Topic: Noodle Bug

[Fanny Pack]

Began working on my new project.  I call it "Noodle Bug".  It's a drawing application.  It will not be ILDA based at all but will have a runtime engine that will be able to convert Bug images to an optimized series of points for laser display. 

[James]

Will there be any output file type other than bug?

Will this just be for Spaghetti input?

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

It's for Spaghetti and Wet Noodles.  I tried to get my wife to create some shapes with Quazar for a demo Spaghetti show and Quazar was so awful that we couldn't get anything useful out of it.  So, I decided to write my own.

The file format will be bug xml and will contain whatever I need to include to make it work.  But, the contents will probably be similar to what is in other vector file formats so I imagine there will be some degree of importability and exportability even though I don't intend to implement that functionality myself.

The engine output will be a point frame. However, I am thinking that it will probably make sense to also have some intermediate object format that is a preprocessed XML file.  In other words, if you generate an image made of several layers, all of the layer information will be stored in the XML file, but when you load that into your application, or the preprocessor, it combines all of the layers and creates a set of drawing primitives that can be fed into the engine.  The engine needs to be able to create points in real time so it needs to be able to do it very quickly.

I think it will be a very interesting and rewarding project.

[drlava]

did you ever try inkscape?

[Fanny Pack]

I looked at it but I wasn't too interested.  I need something lightweight and I need to embed it into my applications.  In general, people don't want to have to deal with editing in one program, saving it, then loading it in another.

[James]

Do you have any plans to allow any of your projects to output to any file format that might be examined for quality of optimization?

James.   

[Fanny Pack]

Not specifically for that purpose, no.

[James]

Just out of curiosity, how do you analyze the quality of your optimizations?

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

I project it on the wall and see if it looks OK.

[James]

You know if you save your data stream as plain ASCII text {X Y Z r g b \n}, you could open it in LaserBoy and see it in 2D over time. That is you can put the order of the vertices in the Z axis and see exactly how the image is being drawn.

You can clearly see dwell and you can also see the numerical stats of every frame to find the longest single jump.

Plus, if you output to text, it will test and exercise LaserBoy's ability to read it!

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

I can already load stuff into laserboy by exporting to an ILDA file.  I have always had that capability.

[James]

Oh!

OK.

So you can load in some frames, put some special effects on them and then save optimized data to ILDA?

That's cool.

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

I don't do a whole lot of optmizations right now. Just stuff to get rid of tails and that sort of thing.  I used to export with those optimizations if they were turned on but I don't know if I do anymore.  Probably not.  They are pretty crude optmizations that serve their purpose and not much more. And, I admit that they work the scanners a little harder than they should.  I wanted to put in better optimizations in the 1.9.0.0 release but it got pushed down the priority list.  I have a lot of things I want to accomplish so I need to prioritize and get started.  Documentation is at or near the top.  I am also going to add multi-language support.  That should be easy once I set up the string tables.  A large portion of people using Spaghetti are from outside the US.  Maybe even more than 1/2.  Anyway, I am rambling.

[Fanny Pack]

But to answer your question, yes, you can load ILDA files, do stuff with them, and then save the results in a new ILDA file.  Someone I recently talked to uses the multi-layers to create new animations and then exports them for use in a different program.

[drlava]

I've done that, too with Spaghetti and other programs like LDS and Laserboy, it's a nice feature.  Do you plan on publishing a .bug standard?