Topic: New fields and methods

[Agent C]

So I finally got around to adding some much needed methods to my segment and frame class

Segments and frames now have some new methods: rotate, translate, and scale, and a new anchor point vector field to denote the center of scale and rotation.  The anchor point defaults to the first point in the frame, and may be moved with the methods setAnchor and centerAnchor which moves it to the center of the segment or frame based on a simple bounding box.

These methods do affect the actual data points in the frame.

My simple test animation is a hexagon composed of 6 seperate segments.  Each segment its own centerpoint.  Even this simple animation produced a very cool beam effect.

I'm toying with the idea of creating a transformation queue field for frames and segments and non side-effecting transform methods so that the original points can be left as is and before rendering to screen and dac engine all transforms from the stack are played back in the appropriate order... still thinking about that one...

Anyway, boids will soon move on from simple dots to some sort of bird representation that orients itself correctly to the heading - can't have boids flying backwards.

[BlinkenLights]

Q: is this open source?

[Agent C]

I haven't shared the source with anybody yet so I guess it's not open source.  I plan on sharing the source for the engine when it's cleaned up to the point that it's embarrassing.  If anybody wants to look at the source I'd be happy to send them the code.

The closed source part will be/can be the generative artwork classes that I and other people may write for fun and for profit.  I haven't tried it yet, but I think I should be able to compile the patterns into jar files, then load those at run time or while the program is running.

[BlinkenLights]

good answer

[Agent C]

I've got a cool little wav I want to turn into ild with laserboy like we did with the boids.  It's 6 segments, 2 points each, arranged in a hexagon with segments rotating about their center.  I'm guessing the following for laserboy settings

30 frames per second
output wave sample rate 30000
unframed wave samples per frame - I have no idea on this.  Is it 12, 6, 48?  what does this value really mean?

f wave signal if not z - uh....

Thanks!

[James]

If you can make a wave that creates a nice picture on your scope, LaserBoy can make an ilda frame set out of it!

Check this out!

I just did this in about 10 seconds in LaserBoy.

James. 

[Agent C]

Let me rephrase this as a problem I'm having.  When I import my file, I get a horizontal line.  When I play it back to my scope, it looks fine.  I think I'm missing something in the settings.

[James]

We still have some sort of difference between our wave headers.

If you open the wave in something else... like Audacity, you can split it apart into a stereo XY wave and a set of mono waves for r, g, & b. Then you can put these waves back together in LaserBoy as an ADAT import. For some reason, this seems to work.

James. 

[Agent C]

Ah missed that part in the boids thread.  I'm about to call it an evening but maybe tomorrow we can cover some ground on proper headers and the extended laserboy headers.

[James]

Let's have another phone call.

You know, I always get a brain full of things to think about after a conversation with you!

I'd like to do a complete write-up on the LaserBoy wave header extensions, but I keep thinking I'm going to add more stuff....

The code is still not done from the major rewrite.

Today is the one year anniversary of the release of LaserBoy Multiplatform (Linux, Windows, Mac via SDL).

Lincoln is the capital of Nebraska.

James.