TF01 1,PROGRAMMER'S LOG 3,Development of the LCARS software by Luke Elliott REVISIONS ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ Date/times given are for completion of alteration. DATE TIME ENTRY ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ 21-2-95 16:15 Fixed bug which caused samples to stop playing after a few requesters had been displayed. Requester routines now also determine the screen display type (either MenuMode like or full screen like a slideshow) and position standard requesters accordingly. 13-2-95 16:20 Release 2.2 sent to HQ! 12-2-95 17:00 Altered graphics routines. Previously, a ILBM file was either copied to RAM (if not crunched) or decrunched to RAM (if crunched) before being displayed with the buffered IFF routines. Now, if the file is not crunched it is displayed "off the disk", with quite a considerable memory usage saving. 10-2-95 ----- A memorable day... 27-1-95 13:00 Final final improvements before finally sending an update - renamed lcars library to lcsupport library in order to avoid possible problems with the old version, since they are incompatible. Final. Honest. 9-1-95 15:35 Final few improvements before sending Simon a release-ready version (2.2). When a requester is opened the window it is opened from is locked (apart from in MusicControl - later...). 8-1-95 17:00 More keyboard shortcuts added (to TextMode, QuizMode and PrefsMode). Only leaves Music Control and the standard requesters. 4-1-95 01:20 Finally rewritten Dos IO error handling routines - those that display the "Insert Disk" requesters. To the user should look the same, but much tidier code (should cope with most situations). 3-1-95 19:30 As a consequence of the new global event handlers, in TextMode using the NEXT LINE gadget would in fact move two lines (one for GADGETDOWN, one for GADGETUP) -- no longer! 3-1-95 17:40 Major reshuffle. Previously, the LCARS library contained the routines and data for playing the sounds you hear in the program. Now the sample playing routines have been rewritten and put in the lcmusic library. The actual sample data for the sounds is now in the LCARS file itself. Unfortunately this means it size has gone up again (by about 18K), but of course the LCARS library is 18K smaller, and now just contains miscellaneous support functions which really have nothing to do with LCARS - but which LCARS, and other programs I have written, can utilise. This is a much more logical solution since all music playing functions are now in the lcmusic library, where they should be! 1-1-95 11:55 Two improvements: In TextMode, displaying of files would be considerably slowed after viewing the INFO screen. Fixed by removing color from INFO screen. Secondly, the NEXT / PREV line gadgets now respond the the user moving the mouse back into the select box of the gadget after moving it out and not letting go of the mouse button (as RELVERIFY gadgets should). 31-12-94 15:30 Finished perging of graphic data. The executable is now 69K, as opposed to 145K before work started. 3300 bytes of this is chip (graphic) data, as opposed to 83K before...! Gibber gibber! Also compressed the background "bridge" sample by 50%, saving almost 10K! 30-12-94 17:10 We now have background printing! You must wait for the standard "INFINITE FRONTIERS" header to be printed, and then you can carry on doing what the hell you like - including viewing other text files! However, you cannot yet queue print requests. Is there any need? 30-12-94 15:20 All modes which interact with the main LCARS window now use a global, recursive event handler. Previously each mode dealt with its own events, but now we have a single handler. This is a pre-cursor to adding background printing and will make the proposed ScriptMode and HyperTextMode a hell of a lot simpler (if they ever appear...)! Besides which, the executable is smaller still! 22-12-94 12:15 Changed the QuizMode status screen (again). It is now one of the new, flexible, LCARS "Easy Requesters". 22-12-94 11:25 Main file now 81K! Saved lots of image data by clever use of PlanePick / PlaneOnOff variables. Another 8K could go, however... 21-12-94 01:32 Variable sized requesters, with any title (not just SYSTEM REQUEST anymore). Check out MenuMode INFO for an example... 20-12-94 12:15 Uncrunched executable length down to 85K!! Requesters tidied up, all requester gadgets now highlight to the same colour. 18-12-94 23:30 YES! It's university holiday time again, so work on LCARS starts once again. The executable was getting far too large (about 145K), so a serious purge was started - so far, approx. 10K has been lost plus a 20K file off the boot disk! There is another 30K to go, however! 25-9-94 16:30 Altered LCARS library to improve generation of random numbers for QuizMode. 25-9-94 16:15 "The word was given" (!) from Simon that issue 8, the next release of LCARS (2.1) would have quizzes in it, so a clean up of QuizMode was next on the list. There were, as far as I know, no bugs, but the code was a mess! Now much more "LCARS friendly"! 18-9-94 21:15 Finished complete rewrite of all SoundMode code. Music Control feature now has a "ListView"-esque kind of list of modules available. Tempo of modules (except MED modules) can be controlled with a slider gadget. Can now play another module without stopping another first. 16-9-94 17:30 Started going through all segments of LCARS to optimise/bug fix/improve/add new features. First up is the LCARS library. AnimPointer is now only a single structure - saves memory fragmentation and will be faster. Interrupt code about half its old length. 8-9-94 00:30 Removed alternate color support from AnimPointer routines. It occured to me that you may have two windows on screen, do something in one which activates an AnimPointer (and thus changes the pointer's palette), then activate the other window to do something in that - with a pointer with strange colors. Messy! It is mentioned in the 3.1 development notes that a colors-per- window system for the pointer may be introduced in the future, but until then this feature will be dormant! 4-9-94 23:52 Fixed a bug in the new AnimPointer code which caused a software failure if the pointer was displayed for a long while. I tried to "include" a file which contained code twice, but had the "Ignore Multiple Includes" option in Devpac set - so the file was only included once, meaning I was writing to an unallocated area of memory!! 3-9-94 12:02 Complete rewrite of AnimPointer support in LCARS library. New code is smaller, faster and removes the annoying jerky movement of the pointer under Kickstart 3. Also no longer needs a separate task. 25-8-94 21:45 Added skeletal NTSC support. If running on an NTSC machine the LCARS screen will open up in interlace, so that all of the screen can be seen at once. Of course, if a machine is running Kickstart 2 or greater, then a screen larger than the actual viewing area can be scrolled around with the mouse, but this is hardly a workable solution, especially when dealing with scrolling text. 25-8-94 00:53 Simple alteration - changed the position of the screen-swap gagdet to the top right of the screen. I felt the old position was a bit ambiguous - now simply move the pointer as far up and to the right as it will go and click. Then again, there's no real need for it anyway... 21-8-94 16:58 Fixed bug which had "appeared" on keyboard shortcuts in MenuMode. Somehow some spurious code calling sample playing routines had appeared in an interrupt server. 21-8-94 16:36 Bug fixed which caused sound effects execpt for the background "engine" noise to cease functioning after playing two music modules. Found to be that the "access" sample was called twice when loading a module, but only waited for and freed once, so a channel was lost each time a module was played! 18-8-94 01:20 LCARS interface for MusicList added. The STOP gadget has been replaced by a permanent MUSIC gadget which brings up a window from which a module can be selected for playing (from the MusicList), playing can be stopped or restarted from the beginning and the tempo of playback can be altered. Modules can now be selected independant of mode - eg during TextMode. 17-8-94 00:40 MusicList feature added - worked first time! Allows selection of modules from a list. No LCARS interface to run this yet. 16-8-94 12:54 Bug found by Allister Brimble in ProTracker replay (not my code I hasten to add!). When running on faster machines a busy wait loop using dbra obviously didn't wait long enough! Now uses a raster-line timer. Why don't people listen to Commodore? 12-8-94 19:20 Updated LCARS font size 28. Now much thinner and looks far superior (in my opinion!). Also added new characters such as ()% etc... A few changes to fonts 11 and 8. CREDITS ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ All code and graphics ................. Luke Elliott (Except as noted below) Original program design ............... Luke Elliott Jason Dunning Additional program design ............. Simon Plumbe Music replay routines ................. Teijo Kinnunen Peter Hanning Additional music replay help .......... Allister Brimble LCARS was created with the following hardware and sotfware: Amiga 500 with Kickstart 2.04 and 1MB RAM (originally) Amiga 600 with 30MB HD and 2MB RAM (for a short while) Amiga 1200 with 60MB HD (currently!) StereoMaster HiSoft Devpac 3.02 DICE 2.06.21 Deluxe Paint FED, the Workbench 1.3 font editor! The Art Department 1.0.3 Protext 4.362 and other utilities to numerous to mention... Enjoy!