DOSCab/WinCab Progress

[Chris]

Okay, it looks awful and there's still obviously a long way to go, but I've made a major breakthrough tonight:

[Sloan]

nice work chris! i'm sure we're all looking forward to the refined versions to come. 

[Chris]

Thanks!  I know it doesn't look like much progress, but I had to build an artwork caching system for the cover art since each image has to potentially be loaded from disk, decoded (if it's a JPG), scaled, adjusted for aspect ratio, rotated, and/or flipped before going to the screen.  Without a caching system, performance would die on low-end machines (as it is, I'm already worried that P120's may not be able to use cover art).  So far, all of the rotations work as well, but I haven't tested flipping yet.  (Flipping is for the extremely rare case of being installed in a mirrored cabinet like Space Invaders.)

What is potentially interesting is that, since CD labels are just regular labels with more than 2 songs, it should be possible to switch from CD mode to "classic" mode on the fly... (although slower machines will probably get a brief stutter if the switch is made while a song is playing.)

I still need to fix the header display for each title card, and make some decent skins, but I might have a release with CD skins within a week.

--Chris

[RacerX]

Nice work! 

I personally am happy with just the classic jukebox look, but with this addition, I think it's safe to say that you have the most flexible jukebox software I have ever seen.

[Chris]

Nice work!

[dphirschler]

Thanks for doing this Chris.  I am eagerly awaiting your new release.


Darryl

[Dermbrian]

I was surfing Google 'images' and ran across the following site, which has a semi-cartoon of two young girls discussing a jukebox.  I think you'd appreciate the subtle humor, Chris.

http://tinyurl.com/c25x5



Brian

[Chris]

Okay, I've fixed the address displays. (It helps if you actually put data into the buffer before you write it to the screen.)  I've still got to fix a couple of minor addressing issues and clean up the selection display, but I should have usable (although probably still unatractive) CD skins this week.  That means it's almost release time;  I'll put out beta 7 for everyone to play with while I hunker down with the new touchscreen.

The CD skins use the same input engine as the rest of the jukebox, so you could do interesting things like use an old-fashioned alphanumeric entry format rather than a keypad, so a CD label card might look like:

2 JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS

A1. 3 Small Words 
A2. Pretend to Be Nice
A3. Spin Around
A4. You Don't See Me
B1. You're a Star
B2. Shapeshifter
B3. I Wish You Well
--BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--. Real Wild Child
B5. Come On
B6. Money (That's What I Want)
B7. Josie and the Pussycats

So to select "Come On", you'd enter 2B5.

The same card with a 6-key numeric keypad with UseZero set to Off would look like:

2 JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS

11. 3 Small Words 
12. Pretend to Be Nice
13. Spin Around
14. You Don't See Me
15. You're a Star
16. Shapeshifter
21. I Wish You Well
22. Real Wild Child
23. Come On
24. Money (That's What I Want)
25. Josie and the Pussycats

So you'd enter 223 to get Come On.

This all assumes Relative Mode, in which the first album on the screen is disc 1, the second is disc 2, etc.  In Absolute mode, each album has its own number, so the label might say:

1142 JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS

11. 3 Small Words 
12. Pretend to Be Nice
13. Spin Around
14. You Don't See Me
15. You're a Star
16. Shapeshifter
21. I Wish You Well
22. Real Wild Child
23. Come On
24. Money (That's What I Want)
25. Josie and the Pussycats

So you'd enter 114223 to play Come On, whether or not the album was actually on the screen.  The leading 1's or 0's (depending on whether zeroes are enabled) are optional, so entering 4223 would get you the same song.  In Absolute Alphanumeric mode, that disc label would be more like AAD2, and entering AAD2B3 or just D2B3 would get you Come On.

Does any of that make any sense?

--Chris

[garyh]

Makes perfect sense, Chris.

Looking forward to the new beta . . .

[Chris]

Makes perfect sense, Chris.

Looking forward to the new beta . . .

It's out!  See the thread at http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=37545.msg334378#msg334378 .

-Chris