Thread: AMP v1.0 Worklog

AMP v1.1 Release
--------------------
http://www.aychamo.com/amp/AMP.zip
http://www.aychamo.com/amp/AMPSource.zip

I hope this release isn't disappointing. There isn't too many new features. It primarily has bug fixes, and some "optimized" code.

iamgnat (dave) and I have been working on reducing the bulk of the code, to make it more manageable, which should eventually help for better plugin support, etc. He is teaching me a lot of valuable things.

The main "new" things are a new screen that comes up when you play a song, and there is a bit of a "floater" screen that you can pull up while playing songs. The screens have a nice appearence when they enter the view. FOR NOW, since it's not "completely implemented" I've assigned it to the album art button (lame, I know). So when you are in the music view, just click on the album art little icon (in the bottom right), and it will bring up the floater screen.

(When testing AMP on your normal computer, and you see the animations, please keep in mind that it will look better when you use it on 800x480 or 800x600 (both of which I still need to see pictures of it running, LOL) - there won't be any "black bars, etc".

(Also note there is a little logic to the window transitions. When you go from the main menu, things come from one way, and when you go back to the main menu, they come from the other way. Etc)

From the floater screen, you can control music, and you can also now skip around within a song (there is a scroller that looks like the vertical scrollers, but is horizontal, and you can just click where ever and skip to the right part of the song.

(NOTE: This floater screen, that pops down, etc. It is the same screen as the "music controls during visuals" screen. So, the option for "auto hide popup music control panel" applies to this floater. So if its selected, when you popup the floater, it will stay for a while then hide itself [which is great for like if you are browsing photos, and just want to change a song.] If you have it set to *not* auto hide, juts click the X and it will go away. (additionally, if you are an impatient bastard [like myself], and you have it set to autohide or whatever, and you don't want to wait the 2 seconds for it to go away, you can click on the big album art and it should immediately go away.) ))))))))))))))))))

(EDIT #2: Ok, this floater thing rocks. I was typing the above, and I was looking at the config screen to make sure I was typing the name of the option correcetly, and then I clicked the "clock hot spot" [even though I have the clock disabled], and I could change songs really quickly, etc.)

Sounds useful, right? Well, I've assigned this same floater to a hotkey on the clock. So any screen where you would see the clock, you can click on the clock and bring up the floater music control screen. If you have disabled the clock, you can still click in the general area where the clock would be (upper-right corner). I suppose it's a bit of a "hot key."

Also.. I've updated the movie controls. When you click on the movie screen, it moves the controls into view, and just as in the music controls, you can skip around within the movie.

Oh, and for those who are interested. I was originally using a NSMovieView for the big movie, but now I'm using a QTMovieView. Why did I switch? Well, in the method where I set the movie view to a new time, in the NSMovieView it had this amazingly strange bug where it would move the movie's NSRect, and I couldn't reset it. Simply by switching to a QTMovieView, it fixed the bug (but I had to rewrite some sections to support the new movie view.) -- From what I understand, NSMovieView is a bit buggy anyway, so I guess I had experienced some unpolished Apple loving.

For anyone looking at the source: I suppose the first thing we are doing is consolidatin groups of buttons. I've removed about 20-25 IBActions, and groups of similar buttons are all under the same action now. I like this method because for the most part, a lot of that code will *never* change, so it just keeps them organized, grouped, and they appear to take up less space, less ****, etc. I still have a lot more to do. For anyone who looks at this, I won't be doing this to the buttons in the "musicView" section though. That part of the code is the most important in the progam, so I think it deserves every thing it gets ;-) That's a bit of emotional attachment shining out!

Hmm. And there is now a music control (I made the icon myself, lol, hahah) button on the browser. Just a nice way to bring up the controls.

Hmm. I'm sure I added more things that you'll notice.

I may start a little work on some plugins, that will be of variable usefulness (lol), and give the source, so hopefully some people can start making some plugins, etc.

Oh, and Jakob has started work on an AMP icon!

-- Wow, I was typing this, and totally fell asleep.. LOL