0.7.3 Preview r899

[Nicholas]

I should have a dev preview in the next day or so with changeable track instruments.

There have been a couple amazing nights now where I have been able to knock out huge amounts of work. First the Internet piece worked out pretty well. And now, I might claim that my silly homemade UI infrastructure has "leveled up" at least a couple times. There is now z-ordering for the drawing and mouse hit-testing. So, if button A is on top of button B, then B won't highlight anymore when the mouse is over A... better, B won't also act like you clicked it when you click A. This is all in support of pop-up menus -- like the one you'll be picking new instruments from.

Once I add (the dreaded) text box control in the preview after that, I'll be all done with infrastructure for a while again. The last hole in the whole thing is the notion of "focus"... being able to tab through controls and have more than one text box on a screen at a time. Without knowing which control has "focus", if you press a key, all text boxes on the screen will think you typed that key into them at the same time.

I do feel a little guilty because working on a context menu control for my one-off UI framework doesn't exactly give you guys the new features you're looking for... but, I'm way deep in at this point. It would be more effort to switch to something else and I'm actually nearing a complete toolbox. Also, as far as cross-platform hardware accelerated UIs go, it's not half bad to work with at this point.

Anyway, we're drawing very (very!) late in the month, so I'm at a full sprint now. Hopefully there is time right at the tail end for the metronome stuff... it would be sad if 0.7.3 were basically nothing but infrastructure plus the instrument changing thing.

... sad for you guys anyway. I'm super excited at everything I've been able to get in there this time around.

[aria1121]

Nice to hear that its almost time for a new dev preview.

[tommai78101]

Don't tell me it's r900!!

[Nicholas]

I'm already a little ways past r900.

It will be exciting when we hit 1000!

[aria1121]

Over r1000? Does it mean version 1.0 Final Release?

[Nicholas]

Nope, that's just an internal number that tracks the number of times I "commit" to my source repository. It doesn't correspond to anything else in particular. The reason it's very useful is because if someone says "I'm having trouble with version r899", I can go and grab *exactly* the code as it existed at the time and use it to help solve the problem.

r1000 will come and go somewhere during 0.7.4 or 0.7.5 probably.

[cairnz]

or in other words, every r-increase is yet another "backup" of the the changes he's done

i think its very good to hear about the infrastructure improvements. z-order, focus, textbox controls will all be important things to have nailed down for future improvements. the later it is done the more hassle it'll be to fix it because you do more workarounds to get around what you didn't have in place in the beginning, making it more time consuming to make it proper

[Nicholas]

Getting closer...

instruments.png (46.56 KiB) Viewed 10332 times

[aria1121]

@ Cairnz
Aha, thanks

@ Nicholas
Wow... That looks nice, do you have added more pictures? For example the Sitar, thats a sort of 'alto' Iranian guitar

Edit: Ah... So when the mouse is pointing at the piano, it says {Change instrument} and a list appears?
Edit 2: And a little request: (I know it must be in the Future Requests...) (See attachment 1)

[vicentefer31]

Editable Track Instruments looks very good

[Mos]

That looks great

suggestion: if you are not doing that already, you should start pulling any new "English" to a new file or whatever instead of keeping it in the code. this would help alot in when you want the localization because you will just have to pull the text from the old codes!

[Nicholas]

have [you] added more pictures? For example the Sitar...

I'm thinking about commissioning a few more from the same person that created the first set of 21 icons. I haven't asked him yet though to see if he's interested. Before when you could only see the instruments that were used in the song, I tried to pick the most common ones. Now that you can see the entire list, there are a lot of big gaps where it just uses the generic "synth" icon.

Those probably wouldn't make it into 0.7.3, but I'd definitely consider adding at least another 16 or so. I'll check to see what his availability looks like.

So when the mouse is pointing at the piano, it says {Change instrument} and a list appears?

There is a "Change instrument" tooltip, and when you click a list appears.

And a little request: ... (See attachment 1)

Any particular reason you're interested in making the sheet icon button narrower?

if you are not doing that already, you should start pulling any new "English" to a new file or whatever instead of keeping it in the code.

I guess I hadn't added those top-level categories before ("Chromatic Percussion", etc.), but all the rest of the instrument names were already in there just to be able to show the names in the track boxes.

Though, what you're describing is definitely something on my radar. (See "Unicode Support and Localization Preparation" on the voting list.) Though, it would appear no one else shares your enthusiasm. Maybe it's because it's worded technically... or because it's not exciting at all.

[aria1121]

Any particular reason you're interested in making the sheet icon button narrower?

It would be a bit more 'button'-ish, so maybe that helps the user or something?

[Nicholas]

It would be a bit more 'button'-ish, so maybe that helps the user or something?

The total revamp of that screen is coming. It's close now. I'm trying to avoid doing anything to it that won't be staying much longer. (The instrument list will be kept in the switch-over.) Spending any time on that stuff feels like it would be a waste because in another version or two it'll all be gone.

That said, I expect to have a dev preview tonight with the instrument stuff done... maybe even early'ish if things go smoothly.

And then probably another one near the end of the weekend with the textbox/song library filtering stuff.

[aria1121]

@ Nicholas
But are you gonna paste all this by r917?

[Nicholas]

But are you gonna paste all this by r917?

What?

[aria1121]

err, described it wrong... I mean you are gonna create all those things in a new version of Synthesia, right?

[Nicholas]

If you meant the track settings screen revamp, then yeah, that's coming before the Rock Band 3 deadline.

I'm defining that deadline as January 1st, 2011. The game is actually being released this October 26th, but I need more time than that and many of the sales will end up being given as gifts around the holidays.

[aria1121]

Aha, but what if Synthesia is finished EARLIER?