Looking for Beta Testers for Computer Graphics Program

[EntityX]

Next Ray Rover version will be out in July. No not quite that long. I'm making space for a button in every section. They'll be seven Settings Explained buttons and 7 Settings Explained forms, one for each section. I made space for the buttons down to C Phase and am working in D Phase. D Phase was way too crowded so I'm adding more lines to space the labels and comboboxes out and I'll probably add another line in E Phase to space that out more too.

If you want to make suggestions about the improvement of some Preset screen I'm open to that. I know a lot of them could be way better. For instance changing the color mode(CA, CM, CMD, CMC, CME) by itself can sometimes make a big difference. A lot of the Color Rotations or CR's in B Phase as well as the CM's aren't very good but I am reluctant to cut them out for some reason.

Some of the screens look very amateurish but my hope is that they are at least somewhat interesting to watch and no doubt some of them will go bye bye.

[EntityX]

All the buttons have been added and the forms each display only the explanations for one section. Breaking the labels up among 7 different forms greatly speeded things up. No more 24 second waits. B phase has the most labels and it's about a second for it to open on my computer.

It is becoming clear that I have to find a way to determine which of the 3 text sizes the computer is using. I'll have to set the maximum size for the FlowLayoutPanel differently depending on which of those sizes is being used. If I use just one maximum size I would either have a giant void area at the bottom of the form in the default size or else not all the labels will display if it's one of the larger text sizes. There's also the problem of the crowding inside the comboboxes on the Settings Control screen and the text not being centered in the labels as well as some labels not displaying completely.

Maybe there's a way I could find out which size is being used without getting it from the property setting but rather testing the width of some predetermined string in pixels if that's possible. There probably is a way to find which of the three sizes is being used though. I posted again in the thread I started before that didn't get any replies. Maybe I'll get some replies now and I'll start doing some searching on the internet again.

[boops boops]

All the buttons have been added and the forms each display only the explanations for one section. Breaking the labels up among 7 different forms greatly speeded things up. No more 24 second waits. B phase has the most labels and it's about a second for it to open on my computer.

It is becoming clear that I have to find a way to determine which of the 3 text sizes the computer is using. I'll have to set the maximum size for the FlowLayoutPanel differently depending on which of those sizes is being used. If I use just one maximum size I would either have a giant void area at the bottom of the form in the default size or else not all the labels will display if it's one of the larger text sizes. There's also the problem of the crowding inside the comboboxes on the Settings Control screen and the text not being centered in the labels as well as some labels not displaying completely.

Maybe there's a way I could find out which size is being used without getting it from the property setting but rather testing the width of some predetermined string in pixels if that's possible. There probably is a way to find which of the three sizes is being used though. I posted again in the thread I started before that didn't get any replies. Maybe I'll get some replies now and I'll start doing some searching on the internet again.

Maybe you are trying to solve the wrong problem. Structuring the information better would give you much more room to play with. For example, you could organize all the setting names into a TreeView instead of a host of separate labels. Then you would only have to show one ComBobox at a time, for the selected node. When it's more logical to group several settings together, such as all the PTA settings in the A Phase, you could take advantage of an unbound DataGridView with one or more ComboBox columns. The fields could all be autosized, and you would have much more space to play with on the form. Then, for example, you could display an explanation of the setting under the ComboBox, instead of a separate window for all of the explanations.

I realize that a layout like that would be very different from what you are doing now, and controls like the TreeView and the DataGridView take a lot of learning. My knowledge of the DGV is pretty rudimentary. But I expect I could produce a mockup of a settings layout like the above, if you are interested.

BB

[EntityX]

I'm going to stick with my general plan the way it is. I'll always try to make things look better but as I said before I like the Settings Control Screen the way it is. I found a way to distinguish between the 3 different Windows text sizes and I got it looking good for both the default and the middle text size and the largest size always looked pretty good. Maybe I'll have another version out in a day or two and you can tell me what you think. One of these days after much work I'll get the Settings Control Screen to a state where you'll think it's just bad and not disastrously bad.

Edit entry :
I was just thinking on what you said in your last post. I'm going to continue work on making the Settings Control screen display properly in the different Windows text size modes so I'm satisfied with how it looks on my computer. At some point in the future I think I might have an alternate Settings Control Screen that you could bring up if you were just interested in adjusting one setting or a small number of settings. If you opened it while you had D Phase on for instance then it would give you the list of D Phase settings and you could click on from 1 to up to perhaps 5 or maybe more settings and then you get one or more comboboxes on a form that you could use to adjust just those settings that you want to. The screen would open faster and it could hold a memory of which settings you last selected so that if you left it and went back to it a minute later it would come up the same way until you altered which settings you wanted to adjust. So it would have a memory for each of the different phases. That's something I'll put on hold for now but it makes sense because for one thing the Settings Control Screen has so many objects on it it takes a while for it to open. Once someone gets some screen that they are experimenting with in the Freestyle mode the way they want it then they can bring the big Settings Control screen up and save it as a Personal Screen.

[boops boops]

I'm going to stick with my general plan the way it is. I'll always try to make things look better but as I said before I like the Settings Control Screen the way it is. I found a way to distinguish between the different text sizes and I got it looking good for both the default and the middle text size and the largest size always looked pretty good. Maybe I'll have another version out in a day or two and you can tell me what you think. One of these days after much work I'll get the Settings Control Screen to a state where you'll think it's just bad and not disastrously bad.

OK, but I should add (in public) that I think the screens themselves are very good indeed. I hope you will find other people who like the UI.

BB

[EntityX]

Ray Rover 1.0.48 is up on my site. I still have plenty of work to do getting the S list to display properly in the Windows middle text size but the Settings Control Screen looks a lot better and so do the Explains Settings explanations.

[EntityX]

1.0.56 is up now. ( From version 1.0.49 : S list is better. Displays wider in middle text size and some B Phase keyboard controls were moved to P list.) CC setting was changed. Preset screens will hold changes made when settings change part way through a screen. They used to revert to the settings that the screen started with whenever a settings change was made. Just the one or two or however many changes take place when will occur and all the settings won't be returned to what the screen started out with.

I do plan on creating an alternate Settings Control Screen where you could just play around with one or two or a few different settings.

1.0.57 is up.

[EntityX]

Boops just want to say thanks again for all your help and if you never help me again anytime in the next 500 billion eons, ( I like the number 500 billion ) I owe you. Back in an earlier post I was saying that in my attempts to get a decimal comma to be used on my computer I couldn't find a format (language and country) that would give me that option but I finally did and was able to duplicate the problem you were getting on your computer and then I used your code and it worked perfectly changing the decimal comma to a decimal point. Only had to use it in two places so I don't think there's a need to search anymore to solve that problem. Thanks again.

Ray Rover 1.0.62 is up on my site. Some Preset screen settings I discovered got messed up and have been corrected and various other improvements have been made. 1.0.62 shouldn't require any prerequisites. .NET Framework 2.0 is used. Found out on library computer that 1.0.61 was asking for .NET Framework 4.0. Never saw that message because my computer has it. Hopefully anyone that doesn't have 4.0 won't have a problem downloading it now.

My new monitor is arriving today so I'll get to see how Ray Rover looks on a 1920 x 1080 resolution screen.

And all my many beta testers please don't pester me to death with all your posts. Try to control yourselves.

Edit entry :

Changes in recent versions

PTA(0) to PTA(4) allow 3 digits right of the decimal point instead of just 2 so longer stays at each pen
thickness are possible now in version 1.0.66 and afterward. If you made any Personal Screens in A Phase that
used those settings you would want to add a 0 in the tenths place to get the same result now.
So PTA(0) = 60.60 in previous versions should now be converted to PTA(0) = 60.060 to get the
same result.

PTA2(0) to PTA2(4) and PTA3(0) to PTA3(4) now use 3 digits in the tenths,
hundredths and thousandths places to control the duration of increase or
decrease of pen thickness whereas in earlier versions only two digits were used
in the tenths and hundredths places. To give an example if you have a Personal Screen
with PTA2(0) = 222.2020, that should be converted to
PTA2(0) = 222.02020 to get the same result.

In version 1.0.70 Findstep function is no longer used for VPT2, VPT4 and VPT5. Those VPTs use more digits right of the decimal point now. Greater precision and range of adjustment is now possible for those settings. Refer to explanations of settings for more details.

In version 1.0.71 VPT0, VPT1 and VPT3 use 3 digits right of the decimal point to determine pen width upper limit. See explanation of settings for details. Some new Preset screen were added at the end.

Was just replacing CSR = 2 or 3 or 4 with CSR = 1 in Preset screens. I used 2, 3 and 4 for CSR because back when I wasn't using a picture box or double bufferring I found that I got a better result with those values sometimes but now it seems that CSR = 1 always looks better. Next version 1.0.72 won't have any CSR = 2, 3 or 4 screens in it.

[EntityX]

Looks like I'm posting about 95 % of the posts in this thread. Went to library again today. Was very surprised to see the message still asking for .NET Framework 4.0 when Ray Rover is only using 2.0. I'm not going to go into all the details and why I was so surprised but anyway I uninstalled 4.0, 3.5 and 3.0 from XP so I could duplicate the situation at home. I'm using InstallShield now and the problem has been solved. Maybe I don't need to be posting to my non-existent beta testers anymore.

[EntityX]

Lots of boops boops Ray Rover wishes are coming true. There's a go to window now. Shift+Enter brings it up. If you see a space between keys for the keyboard control list that means you press and release one key and then the other but if there's a + between them then you hold them down at the same time. So hold Shift down and then press Enter to bring up the go to window.

There are also bookmarks now. It will start with a list of 106 bookmarks now that has a lot of my favorites but you can clear those all out or add to them if you want. F9 to bring up screen to manipulate bookmarks. F8 to clear bookmark or set bookmark. F10 to enter and exit Preset Bookmarks mode. Refer to S list. A lot of the F1 to F12 keys are used differently now.

Any window that starts maximized can be minimized with F11 so F11 works for Instructions, graphics display, Settings Control Screen and Manipulate Bookmarks Screen as well as Activation Screen.

Many of the Preset Screens numbered below 30 have been switched with screens from other places and some of the others numbered below 100 too.

[EntityX]

A new milestone for Ray Rover has been reached. I finally got a code signing certificate for it. Once I signed Ray Rover with it the SmartScreen Filter no longer said it was an unsigned program but it still said, "This program might harm your computer. SmartScreen Filter has little or no information about this program. Running this program might harm your computer." A couple days back I stopped seeing that message so apparently once your program is signed and enough downloads take place without anyone reporting a problem then the message saying this program might harm your computer, disappears.

I don't see that message anymore. If anyone else does, let me know. I have an ebay listing back up for Ray Rover but haven't spent any money on advertising it. Anyone that has donwloaded Ray Rover and used it, let me know if you think $ 16 is a good price for it. Do you think I should try to tune it up more, like add some better Preset Screens or something, before spending money on advertising it?