Yes, I too got it to work now when I moved it to a folder without space in the name. :) Thanks!

Mountainmaster,
hehe, I didn't check my info first. Sorry!

That path: in the helpfile didn't even work!

And now one more wish:
In html (or is it a Javascript?) you can create an imagemap for a picture, so you can click directly on it on different positions and get different results. Maybe a clickable starfish position image could be created also with whatever language you program in?!
(Just an idea, for future versions.) :)

Swede
Bad news for u, with ur wish it is nearly impossible to be accomplished. I'll explain why to u

First, in order to create a image pixel map, the designer has to know all the possible position values of starfish and then scale down into the small pop-up window. But without knowing the core of the SSA program(Jim sure do), we never figure out how the SSA program calculate the starfish position values, we don't even know the boundary of the starfish's moving area, that's why I spent two hours waiting starfish to went across the tank and choose the 9 position to recorde the values. of coz I can record more values, but I have to close and restart the SSA every time I recorde the value from registry(becoz the starfish's position only saved in the registry when SSA exit or refreshed by double hitting the space bar), furthermore, it is unrealistic to record the value each time when starfish move a pixel, then I have to repeat the previous process thousands of times!!!

Even I have all the values avaliable and collected as pixel map, it is very hard to scale the coordination of the clicking point from a small pop-up window to match the full screen size.

So now u know the difficaluties of implementing this kind of mechanism, hope u won't feel so bad!

Mountainmaster
Nice new avatar and waiting for u to add the path converting into ur later version!

Thanks for your reply James.

Ok, maybe I asked for too much here, but maybe it can be limited to 10 areas, like the position of the letters today a-j. Each position could have a symbol or a letter, so it's easy to understand what to do with the picture. Then just run your pointer over the symbols, and they change color so you know which one is active...

No calcualtions or anything! Just use the values available, and maybe add a few more. :)

Problem solved! :) New version is up at http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/picker.zip

James,
The dosname converter actually was the only tool I didn't make just for fun. I use it for my work, part of which includes installing network applications in hospitals (our customers). Our software needs to know paths on mapped network drives in short names.

Swede,
I suppose you are right. Since you can click images in the main screen you would expect the same in the popup window. I'll look into that.

memilm,
I was not succesful with the system tray icon. The code I used before somehow did not work.

Swede,
I added the imagemap. It was surprisingly easy. New version is up at the download link above.

...Later...
Added some graphical effects to the imagemap. A starfish icon now sticks to the position that was last clicked. Also moved up to a final version. So unless anyone still finds serious bugs I consider this project finished for now.

Morgan

Thanks for ur remind, but I don't qute get what u mean, what's the quote (") marks for? is it used to indicating the absolute path or does it act like a flag which tells the OS to parse it into short name when ever OS is accessing the path?

Mountainmaster
Very nice, but I found a little problem, it is not a bug but just a level of design that developer didn't considered.
When saving the setting, u only saved 7 fish choice in the registry but u didn't save the choice of the position of the starfish, I suggest u can save the choice of starfish position as letters in ur own registry place (Tank1 is an example of saved name)

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SerenePicker\Tank1]
"StarFishPosReg"="e.reg"

so now u got it saved and when applying it to the SSA, u eventually apply the value in e.reg to the StarFishPos in SSA, futhermore, when the user selected a saved setting, then wish to change the starfish postion, once starfish position selection window pops up, I wish I can see the starfish icon stick on the position which is according to the previours seting, so this gives the user better idea on what's starfish's postion in this particular setting.

Call me a perfection, I would to fine tune the interface for better looking, if u like, take my suggestion or just level it
I like the pop up window for starfish postion with no fish around, that'll be more realistic looking, and the starfish icon is actually a smaller size of the apperance of the starfish, not just a hand drew icon. In addition, if some one doesn't like the starfish, ur program can just make the starfish disappers by setting its position to
ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff dc 0c fd bf
and make another button or radio box and label as "No Starfish" or "Starfish Off" which does this, so u also need one more registry file

here's my attachment for u if u want to take my suggestion:
the starfish at the bottom is for u the to shrink it down as a icon
I make the starfish in the white area below for u to easy to select in ur image processing application (just use the magic wand to select the white area and invert the selection.)

James,
It is by choice that I don't save the starfish position in the custom settings. What if the starfish has crawled to a position the user prefers to the presets? Then he won't be able to change to another custom setting without losing that. Sure, I could make an option "leave starfish alone" but I believe yet another option would make things overly complicated for not so advanced users.I agree that the graphics need some improvement. I'll see what I can do with your image. They also need to be somewhat larger to avoid the current pixel hunting, but that requires recalculating the entire imagemap :(

As for making the the starfish disappear, I have decided not to do anything that would not normally occur in the aquarium. I do not want to risk jim's disapproval, who - by the way - has been remarkably silent in this thread.

It's neither.

It is the proper way of specifying pathnames in a world where spaces are a possible character within the pathname. You should ALWAYS specify pathnames in quotes in any programming you do.

Hmm, that's one of the first things I thought of to add. Then again, I'm a rebel, much to Jim's shagrin.

Yes Indeed, but I reckon it is because the path name are treated as string data type in programming lang...not becoz it is a path name so that it uses quote.....
well...correct me if I was wrong :)

Mountainmaster
Arr.so it is intentional, no wonder ur application doesn't support this feature, well, for ur explaination, I think u still can avoid the addition of interface complicacy by not adding the "leave starfish alone" option but still accomplish the need by implementing the logicalness of the programe's intelligence. If the user didn't set the starfish position when he/she was creating a new set, then ur programe can just omit the additional starfish information in that custom seting, nevertheless, if the user did select a position for starfish while creating the new set, ur programe will then add this information in to the setting as usual as u do for saving the fish information.
Afterall, the goal of ur programe is to predefine the SSA, by the defination of "predefined" means everything is defined as the user prefers, so if the user did select a position for starfish then this information should also being saved, this is more logical in sense I reckon.

What do u reckon then? :)

---EDIT---
the message I'm trying to convey here is that for this kind of situation, it is a conditional situation, and if the condition(emplying "leave starfish alone" here) can be observed by user's interaction(if the user doesn't select starfish's position, that means "leave starfish alone"), then the decision(emplying save or not to save the starfish postion value) from this condition can be done by the programe itself since it can determined from user's interaction, therefore, there's no need to explicitly to ask the user about the condition first and then take the decision.

Hope u understand my saying. I think I still need to improve my English when it comes to explaing stuff.:p

New version is up with improved and larger imagemap.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/picker.zip

Morgan,
James is right. The problem is that I could not figure out how to put quotes around the string that is passed as command-line argument. When defining the string I already use quotes so I would have to place quotes between quotes, but then VB gets confused.
---edited---
Found it, quote in VB is Chr$(34).

James,
I like the way you can set the fishes and starfish independently now. Especially because I made the starfish position selector look so good and I want the user to go there instead of recalling it from a save.
I know the original goal was to predefine the aquarium but I already deviated from that by not implementing light and sound etc.

Nice surprice when you click the starfish to its position, Mountainmaster! :) I like it. The starfish maybe looks a bit bigger than in the real aquarium but thats ok!

So, how do you create programs like this? I saw you mentioned VB in your post. Visual Basic? Is it like modern html programming, or more like old time Basic programming? Line, by line programming with a lot of subroutines... Seems like a very usefull and fun thing to master, anyhow. :)

Neither HTML nor Basic.

It's a scripted real programming language, not web pages.

And you can do BASIC programming without line numbers you know. :)

And even the latest C++ still has subroutines. :)

Well, html can either be programmed directly in code or by using a WYSIWYG type editing. I was curious if there is a similar way of using VB. A combination of readily made functions that you just paste in and move around, and then go to the code to adjust it...

- Do you mean it's only a scripted language this VB?

Hehe. In the 70s, when I programmed my Vic20, and later my C64, I had to use linenumbers...

The question I have is: What programming language do you guys recomend then, if I want to learn a quick, useful and easy language?

BTW, is it C++ Jim uses for the Aquarium?

In a way, yes, that's what Visual Basic is. The visual part rather. :) You drag pieces around and do very little actual writing of code. It produces incredibly inefficient code, but it is a piece of cake to write programs for it especially with complex interfaces.

I don't know if it's a ringing endorsement, but Prolific is really getting behind a language called Rebol. Now, you have to write it all yourself (no automatic code writing), but it seems very accessible.

Yes. I'm not sure if he uses all (any?) of the OOP aspects of C++.

Yes, the Aquarium is written in C++, and Morgan's right -- I use almost no object-oriented features.

Mountainmaster
Haha, nice reason but don't let this reason to ruin the level of ur programe, the friendly user interface become degraded.....
Well, it can be say that if the user select the starfish pos b4 and then save the setting, that means the user did actually go into ur starfish pos selection interface b4 and exprienced the nice imagemap, so if u make the user to go back to the starfish pos selector everytime when the user recalls a particular setting, that'll become a bit annoying, in fact, I made a few sampling by asking 12 ppl in my software enginerring classmates to use ur programe and 9 out of 12 asking me why did I have to select the starfish pos again everytime when I recall my setting, trust me, I didn't tell them anything about how the save setting function works.
Maybe it just we software engineering ppl like the better user friendly interface, after all our goal is to make a perfect software in the world providing better life to ppl. maybe we were been brain washed by doing so many programming and the way of thinking we face a thing is quite different then usual ppl...:p

I start explaining ur reason to them why u didn't plan to add that feature, and tell them maybe it requires a large amount of work on coding so that u don't wanna adding more functions and then they start telling me how can it be done in a persudal code way.
I can tell u how if u wish to add this feature in the future.

and btw, the starfish is a bit big as Swede said but it's alright.

Finally, I think making starfish to disappear is a many-request features in this forum, in fact, Jim did planing to make the feature to turn on/off of any invertebrate critter in the SSA in the later version, so why don't u alter it do make more pll feels better?
just simplely add another button labeled as "Turn starfish off"
and apply the regitry value when it's pressed.
anyway, it just another suggestion for u.


A very nice job done man!

James,

Allright, you convinced me. I think I found a good way to save the starfish position in the custom settings and also integrate it all logically in the interface.
And since there seems to be such a demand for making the starfish disappear I will add that feature too like you suggested, though I suppose in time it will crawl back into the screen area that way.
However, I am not sure if I can find time to work on this as much as I did last week. But who knows...

Mountainmaster
don't stress urself too much man, I just suggest u a way to improve ur programe, if u decide to take my way that's great but u can do it in any time u like, there's not deadline or something, by the way, your programe is good enough for most of the ppl despite of those engineering ppl I lived with....:p

if u need any help just ask.

Ok, here it is. You can now save the starfish position if you have set one or hide the starfish!

http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/picker.zip

James,
Yes I know, no deadline, but programming is just so addictive. How nerdy can you get eh? :rolleyes:
I didn't use your hex code exactly but ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff. Then I tested by leaving the aquarium running for a full day, but the starfish hasn't crawled back in the screen area yet. I seems to be gone for good, but I wonder to which demonic dimension it orbs this way...

Mountainmaster
Wow very nice, better then we expected.
the popup window for starfish setting is very organized and very logical (the selection become disable when the Starfish off is checked)
Here's One last suggestion, we found that the starfish position is applied immediatly after click OK, nevertheless, in order to keep the programe's consistency, the starfish position should be apply when the "Appply" button clicked, and the letters (A~J, DEFAULT, OFF)in status box become black, otherwise it remains red when only done selecting and before apply.

We are impressed by your testing about the "starfish off" setting for running it whole day, and also the error handeling abuot no commas in custom setting name. This is the spirit that we software engineers always try to accomplished.

we'll keeo looking if there's any serious bug, but we think this is nearly perfect. again very nice job done.

To whom download and use this programe:
Please post your feedback here to Mountainmaster, give him ur comments and any suggestions, at least some compliments.

Nice work!

- But it doesn't work. :)

The starfish isn't visible, but som strange diagonal lines comes beaming in from the left bottom corner, stretching up towards the upper right corner. It's like very sharp triangels, so some polygons still want's to enter the aquarium...

Other than that, OK!

I don't have this kind of problem Swede
how did this happen?
can u tell us what did u do b4 u see this starge thing?

Yes, this picker looks pretty good. I would prefer a drag and drop type aproach for the fish selection though. Clicking a dot, then clicking a number, or however, it was a little confusing at first. Morgan, didn't you make a drag and drop prototype once? Someone did. It was called the Sachs Aquarium Settings Prototype and was a Multimedia Fusion Stand Alone Application. Anyone else remember that? That was really nice. I still have it. It's just a prototype though, you can drag and drop the fish into their slots and move all the volume levels and controls, but it doesn't actually affect the SSA. It's not a working model. This picker is novel because it actually works.

Remember this thread?

https://www.feldoncentral.com/forums...ings+prototype

Or try this demo

http://rmrcpa.com/lgk/fishdrop/fishdrop.htm

James said
I just choose "Starfish off", and then start the aquarium. It seems that my grafx card differs in performance some... Maybe you also have these spikes but they stay invicibly behind the aquarium and with my card they get in front... Just guessing, though. :)

I tried to make a screendump of it, but they flicker so fast I hardly can get one in the dump. This is one of the thinner ones (the only one I managed to get an image of) :)

Edit:
Using this code for the StarFishPos ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff dd I get rid of both the spikes and the starfish temporarily, but I also must have StarfishOnGlass set to 00. Go figure. :)

Maybe setting StarFishOnGlass and StarFishAllowedGlass to 00 also makes it impossible for the starfish to crawl back to the screen...

Hm... ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ee is even better! No spikes yet!

BTW, Shouldn't there be a selection thing for Starfish on glass: "no" available in the picker also?

Swede,
It seems your starfish was indeed partly orbed to another dimension. The aquarium should be able to correct impossible coordinates I think. On my system it changes ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff to ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff cd cc 8c bf immediately on startup. Assuming these are logical coordinates I put them in my program and took the starfish off the glass. Could you test again?
The 'Default' button is in fact the starfish on glass: "no" option.

James,
I followed your suggestion not to change the starfish position until the 'Apply' button is clicked.

patscarr,
I like the drag and drop idea. Never programmed drag and drop before, but it should be possible to implemented that and also keep the existing approach. I will look into it. BTW you don't have to click the dot, clicking on the fish also works.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/picker.zip

settings prototype
 

hey patscarr, that was me who made the stand alone stteings prototype. Infact, I finished making a new better version that actually works with the ss. The only problem is that I made it with a new version of Multimedia Fusion which I only have the demo of, which means I cant compile the file into an exe. If anyone wants to download the demo of mmf 1.5 from www.clickteam.com, I can send you the necessary files to run my program (and edit it if you know how to use mmf). In the meantime, ill think about buying mmf so I can share the program with everyone. I still have a few improvements to make, but I posted a screenshot anyway. The blue box in the top right is where a readme file will be loaded. The little colored boxes under the fish icons will be where you can store preset fish settings (like on a radio). The long box above these colored ones is where the name of the fish or preset button (yes you can name your preset buttons) will show up when your mouse is over it. To change the settings in the program at the top right, you click on one of the boxes such as the one that says "Resolution" and a menu will pop up that lets you choose a setting. I thought this was the most convienant way of doing it. It also helped keep the file size down to about 500k. You'll also notice that all of the invertebrate slots are set to random. This wont work yet for obvious reasons.

Can't say I agree with the totally nonstandard GUI.

But it looks like you put a lot of hard work into that.

Here is the settings that work on my computer, Mountainmaster. It leaves no traces of the starfish, and no artefacts either. :)

The regfiles doesn't change back or anything, it stays like this for ever.

It only works if the allowedonglass and the onglass is set to 00, othervise the position is altered as you mentioned.

GUI
 

feldon, about the GUI...I tried to make it creative and I also kept in mind what it might look like over the actual screensaver (which Im working on). I could easily change the interface, though. I even experimented with different shaped windows (think of a settings window shaped like a fish..lol). But trust me, once you try it out, the program feels very organized and easy to use.

I guess I just don't see a reason to try to cram 4 windows worth of stuff into a single window. But this is only my opinion.

Here's my old settings panel prototype I did way back...

https://www.feldoncentral.com/Sachs/...ttings102.html

Yeah, if you remember, I made that settings panel into an actual program. The problem was that with 4 frames and lots of graphics, the file got huge and it was difficult to see everything you needed in one spot. My main focus in this one was to fix those problems. I am actually starting a version, though, that will be split into 4 frames while keeping the small file size. Ill post some pictures when im done. And good job on the fish picker btw

Mountainmaster
VERY GOOD!!
Now u even get the drag and drop working!!!!
though u haven't mention on the forum....
But I just downloaded and tried again
I didn't know u done it but I happens to read ur readme.txt and found that it support dnd now.....so nice man....
ya...the starfish setting now is consiste with the fishes....

I'm thinking if u can improve ur dnd into graphical format?
so that the 7 slots become 7 boxs, just like morgan's prototype
u can expand ur window with no problem I think.

btw,u can also put an "About..." somewhere to show the credit and the version number, put ur name and email on it man...!!:)

Swede
thx for posting these values...we beta tester are really helpful to a programmer with those valuable feedbacks...:) so keep it on!!

sthprk1000
ur work also very nice but just it cannot compile into EXE, how sad..

patscarr,
You wanted drag and drop? You got it! It is still possible to select fishes the "old" way, but no longer by clicking the images. Only the option button selects now. It was either that or drag and drop.

Swede,
I changed the "starfish off" settings to yours. Hopefully it works that way on all video cards.

sthprk1000,
Good thing I didn't know someone already got that far, otherwise I may not have started this project (from which I learned quite a lot as it turns out).
Your GUI looks very good. In my opinion non standard GUI is fine and is actually quite common for screensavers. Multimedia Fusion seems very powerful. I'm going to try that one some time.

James,
When previewing my reply I saw you beat me to this announcement. I just looked at the boxes in Morgan's prototype. I may try something like that in the future.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/picker.zip

Southpark¡¦I liked your last version and can¡¯t wait for some pictures of the next version. The little colored boxes under the fish icons where you can store preset fish settings, needs to be labeled ¡°presets¡± or something. ¡°Save and Exit¡± is good. Could you add ¡°launch screensaver¡±? I also agree with Morgan, everything in one window looks a bit crowded but as soon as you get an exe version, post it here. We would all love to test it out.

Morgan¡¦I like the four tabs at the top of yours and all the many different options and settings. Could you add a place to save and name multiple ¡°presets¡± of our favorite settings? Could you also turn yours into a working model so we can test it?

Mountainmaster¡¦The drag and drop feature is excellent. Also, I love being able to save and name my favorite settings. Jim has got to add this feature to the Aquarium soon. So far I have ¡°yellow¡± (most fish are yellow or have some yellow in them), ¡°blue¡± and ¡°default¡± (my original favorite settings). Could you add tabs at the top for different pages, as in Morgan¡¯s demo? Because soon you¡¯ll need to add more ¡°pages¡± for more options. You¡¯ve already got one page for the starfish. Maybe next you¡¯ll be adding future creatures, invertebrates, bubbles on/off, lights, etc¡¦ Looks great. Keep up the good work.

Mountainmaster
haha,sorry about that, well...although someone (sthprk1000) doen that b4,it never works, it is just a demo. so ur one still has the credit :) and your one has the tweaking of starfish!!!
btw,I found there r some interesting programes on ur page http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/software.htm
ha that's great, and the Windows Hidden Settings Editor did really give me some laughs.....LOL

sthprk1000
if u have the full version of Multimedia Fusion then u r able to compile it into EXE.....is it what u mean?

Thanks Mountainmaster! It works totally fine now!

James:
Yes, you can only compile the program into an exe if you have the full version of mmf (it must be mmf 1.5 in my case because thats what I used to make the prog). Otherwise the file is a .cca file and you must have mmf (or the demo) to use it.

Preset the last setting-"File" name on start
 

Hi,

can you fill the name of the last settings "file" in the respective field (presetting)?
Another thing to make better is, when you want to save the file, please preset this field with the last used Setting-"file", or better give the all dropdown-list to select something from it and than to edit...
Starfish position work very fine on my system.

Regards,
emil

memilm,

Here's what I could do for now: When saving a setting the inputbox now by default displays the name of the currently opened custum setting (if any).

http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/picker.zip

The other thing is more complicated. I assume you mean that after saving a setting you want to see its name selected in the dropdown list. Before I do that I am going to make a check for the dropdown list to compare the aquarium's settings with the custom settings when they are selected. When the slots match the text should not become red like it does now, but black. Funny that nobody mentioned this flaw.

--edit--
All done, v.1.1 build 7 is up!