Stykz 1.5 - Development Updates

[stykzman]

I'm going to use this thread (along with much shorter versions in my Twitter feed) to keep everyone up to date on where development is. My intention is to try and update this at least once a week. Some of it will be kind of technical stuff (so those of you in the tl;dr category can skip those chunks), but at least you'll know what's going on.

Rather than just have one post at the top of this topic that I keep editing, I'm going to just post things as they happen - feel free to respond/ask questions. Since it's possible that people won't have any feedback, I have authorized myself to violate the double-posting policy as needed (so if you see multiple posts by me, don't complain ).

[stykzman]

I worked over the weekend on 1.5 and have accomplished the following:

• Worked on migrating the "old" node layer management system to the "new" one (more on this in the next post); managed to get the time to display nodes on a given frame when you get there to be upwards of 10x faster than in 1.0 - there's still a lot of work to be done to fully migrate from the old to the new (I figure I'm at about 30% of the way there for this part of 1.5).
  
• Because the new node management system removes the ability to interleave nodes in between the segments, I removed the preference for this (Edit > Preferences > Nodes/Segments > Show nodes:), and removed the menu item as well (View > Show Nodes in Front).
  
• Updated the preference retrieval and storage system to ignore the older preferences for node layering; went through the Stykz code and modified all the places where I was checking to see if "Show Nodes in Front" was on or off.
  
• Did some quick testing on a possible new feature for 1.5 that I thought of over the weekend - the ability to give frames a name that would appear in the Frames Palette instead of the number; the idea is that there would be a "Go to Frame" dialog (probably accessed by a menu item) that would let you type in the number of a frame to jump to, or you could pick from a list of the frames you had named. Looks like it should be a pretty easy implementation - if I have time to do it after the hard stuff is done, I'll toss it in.
  
  
  
  
• Modified the splash screen to show "Stykz 1.5" (it's great seeing this every time I launch... ):
  
  

[Wind3H]

WEEEEEEHHH :D
its going forward :D
ive read about gradient polyfills in this thread, is this still something you thnk of putting in?

managed to get the time to display nodes on a given frame when you get there to be upwards of 10x faster than in 1.0

i like this very much

[stykzman]

ive read about gradient polyfills in this thread, is this still something you thnk of putting in?

If I have time, then yes... it shouldn't be that hard to implement, but I don't know how the animated GIFs are going to look with gradients since they only take 256 colors - but outputting as a QuickTime movie should look great!

[Wind3H]

you also could export the animation as seperate images and put them together again in another program (flash, virtualdub, benetin gif...) the colors would stay then ( always do that when i need more colors)
alsot gradeint fills would be very helpful for effects like fire,water,light,dust,smoke... :D

[stykzman]

you also could export the animation as seperate images and put them together again in another program (flash, virtualdub, benetin gif...) the colors would stay then ( always do that when i need more colors)
alsot gradeint fills would be very helpful for effects like fire,water,light,dust,smoke... :D

Good point! There's also a ton of options available with the GIFsicle program I'm using to output the animated GIFs, so I might be able to either test and see if there are better settings when gradients are used, or maybe even expose some of the options in the Export dialog so you (and others) could experiment and pick the best settings.

[Wind3H]

i like experimenting :]
and this sounds very interesting,too

[stykzman]

UPDATE:

• Continued migrating 1.0 code to new Object Manager ("OM") - this is what I'm calling the core functionality that manages the new node layering and future objects in Stykz (like sprites).
  
• Pivot .stk import is now a bit faster, since the OM manages nodes more closely to the Pivot model.
  
• Trying to figure out a way to keep the "Single Node" option in the Figures menu - since it only creates a node with (technically) no underlying figure, it kind of violates the new method of node management (where nodes only display for actual figures on the Stage); this may end up going away unless I hear a lot of requests to keep it in. I'll put up a quick poll to get people's opinions.
  
• Added gradients to the "if I have time" list for 1.5 (technically it's not too hard, but I will see if there's time to get it into 1.5 once the OM migration is done).

[stykzman]

UPDATE:

• Continued migrating 1.0 code to new Object Manager; multiple selection and dragging is working properly and quickly.
  
• Added rollover effect to nodes to make knowing when you're over a node much clearer:
  
  
  
  
  
• Started working with images; here's an early rendition of a background image for a frame:
  
  
  
  
• Added "merging Stykz documents to the "if I have time" list for 1.5; if I can't add it, I'll make a separate utility

[Wind3H]

the rollover effect looks pretty useful :D
(i always found it annoying when i missed the node )