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Author Topic: DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news  (Read 11645 times)

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Chris

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DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« on: June 24, 2004, 10:53:46 am »
Just wanted to post an update...

I decided to plunge forward with rebuilding the input system.  I had originally decided to put this off, figuring that what I have now was "good enough", but after looking into it I decided that it would only delay a release by a week, so I'm plunging forward.

The goals of the input system changes are to allow mouse support (mostly for touchscreens, with an invisible mouse pointer, but also for those with trackball-only cabinets), flexibility on the number of songs shown at once, and flexibility on the number of songs per title strip.  Being able to support mice also means having to be able to define icons in the skin to support little things like changing  pages.  

The good news is that most of this is now done.  The splits are working and mouseable, but only the first 16 songs on any given screen are available because I haven't rebuilt the keyboard support yet; I'm working on that now.  They new keyboard system writes into a message queue instead of taking actions directly, so I can have icons send or react to the same messages; it also allows any number of keys to perform the same function, which is necessary for cocktail cabinets.

You can now specify any number of songs per strip.  If you specify 1, it looks like Arcade Jukebox; if you specify 2, it looks like it always has; and if you specify more than 2, it switches to an album sort and renders as a CD-style jukebox. Being able to change the number of title strips means that when all is done, it should be possible to make skins to emulate Arcade Jukebox or any of the CD jukeboxes, but rotatable and in DOS or Windows.  Essentially I'll have a "Jukebox Construction Set" of sorts...

After I finish the new keyboard input, I'll need to add icon support, figure out how to rotate mouse input on a rotated monitor, and add support for CD cover art when in CD mode.  After that, I'll call 3.0 done. I'm hoping to have a public beta this weekend.

Here's the change log so far for 3.0:

- Added multiple resolution support.
- Added rotation support.
- Added skin support.
- Added TrueType font support.
- Added multiple dot-matrix font sizes to support multiple resolutions.
- Added support for multiple song paths.
- Added ID3 support.
- Added function to release unused time slices so jukebox no longer uses 100% CPU in Windows.
- Added mouse support.
- Added mouse cursors to jukebox.dat.
- Added support for single (Arcade Jukebox-style) title strips in addition to the standard double (45-style) title strips.
- Added support for CD-style title cards; in this mode, songs are sorted by album, not artist.
- Added splash screen/indexer status display.
- Added file version block.
- Added BTN_EXIT; the ESC key is no longer hardcoded to exit.
- Added ability to disable unused displays
- Added ability to adjust the number of lines in Now Playing and Coming Up displays.
- Added album name to Now Playing display when at least 5 lines are displayed.
- Added ability to specify number of titlestrips per page; removed hardcoded setting of 8 titlestrips per page.
- Added JPG support.
- Rebuilt indexer; eliminated need for jukelist.
- Changed screenshot function to output BMP files instead of PCX.
- Moved play counts to song database.
- Moved graphics from datafile to individual files to support skins.
- Moved symbol definitions to symbols.ini.
- When using Artist Sort, the word "The" at the beginning of an artist name is now ignored for sorting purposes, so "The Beatles" now sorts under B rather than T.
- Songs are grouped on labels by album and in track order (when known) within an artist.
- Fixed major bug that was causing excessive CPU usage (labels continually redrawn).
- Fixed bug where songs wouldn't start in the background in Windows.
- Fixed bug where SongPath wasn't actually working in Windows.
- Fixed bug where files with a # in them could not be played.
- Fixed bug where read-only files could not be played.
- Fixed bug where last titlestrip wasn't being displayed

If anyone has any last minute small requests, now is the time... I can't guarantee that they'll all get in, but I'll see whhat I can do...

Thank you all for your support!

--Chris
--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

GadgetGeek

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #1 on: June 24, 2004, 12:45:17 pm »
How 'bout a linux port? ;D
Looks to be an amazing effort.  Will all these upgrades raise the minimum machine requirements?

Chris

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #2 on: June 24, 2004, 01:43:00 pm »
How 'bout a linux port? ;D
Looks to be an amazing effort.  Will all these upgrades raise the minimum machine requirements?
A Linux port is theoretically possible, under either X or SVGALIB; the code is mostly portable, and uses portable libraries (most of which are actually Linux libraries ported to DOS and Windows, not the other way around); the parts that aren't portable could be made portable very easily (basically, I check to see if I'm in Windows to, for example, check if I have long filename support; I'd need to just reverse that to check to make sure I'm not in DOS).  I could also theoretically compile for a Mac and BeOS.  The problem is that I have absolutely no experience in that area... even if I could get it compiled, I wouldn't ever be able to support or troubleshoot it in any way, so I probably wouldn't do it just for that reason.  

I also wouldn't have a good name; LinCab just doesn't sound right, although TuxCab could work...

The machine requirements are actually much lower now.  It used to require a 300 MHz machine, but I've been much more careful this time around. My DOS test platform this time is a P-166 laptop with 32 MB of RAM, which runs at full speed even with antialiasing at 800x600.  It should theoretically run on a P-75, and I suppose there's a possibility it could run on a 486 in DOS at lower resolutions with antialiasing turned off, although probably only with lower bitrate MP3's... too bad I threw out my 486 when I moved last year.  In my documentation, I'm going to call the minimum a P-133 unless I can actually test on something lower.

--Chris

--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

RacerX

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2004, 02:07:19 pm »
Wow, Chris.  Let me just say as someone who has been testing the Alpha version, I'm very impressed.  And these latest changes sound very cool, too.  I am planning on continuing to use the "classic" WinCab look and feel, but it's nice to have all of these options.  Actually, I may expand the number of songs per page, now that I think about it.   :)

Chris

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #4 on: June 24, 2004, 02:18:28 pm »
Wow, Chris.  Let me just say as someone who has been testing the Alpha version, I'm very impressed.  And these latest changes sound very cool, too.  I am planning on continuing to use the "classic" WinCab look and feel, but it's nice to have all of these options.  Actually, I may expand the number of songs per page, now that I think about it.   :)
Thanks!  :)

Under the new input system, the theoretical maximum songs per page is 260 for classic mode and pretty much unlimited in CD mode, so if you've invested in that big screen monitor, now's when it pays off...  ;D
--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

colopioneers

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #5 on: June 24, 2004, 04:58:36 pm »
Gotta put in my $.02 as well...

Chris, you know me as the pest that you've been helping configure the alpha for the past three days!

Anyway, just wanted to post this to let everyone know that Chris and WinCab absolutely rock!!!

If you're reading this and deciding on which jukebox FE to use, you can't go wrong with DosCab/WinCab!

Keep up the great work Chris, and thanks again for all the help!

Jamie
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Welcome to Colorado....NOW GO HOME!

Chris

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #6 on: June 27, 2004, 04:25:54 pm »
I expected to have a public beta version by today, but had a bit of a setback yesterday...

I happen to have Malague
--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #7 on: June 27, 2004, 07:09:47 pm »
Sounds like you're getting close!  I'm glad you didn't lose all 10 hours worth of work.  That would have sucked royally!  Thanks again for all of your efforts.

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #8 on: June 30, 2004, 12:03:33 pm »
One side effect of rebuilding the input system was that adding other input systems is now simple.  So last night, I tinkered with gamepad support, and it now works.  Most of the time it took was spent tracking down one single typo... :(

The system I added will allow you to map the four main directions and up to 14 buttons for up to 4 gamepads/sticks to any DWJ feature.  For Windows, joysticks are autodetected through DirectX.  For DOS, you do have to specify the joystick in jukebox.ini, and of course you can't use USB.  You can set it up for a standard 2-button, 4-button, 6-button, or 8-button stick, a Flightstick Pro, a Wingman Extreme, a Wingman Warrior, a Sidewinder, a Gravis Gamepad Pro, a Gravis GrIP, an SNES pad connected to the parallel port, a PSX pad connected to the parallel port, an N64 pad connected to the parallel port, and a couple of other console sticks with hacked interfaces.  

--Chris
--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #9 on: June 30, 2004, 03:33:31 pm »
One side effect of rebuilding the input system was that adding other input systems is now simple.  So last night, I tinkered with gamepad support, and it now works.  Most of the time it took was spent tracking down one single typo... :(

The system I added will allow you to map the four main directions and up to 14 buttons for up to 4 gamepads/sticks to any DWJ feature.  For Windows, joysticks are autodetected through DirectX.  For DOS, you do have to specify the joystick in jukebox.ini, and of course you can't use USB.  You can set it up for a standard 2-button, 4-button, 6-button, or 8-button stick, a Flightstick Pro, a Wingman Extreme, a Wingman Warrior, a Sidewinder, a Gravis Gamepad Pro, a Gravis GrIP, an SNES pad connected to the parallel port, a PSX pad connected to the parallel port, an N64 pad connected to the parallel port, and a couple of other console sticks with hacked interfaces.  

--Chris

That's cool.  If I should decide to build additional jukeboxes, I'll just hack old gamepads instead of ordering IPAC's.

garyh

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #10 on: June 30, 2004, 04:21:37 pm »
Chris

Great news, can't wait for the public beta. I assume OggVorbis support didn't make it in this version? . . .

Rgeards

Gary


Chris

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #11 on: June 30, 2004, 04:26:09 pm »
Great news, can't wait for the public beta. I assume OggVorbis support didn't make it in this version? . . .
Well, with the way I've rearranged the code, it's theoretically really easy to add at this point.  All of the music related functions are abstracted now, so it should just be a matter of compiling in a cross-platform Ogg library...

It's not my highest priority, but I'll look at it.  Gamepad support and CD-style skins weren't supposed to be in this version either, but it's amazing how easy things are to add once you impose some order on once chaotic code...
--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

Chris

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #12 on: June 30, 2004, 08:44:54 pm »
Great news, can't wait for the public beta. I assume OggVorbis support didn't make it in this version? . . .
Okay, that wasn't so hard.  It's now working with OGG files.

--Chris
--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

Chris

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #13 on: June 30, 2004, 09:14:22 pm »
Great news, can't wait for the public beta. I assume OggVorbis support didn't make it in this version? . . .
Okay, that wasn't so hard.  It's now working with OGG files.
Oops... looks like OGG doesn't support ID3; it uses its own tagging format.  That screws up my indexing for DOS.  I'll probaby have to pull it back out unless I can figure out how to get at their tags.

EDIT: Never mind... I figured out how to get OGG tags, so OGG can stay.  :)
« Last Edit: June 30, 2004, 11:19:17 pm by Chris »
--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #14 on: July 03, 2004, 04:23:40 am »
Superb!!!! Now the wait for the public beta is even more unbearable!

Thanks Chris.

Gary

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #15 on: July 03, 2004, 11:52:35 pm »
Another wasted weekend...

I spent all last night and all day today troubleshooting the fact that the DOS version wouldn't play anymore after I abstracted the sound interface and added OGG support... and it turned out to be that somehow the configuration on the DOS test machine changed.  Grr...

--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #16 on: July 06, 2004, 11:56:00 pm »
For those on this thread who haven't seen the release thread, the public beta is out. http://webpages.charter.net/celamantia/jukebox
--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #17 on: July 08, 2004, 10:43:53 pm »
Hi Chris,

This is my first time playing with your great little program but I have a question. Do I have to install some additional product to play the MP3 files? I tried playing some songs but they sound terrible. Like there is only about 10% of the information there. If I play the files outside of your application they sound fine. I am using Windows 98 and I tested the MP3 files with Windows Media player. The files were ripped with EAD and Lame. Any help would really be apprecaited. I love the look of this program!

Chris

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #18 on: July 08, 2004, 10:52:14 pm »
My guess is that they are encoded as Variable Bit Rate.  Unfortunately, at this time I can't handle VBR MP3's.

--Chris
--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #19 on: July 08, 2004, 11:02:15 pm »
I check the encodin parameters and is says 192kBit/s. I checked and there is a variable bit rate option but I am not using that. Any thoughts on how I could check for sure?

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #20 on: July 08, 2004, 11:05:28 pm »
Silly question: Are you sure you're running the Windows version (jukewin.exe) and not the DOS version (jukebox.exe)?  The DOS version runs poorly in Windows.  (It should say WINCAB on startup, not DOSCAB.)

--Chris
--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #21 on: July 08, 2004, 11:10:16 pm »
Yes, jukewin.exe. Do the dlls that include in the distribution need to be placed in the Windows System directory. I tried that but it didn't seem to make a difference.

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #22 on: July 08, 2004, 11:13:59 pm »
Yes, jukewin.exe. Do the dlls that include in the distribution need to be placed in the Windows System directory. I tried that but it didn't seem to make a difference.
No, they should be fine where they are.

Can you put one of the offending files somewhere I can get at it?

--Chris

--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #23 on: July 08, 2004, 11:19:49 pm »
I found that there is a mp3 stream statistic display in Windows Media player and it confirms that the files are 44.1KHz, Stereo with a 192kBp/s bitrate. The smallest file is 3.6 MB. Is there any chance that your email would handle that? If not, I might be able to put it on a friends web site temporarily.

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #24 on: July 08, 2004, 11:24:45 pm »
I found that there is a mp3 stream statistic display in Windows Media player and it confirms that the files are 44.1KHz, Stereo with a 192kBp/s bitrate. The smallest file is 3.6 MB. Is there any chance that your email would handle that? If not, I might be able to put it on a friends web site temporarily.
Yeah, I should be able to take a 3.6...
--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #25 on: July 09, 2004, 12:23:33 am »
Ok, now I am really confused. This was a new installation of Windows 98, a system restore actually. I remembered that I had a Windows 98 Second Edition upgrade, so I installed that. Now WinCab sound totally awesome! I have no idea what is different, but that is all that I changed.

I really like this program, it looks and works like I expect it to. I want to rip somemore music and see how I can control the song display.

Great work!

Chris

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #26 on: July 09, 2004, 12:50:28 am »
Ok, now I am really confused. This was a new installation of Windows 98, a system restore actually. I remembered that I had a Windows 98 Second Edition upgrade, so I installed that. Now WinCab sound totally awesome! I have no idea what is different, but that is all that I changed.
I'll bet part of the upgrade is an upgrade to DirectX.  The Windows version does depend on DirectX...
--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #27 on: July 09, 2004, 10:35:14 am »
My guess is that they are encoded as Variable Bit Rate.  Unfortunately, at this time I can't handle VBR MP3's.

--Chris

 ???
I only have a few VBR mp3's, but they play just fine on WinCab.   :)

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Re:DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox news
« Reply #28 on: July 09, 2004, 10:43:57 am »
My guess is that they are encoded as Variable Bit Rate.  Unfortunately, at this time I can't handle VBR MP3's.

--Chris

 ???
I only have a few VBR mp3's, but they play just fine on WinCab.   :)
Wow... I wonder what I fixed?   ???
--Chris
DOSCab/WinCab Jukebox: http://www.dwjukebox.com