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!