Tomis’ Software Blog

I released ImagePlay 0.3 today! There’s a few big new things in it, mainly the Filter Layers and the Fullscreen view, you can read about them in past entries. Seeing as they’re completely new, I’m expecting people will find bugs that I haven’t tracked down yet. I’ve think I’ve gotten most of the kinks worked out, but don’t hesitate to drop me a line if you find some unexpected behavior. There are several ways to contact me listed under the Help menu in ImagePlay.

Another major change in this version is one that most people probably won’t even notice. I’ve completely reworked the Help system around a built-in viewer. Previously the help system was built around a local HTTP server and the user’s browser. This new design means I have more control over how the content is presented, and it also lends its self to more interactive features. So we’ll see where this tightly integrated Help system goes.

As you can read in my previous post. I was expecting this release to be out in a week or so. This was mainly due to testing the MacOS 9 / Windows versions. I decided instead to do a staggered release this time. I’ve released the MacOS X (Universal) version now, and as I have time to test the other versions I’ll release them.

Also, 0.3 should fix the problems on Intels.

So go check it out at http://imageplay.sourceforge.net/ and let me know what you think!

So after months in the pipeline, ImagePlay 0.2 has finally been released. It doesn’t have shape-layers like I mentioned in a previous post, but it does have new Text layers, and numerous improvements and new features throughout.

One major new feature is the Effects/Groups Manager. This nifty window automatically takes care of moving your effects groups between two folders “Groups” and “Groups Disabled.” It also displays a preview of the selected effect or group making management much easier.

There are a number of performance improvements with regards to the workspace. I did a lot of work to optimize drawing operations in general, but in particular the selection rect. It took me a good week to implement and tweak the sub-recting routine it now uses to determine the smallest possible area to update as you drag the selection rect around. The end result is that its much faster. If you’ve ever tried dragging a selection across several layers in a large project window you’ll definitely feel the difference.

Working with movies has been much improved as well. Now you can include the sound track when exporting, as well as other layers. This is great for doing logo overlays and things like that.

Another big improvement isn’t really a feature so much, but an ability. ImagePlay is now a Universal binary on MacOS X! In my rough tests this means almost double the performance on Intel Macs. And on the Windows version I have fixed a slew of bugs which basically made the program useless, and I’ve packaged it up in an installer. So now ImagePlay is acting a bit more like a well behaved Windows app.

Due to all the work I’ve put into this release I’ve decided to move from a “donation” system to a “purchase” system. The price is now firmly set at $20.00 USD. However, this does NOT change the open source status of the project or the Effects Library. The Effects Library is still free for all developers to use in their own projects, and it will always be so.

So, go check out ImagePlay 0.2 and tell me what you think! The complete change log is listed there as well, and it’s a long list.

I’ve released ImagePlay 0.1.6 today for MacOS X. There’s a long list of minor changes, but the most notable are in the interface.

* Projects Browser has been refined and simplified.
* Starting Points window looks much nicer, and includes a new templates list

There are numerous under-the-hood changes and optimizations as well, so go check it out!

It’s very time consuming to do a MacOS 9 release, and the Windows version has a few complex bugs that need to get fixed. So to save time, this release is MacOS X only.

Check out the newest version of ImagePlay and send me some feedback.

This release mostly focusses on new features, and other interface stuff. The previous releases focussed more on effects-centric things. Still I managed to improve the performance of a few effects, and add a couple new ones. Colorize and Outline are two cool new effects. I’m still trying to perfect the effects needed to get that perfect “cartoon” look to turn a real life photo into a flat 2-D characterization.

Unfortunately, I still feel that ImagePlay is pretty “stiff” in it’s design. The manipulation of layers and effects needs to be more free-form. Letting the user “mold” images rather than tweak knobs. I hope to add drawing/painting layers in the future, but that’s a subject for a different entry…

I can sit back and relax for a bit now. I always get a bit nervous when I’m doing a release. Checking and double checking the software to make sure there are no major flaws I’ve missed. Then putting the release packages together, updating the website, sending out update notices, etc.

I probably could have gotten out a release a couple months sooner if I had gone through the bug-fix cycle sooner. It is more fun to add features than it is to fix glitches and implement basic but tedious behavior. The last couple of weeks have been crazy, I’ve been testing, testing, testing. I try to keep my code structure sensical and organized, but it’s surprising how much time is spent fixing bugs. You implement a fix for a problem which changes behavior somewhere else, so you have to go making sure the whole app still operates fine for every behavioral change in the program.

As mentioned in my previous post, there were some new features I was working on for this release that had to get axed so I could ship something now. Major new features/rewrites cause bugs like nothing else. For example, you can now preview effects before you add them to a layer. This function doesn’t let you change the effect’s settings in the preview window, adding such ability would end up being a major investment of time. So instead I put it off for a later version. But at least the basic ability is there now.

In the rush of development I sometimes neglect to note things in the change log. New features tend to get omitted more than anything. And there there’s the “fix” question; was this functionality broken in the last release or did I break it during the development cycle? So there’s a whole other job that needs to get done on each release. Anyway the point I’m making as that the Change Log isn’t as exact as I’d like it to be.

Yahoo disconnected the YCHT protocol today. That is the protocol that ChitChat used. I knew this was coming, as did all the other Yahoo Chat developers. They’d been hinting for years that YCHT would die in favor of the new YMSG protocol.

Unfortunately, I never had the time to update ChitChat to the new protocol. And so this is the end of the line for it. I will leave the project up, hopefully someone else can gleam some useful knowledge from all my hard work.

I learned a lot from ChitChat. Especially back in the beginning when I was hacking away at the miChat source code written by J. Seth Lowe. How to design good interface, how to design good internal structure (something I’m still struggling with), I learned a lot.

You can read more at the ChitChat homepage.

New in ImagePlay 0.1.1

• NEW Layer Rotation/Reflection
• NEW Project Browser Redesign
• NEW Guided Tour
• NEW Help System
• Performance Improvements - Mostly optimizations to the project canvas, but oh how sweet they are!
• Interface Improvements - Especially on Microsoft Windows
• Bug Fixes - Layer positions are now remembered, and other fixes

Check it out at the ImagePlay homepage and let me know what you think!

ChitChat Lite 1.0.1 released today.

It fixes some annoying bugs with the user list, and cleans up the login window a little bit. When I’m able, I’ll make a universal binary.

ChitChat is a Yahoo! chat client.

I plan to use this as a forum for discussing new software releases and development ideas as I work on new versions of my programs. You can check out a few of my current programs in the links section.

I’ve been using REALbasic for about 8 years now. My most recent projects have all been open source.