Topic: Spaghetti Westerns

[Agent C]

Just thought that would be a funny name for plugins ---
To build on the concept started in the Laser Agent thread, what would the architecture for a plugin look like?

I will do some poking around this weekend on the VST plugin arch and also reach out to my friend who wrote some pretty famous After Effects plugins just to get a handle on how to design a plugin arch from the ground up.  I really have no clue what plugins look like under the hood.

[Fanny Pack]

A plug-in would be a class library.  It would contain a GUI control and a frame generator of some sort.  The GUI would obviously configure the frame generator.  The frame generator class would have some function to return a frame based on a frame number.  I actually already use this type architecture for the effects you see.

Most likely I would add some section to my config file that lets you specify the name of an assembly (.NET speak for DLL) and class name as well as a human readable name and description for the plug-in.  That's about all that is necessary to be able to load it and use it.

The problem comes in when a show project file is encountered that references a plug-in that the user doesn't have.  The easy solution is to just ignore those sections of the project I guess.

Finally, the plug-ins could be completely stand-along frame generators (abstract generators, text generators, even preconfigured patterns) or they could be new effects that could be added.  For example, someone might want to make an explode effect or a flashing effect.

It wouldn't not take too much effort to support this thing in Spaghetti I don't think.

[BlinkenLights]

for shows that reference plugins that are not there.. you COULD give an error that says "plugin xxxx missing" and hell, even give a link to download it. the link could be in the plugins ini file. so each plugin would consist of the dll and an INI.. if thats the case you could add a plugin manager in the interface to allow a user to add new plugins in a easy way..

i think its a creat idea and opens up a market for free and commercial plugins.. as long as the underlying code to handle plugins in a generic way is there..

Plugins would add another efect option and could even include an icon for the bar either in the package or as a rescource in the dll.

i thinks its a fantastic idea

[drlava]

cool stuff.  also when you write out the show, the plugin is no longer needed to play the show because its output is captured in the show as frames.  The plugins would not need an ini file, just a standard function that modifies an info structure pointer that contains a web DL string among other things.
All you would need is to code this in and publish a basic example plugin 'solution' and people could build on that.

[Fanny Pack]

Good ideas.  I like idea of having web links so that they can automatically be installed from some website.  Not everyone would put them on a website but it would still be nice to add such functionality for those people that do, though.

I don't plan on adding support for plug-ins unless the use of Spaghetti picks up to the point where it makes sense.  But, I'll keep that in mind as develop the application so that it won't be impossible to add support for it if it ever becomes desireable.

For now, I'll just add everything directly to the application. 

[BlinkenLights]

well im using it im in a holding pattern for the next month but after that its all full on laser time..