouts and a bit of information about yourself?, if you don't want to, then no worries. It's just that we are (or rather I am) a bit nosey

    Anyway, i'm sure I speak for all Mamba users when I say welcome aboard and that we're looking forward to some great improvements with the software!

    Cheers

    Jem

  2. #12
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Posts
    98

    Wink

    Quote Originally Posted by Jem View Post
    Hi there and welcome to the Forum.

    It's brilliant that you have taken the time to join the 'group' and read what real life users are saying with regard to the Mamba Black software.

    It would be really nice to think that you will take notice of what we are saying and perhaps talk with us about proposed improvements etc.
    Long-time experience tells me that user feedback is the most valuable source for product evolution and improvements. Simply because the software is not intended for ME but YOU out there. I'm just the one whose task is to cast ideas into code I'll read the forum when I have some spare time, and I'll answer PMs as promptly as possible. I can't promise anything about when a particular feature will be done (if ever) but I'll discuss all your suggestions and put any feasible wish on my large todo list At present the most important things are bug fixing and stability improvements, as well as the issues with Vista which must be dealt with timely. I'd like to implement no new features before Mamba is stable and solid as a rock, but you know, some things never happen the way one wishes

    Quote Originally Posted by Jem View Post
    I've emailed MediaLas a few times with bits and pieces regarding Mamba and the replies I get are in decent english, but not as good as your posting here. This would lead me to believe that the person who is responding to emails is not you
    That's correct. We have a couple of people doing support, and are still experimenting a bit with procedures and tools on our side to make things work as good as possible. Besides working on Mamba I usually get the "real" bugs like program crashes, and I've already implemented a crash report tool in Mamba that will gather as much information about the cause and whereabouts of the crash as possible. Unfortunately, this stuff makes Mamba a bit slow so that I dislike putting it into the regular download version - we just send special Mamba versions to people who report program crashes etc. The reporting tool itself is very easy to use, all the details are compiled into a bug report text file that you can store on your hard disk and email us. We have already had a couple of such cases and I am usually able to fix the bug on the same day I receive the report file.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jem View Post
    How about you perhaps give us a clue as to your whereabouts and a bit of information about yourself?, if you don't want to, then no worries. It's just that we are (or rather I am) a bit nosey
    Yeah, I'm always nosey myself. I'm a long-time software developer, celebrating my 20th anniversary of writing my own stuff this year, it all started with a Commodore C-128 and a C-1541 floppy drive It's the one thing I like best, so it was only natural to turn the hobby into a job. At present I live near the beautiful town of Heidelberg in Germany, working from home most of the time (and way too much if you ask my significant other ) and travelling to MediaLas for brainstorming and strategy discussions every once in a while. I've specialized in reviving projects that previously died one or the other way, and I dare say I was very lucky to meet the cool folks at MediaLas. They are really awesome and I enjoy working with them quite a lot But enough of that, I'm not a good storyteller and often enough I don't even have the faintest idea about what people would like to hear from me... So feel free to ask if you care to know something particular about me

    Quote Originally Posted by Jem View Post
    Anyway, i'm sure I speak for all Mamba users when I say welcome aboard and that we're looking forward to some great improvements with the software!

    Cheers

    Jem
    Some great improvements sounds nice *peers at his todo list* I have nearly TWOHUNDRED items on my list, some of them less important, others in flaming red Many of them won't reflect in the user interface because some internal things really need fixing and that gives rise to a host of new issues, others might make you go "WOW!" (did I hear "hope against hope"? ) - but I'd really like to focus on stability and reliability first instead of new features. (And there is plenty to do...)

  3. #13
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    Charleston, SC
    Posts
    2,147,489,446

    Smile

    Welcome to PhotonLexicon, Old Grumpy!

    It's great to have another developer here. I'm certain you'll get plenty of feedback from the users here. (Especialy since Mamba Black is so popular here on the forum.)

    And I see that you were a Commodore fan... That alone makes you OK in my book! (I, too, had a C=128, before moving up to the Amiga 500, then the 3000, the 1200, the CD-32 and the 4000.) While I've long since abandoned the Amiga for any real work, I still have two in the house.

    So, again - welcome to the forums.

    Adam

  4. #14
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Sheepsville, Wales, UK
    Posts
    3,406

    Default

    I would like to extend the welcome that Adam and Jem have aready imparted - even if you have no connection to Mamba you are very welcome here, but being the snakemaster (should that be meister) makes you a very special member of the forum. I can't tell you how pleased I am that you are here as I am just one of many who love Mamba but have been getting a little frustrated at some of the things it does and doesnt do.
    I understand that your to do list must be long and that its important to work in the stability it needs before glueing on more whistles and bells. I have begun trying to put together a manual for mamba as we all seem to agree that the one that Medials Supplies is somewhat lacking, so Im trying to fill in some of the gaps. I started a thread about this which you may or may not have seen - here
    http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...ead.php?t=2338
    I also asked for suggestions and wishlists and have had some responnse. I don't wish to burden you with loads more work but would you consider any of the suggestions we can put forward as long as they are reasonable and practical?
    Also I have a couple of questions...a personal one is are you a laser head yourself (if not are you turning into one? ) and can you shed any light on what the 'teach-in movement' tool is supposed to do. All the folks I have asked about it seem just as baffled as I - any clue would be good .
    Also (and im sure its there on your list) are you aware that liveplayer - one of my favorite and most used mamba features - has died recently? I was convinced it was a problem with my midi keyboard as its new to me but second hand but the other night I tried it with V1.6something and it worked just fine. If you would like me to describe the problem in detail I can do, just drop me a PM.
    Finally I would just like to compliment you on your English - its probably better than mine.

    hope you enjoy our group of friendly laser nerds

    Rob

  5. #15
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Posts
    98

    Thumbs up

    Quote Originally Posted by stanwax View Post
    I would like to extend the welcome that Adam and Jem have aready imparted - even if you have no connection to Mamba you are very welcome here, but being the snakemaster (should that be meister) makes you a very special member of the forum. I can't tell you how pleased I am that you are here as I am just one of many who love Mamba but have been getting a little frustrated at some of the things it does and doesnt do.
    You're telling me about getting frustrated I've had a really great bad hair day... well, make that a week. Introduced a very stupid bug that raised its ugly head in a totally different place (you know, domino effect) and made me waste an ungodly amount of time debugging it. That's also the reason for the very late reply... Anyway, thanks for the warm welcome (to everybody), and no, it doesn't have to be meister. "snake meister" sounds... hmm. Maybe Black Adder could say that

    Quote Originally Posted by stanwax View Post
    I understand that your to do list must be long and that its important to work in the stability it needs before glueing on more whistles and bells. I have begun trying to put together a manual for mamba as we all seem to agree that the one that Medials Supplies is somewhat lacking, so Im trying to fill in some of the gaps. I started a thread about this which you may or may not have seen - here
    http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...ead.php?t=2338
    I also asked for suggestions and wishlists and have had some responnse. I don't wish to burden you with loads more work but would you consider any of the suggestions we can put forward as long as they are reasonable and practical?
    As I mentioned before, I'm always thankful for any constructive input from "the crowd" I'll review any suggestions, discuss them and possibly add them to my todo list, depending on the result of internal discussions of course. For example, if my boss dislikes a particular feature, it may not be implemented, but you know, it's all about the better arguments. In the end, Mamba is made for the users, not for us, so it would be silly to not listen to you The manual needs updating and could use some extra pages, that's true. I guess I'll work on that a bit as soon as I have a somewhat stable version. If you don't mind, I can merge your documentation with the manual (gotta discuss that with my boss first, etc.)... For now, if you have any particular detail questions, just drop me a PM. I'll try to clear up things a bit where needed

    Quote Originally Posted by stanwax View Post
    Also I have a couple of questions...a personal one is are you a laser head yourself (if not are you turning into one? ) and can you shed any light on what the 'teach-in movement' tool is supposed to do. All the folks I have asked about it seem just as baffled as I - any clue would be good .
    As of now, I'm not quite a laser head, it was more of a coincidence that I'm now working for MediaLas. I've been a great fan of electronics in the past, but it's been quite a while since I had some time to build some hardware... I'm (due to my job) more into software recently. None the less, laser shows are quite cool and I'm quite fond of our nice show room

    The teach-in tool is intended to create moving objects in ways that cannot be easily described with simple movements etc. - after creating an object, click on the teach-in icon, then drag the desired object around on the frame as it should move and release the mouse button when you are done. When playing the scene, the object will move the same way you moved it with your mouse before. However, in my opinion the implementation is not complete - there is no relation between scene length and movement length and no adjustment in either way. If the movement is longer than the current scene length, the movement speed should either be scaled to fit the scene length or stretch the scene to match the movement length. This is already on my todo list, as well as an annoying drawing bug which draws an extra stroke from the last point of the current object position to the last point of the original object position.

    Quote Originally Posted by stanwax View Post
    Also (and im sure its there on your list) are you aware that liveplayer - one of my favorite and most used mamba features - has died recently? I was convinced it was a problem with my midi keyboard as its new to me but second hand but the other night I tried it with V1.6something and it worked just fine. If you would like me to describe the problem in detail I can do, just drop me a PM.
    Finally I would just like to compliment you on your English - its probably better than mine.

    hope you enjoy our group of friendly laser nerds

    Rob
    The biggest problem was that I had to take over right inbetween two versions. Peter started work on a lot of things and left me a big can of worms to deal with. I appreciate any bug report, and the more details it has, the better - If I can reproduce a bug with your description, it's much easier to fix.

    Eventually, thanks for the compliments, my English depends a lot on my concentration, and when I'm in the middle of just another gordian software knot, I may write more or less nonsense, without even noticing it. I started playing adventures on my Commodore when I got it, with pen and paper and a dictionary... Later on a lot of documentation and interesting books made knowledge of English mandatory to get along. Nowadays I try to keep some conversation in English to polish my skills a bit. It's not a problem of vocabulary, more about grammar - one of my buddies keeps telling me "you must be tired, your English gets worse and worse"

    P.S. I started writing this post in the early morning
    Last edited by OldGrumpy; 05-10-2007 at 08:49.

  6. #16
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Location
    Norway
    Posts
    1,303

    Default

    Hi and welcome to the forum :-)

    I have not testet the new verison yet...

    But it`s installed (in summertimes I dont have so much time for lasers)
    I wonder if this new verison suppoert 2 USB Easylase running at the same time ?

    Becouse the old one did not

  7. #17
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Posts
    98

    Default

    I didn't change much about the output code (beyond a massive speed increase ) so I can't tell right off top of my head, but I'll add this to my todo list.

  8. #18
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Location
    Norway
    Posts
    1,303

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by OldGrumpy View Post
    I didn't change much about the output code (beyond a massive speed increase ) so I can't tell right off top of my head, but I'll add this to my todo list.
    I did get some new updated drivers from Easylase that make it possible to get both board to work togheter..

    But all in all it was a pain in the ass to make it happend !!

  9. #19
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    NL
    Posts
    71

    Thumbs up Mamba thread

    Maybe its a good idea to make a new thread with only To Do and To Wish suggestions for Mamba Black. All new ideas in one thread! Easy to read for us, easy to use for OldGrumpy and Co...

  10. #20
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Posts
    98

    Thumbs up

    Sounds like a good idea. Any volunteers to collect things for a separate thread?

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •