Marine Aquarium 3 Comments & Appreciation

[Jim Sachs]

It's required pretty soon, but I don't know exactly when.

I think everyone will be pretty happy with the Logo interface. I've greatly simplified my original plan. What the user will see is a list which looks exactly like the music playlist, except with image files. This is a list of anything which can appear on the crystal, including clocks and calendars. A typical list might look something like this:

SereneScreenLogo.png 10
ProlificLogo.png 5
ANALOGCLOCK 20
AuntBetty.png 10
DIGITALCLOCK 5
CALENDAR 5

The images are inserted into the list by hunting through the harddrive, just like music files. There are buttons for inserting clocks and calendars at any point in the list. You can click on any item and adjust its position up or down on the list, as well as number of seconds it plays. To repeat an item anywhere in the list, just load its name again and move it to the desired position (the music playlist can also do this now).

[Dale]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

I think everyone will be pretty happy with the Logo interface. I've greatly simplified my original plan. What the user will see is a list which looks exactly like the music playlist, except with image files. This is a list of anything which can appear on the crystal, including clocks and calendars. A typical list might look something like this:

SereneScreenLogo.png 10
ProlificLogo.png 5
ANALOGCLOCK 20
AuntBetty.png 10
DIGITALCLOCK 5
CALENDAR 5

The images are inserted into the list by hunting through the harddrive, just like music files. There are buttons for inserting clocks and calendars at any point in the list. You can click on any item and adjust its position up or down on the list, as well as number of seconds it plays. To repeat an item anywhere in the list, just load its name again and move it to the desired position (the music playlist can also do this now).  

Great Design!!! I'm usually very skeptical when somebody says "everyone", but I think you may have achieved it. [And people should appreciate the elegance of the design].

[snorkler]

So if we didn't "need" the music player we would already have live clams?
Sad!

Michael

[Jim Sachs]

And the logos. And the clock. And the calendar.

Actually, I had guessed that the clams would take two weeks. It's only been a week, I did some of the clam work, and the other stuff is almost done. It's possible that the remainder of the clam work will go faster than expected.

[rctneil]

That interface for the crystal sounds pretty good Jim! - Congrats

Can't wait to try it out.

When will the latest beta be released?

Thanks

Regards,
Neil

[Old Prop]

This is a long-overdue appreciation for the magnificent piece of work that MA3 is fast becoming. Well done! Keep it up!

I tried feldon32's old Logo Creation Guide to put a close-cut photo of my daughter-in-law onto the crystal in MA3 Beta 9a and find that procedure still works without a hitch. I just named my new png file "AltLogo.png" and put it in \Application Data\Marine Aquarium 3 in place of the usual file by that name. Comes up on the L key whether MA3Beta times in by itself or I start it with the Display Properties\Screen Saver panel.

Looking down the road, having a dropdown list of selectable logo images will be brilliant. MA3 just keeps on getting better!

[Jim Sachs]

I'm hoping to have Beta 9c out by tonight.

[henemly]

Nice. Thanks Jim. The 'time to display' is a super feature.

[Simple Steve]

Honestly, I'm only interested in the movement, behavior, and look of the fish. That will decide for me whether or not MA is worth buying to me. Once that gets addressed I'll have an opinion of MA 3.

[rctneil]

Yeh, I agree that the new style fish and fish behavior should be next on the agender after the clams and those parts will in my opinion make version 3 have at least most of the features originally planned for this verison

[Jim Sachs]

I plan to work on the new fish right after the clams.

[rctneil]

Good on ya! -

[patscarr]

Will you be able to include a "play at random" feature for the music, Jim?

[Jim Sachs]

Sure, why not.

[Jim Sachs]

Beta9c news - I got bogged down in text-string stuff (one of my least-favorite things in the world). Every line of new code seems to require 10 lines of error-checking. The problem is in reading the Playlist and Logolist files. Originally, I was going to hide these in the Registry, but now that they are out in the open, people can monkey with them.

Take the Logolist, for example. It consists of file names of pictures (including the complete path to the file), followed by a comma, a space, the number of seconds to display that picture, and a carriage return. The user could theoretically add names manually, though it would be a lot of typing with the paths and all. My routine has to read through the list and build an array of filenames and durations. If someone has disrupted the order of information in the list, the possibilities for errors, endless loops, and crashing bugs are almost infinite.

[dwax]

Will the clams be in Beta9c Jim? And the text-string stuff means no update today then huh?

[Jim Sachs]

The new music and logo interfaces will be in Beta9c, and probably not today unless things start going a little faster.

The clams will be Beta10.

[Dale]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

Beta9c news - I got bogged down in text-string stuff (one of my least-favorite things in the world). Every line of new code seems to require 10 lines of error-checking. The problem is in reading the Playlist and Logolist files. Originally, I was going to hide these in the Registry, but now that they are out in the open, people can monkey with them.

Take the Logolist, for example. It consists of file names of pictures (including the complete path to the file), followed by a comma, a space, the number of seconds to display that picture, and a carriage return. The user could theoretically add names manually, though it would be a lot of typing with the paths and all. My routine has to read through the list and build an array of filenames and durations. If someone has disrupted the order of information in the list, the possibilities for errors, endless loops, and crashing bugs are almost infinite.  

I presume you would do (essentially) the same level of checking if the data were "hidden" in the Registry.

[Jim Sachs]

I wouldn't need to, since it wouldn't be in human-readable form. The array could just be stored as-is, like the fishset list. No need for complex parsers.

[feldon34]

IF there is a full music picker and logo picker in the Aquarium, then you can be stingy on the format of the playlist file and just reject it if people start putting spaces, commas, etc. where they don't belong.

Would Comma Separated Values format help you?

"Filename.png","10"
"Logo.png","20"