LaserBoy 09-01-2008 !!!

[James Lehman]

Are there any Mac OSX users out there that might be willing to compile LaserBoy for other Mac OSX users?

James.

[James Lehman]

Oooops.

Fixed a big wave bug!

http://hacylon.case.edu/laser/LaserB...11_01_2008.zip

James.

[James Lehman]

Fixed the bitmap display so that 1 and 4 bit bitmaps work correctly.

http://hacylon.case.edu/laser/LaserB...11_07_2008.zip

James.

[James Lehman]

Check it out!!!

http://hacylon.case.edu/laser/LaserBoy/LaserBoy_11_09_2008.zip

There are quite a few things different about this release.

There is a new option in the palette transforms menu (best reduce to palette) that converts a true color frame to palette by looking at all of the colors and eliminated RGB values base on their proximity to each other. This produces a pallete-ized frame that looks pretty much exactly the same as the true color frame.

Some work was done on the "color over bitmap" feature to correct for the vector end shift effect.

The draw, color, blank menu was redesigned to put the single vertex focus on the LAST one in the selection, not the first (the spider not the egg!)

I have also identified a few other modifications that will be finished very soon.

This version is different enough that I would ask users of LaserBoy to go over it carefully and please report any unusual behavior that you might find.

Thank you!

James.

[keeperx]

This version is different enough that I would ask users of LaserBoy to go over it carefully and please report any unusual behavior that you might find.

Unusual behavior... My copy doesn't seem to want to play nice... So LaserBoy is grounded, and he cant come out to play until he finds a nicer way to interact with the rest of the word... [get it?]

[keeperx]

Whenever i am applying a transform to a framset, if I move the window, it crashes.. this may be because SDL is updating the window position while ez_bmp_to_SDL_Surface is trying to update the bmp.

FLTK may fix this major bug..

did you add a setting for "no output" while applying transforms.. (dont see one)
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wait thats not exactly the issue...

i can make it crash without moving the window..
I created an S curve and was applying vortax to it after applying tranz to it. thats when it crashed



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Its not actually crashing, it says not responding but eventually comes back.. weird..

[keeperx]

Simple tools to be included with next version..
delete every ? verticie (every other, every third, etc)
Straighten curves with small angles (make gentle curves straight lines)

re-trace

Now retrace is an idea i just had... if you have a traced BMP but it has WAY to many points and curves... then re-trace will trace the image using a set of rules like
if points are too close together, delete them, if curves are almost straight, make them straight, only allow so many points to make a curve.. etc..

more of an automation tool, or plugin actually...

[James Lehman]

That stuff is kinda' already in there.

Yes you can turn off the preview of effect generations.

Mune 'u', option 'b' show effect rendering.

James.

[keeperx]

awesome.. maybe that will fix the hang up ..

and i know its kinda in there.. but some more automated processes (that can later be tweakable) are always great additions..

[James Lehman]

I've noticed that too. Just keep you task manager window open and look at CPU useage. If it's pegged at 100%, go get a cup of coffee! LaserBoy's got some work to do. It will be fine.

BTW, I've done LOTS of neat stuff to LaserBoy and I will be releasing a new version very soon. I've got the color reduction stuff working much better. I can now do a reduction of ALL frames to ONE palette! I've also got the scan over raster stuff working much better. AND I've split the concept of distance_delta_max into lit_distance_delta_max and blank_distance_delta_max. So now you can optimize your blanking separately from the lit stuff!

I have a few more tweaks to make on the wave output.

THEN, I think I'll get LaserBoy to show up in a FLTK window!

James.