AmigaONE-X1000 HDReady...

AmigaONE-X1000 HDReady...

I have been thinking about writing some thing about the fastest Mplayer from me, and about latest utf8.library, I guess I should say something.

Your AmigaONE-X1000 is now HDReady, you can now play 720p video whit out problem, thanks to a changes in vo_cgx_wpa driver, and the new vo_comp, the problem whit old vo_cgx_wpa driver is that it uses RGB, and not ARGB, the Radeon HD cards needs ARGB, so the result was that graphic needed to be converted before being sent over.

The second problem was that it was using software scaling, this slow and CPU intensive, by using hardware acceleration to do the scaling we can scale windows to full screen and back, whit using all the CPU power.

And I wanted to compile a fully AltiVec enabled version of MPlayer. The vo_cgx_wpa and vo_comp is also useful for Sam460 users, it does help to reduce CPU load. How it all came about:

Back story:

well it started because I realized Ka1e needed help, whit MUI-MPlayer, he was begging Hans to emulate overlay, Hans did not want to spend time on obsolete technology. Nor did he have time for that, so this is way I did take on this challenge.

History for Mplayer for AmigaOS4.

The MPlayer project for AmigaOS4 started whit me I think, at least for AmigaOS4, the MorphOS version already existed before I tried to compile it. more importantly my attempt showed it was possible to compile it.

Click this link to read how it all started

I did not manage to compile it because some fork() stuff, but Andrea Palmate'(‎'afxgroup'), did and so it became his project, Varthall and Abalabanb started a project a project on code.google.com.

Now I'm going to tell you some thing not every one knows, or at least where few. After Andrea Palmate successful ported MPlayer to AmigaOS4, I requested the source code from him, and worked on a plugin for IBrowse 2.4, but due to complications and way I decided to do it failed, this project ended in yuv420 to ARGB routine and some stuff, that project is dead now.

http://www.amigasoft.net/pages/mplayer/mplayer.asp

While I never got MPlayer IB2.4 plugin to work as good as I hoped for the work on IB2.4 plugin did end up in plugin for Audio, this probably the route I take if where to redo it.

http://www.os4depot.net/index.php?function=showfile&file=network/browser/np_audio.lha

So I'm well familiar with MPlayer well before I started on this projected. While I was not one to implement MPlayer I was the one who initiated it on AmigaOS4, so it bit funny to see whit project coming back to me, or at least partly.

Today this is no longer needed for a IBrowse plugin whit HTML5 the web browser does no longer need a plugin to play videos, thanks to the Excellent work of Fab and Ka1e.

What is future for me and Mplayer, I have not yet decided, I have some ideas, more likely its going to be fix up mplayer-amigaos at code.google.com at least. Now that Me and Ka1e has joined the code.google.com mplayer-amigaos effort, I like to see is FAB and Andrea Palmate joining the mplayer-amigaos code.google.com effort, so this becomes team work, so whit don't end up whit different MPlayer whit bug that's already fixed in different MPlayers and so. Even if all mplayer can be based on common code base, it might be possible to have unique versions of MPlayer I believe.

https://code.google.com/p/mplayer-amigaos

Its always good to experiment.

While things does not always work out some time you learn something that can be of use latter, this is a example of this at lest for me. I can also take the Basilisk II as an Example, Basilisk was first please I used Composition for scaling window content, part of that code made into Mplayer vo_comp. I have also been using Composition in Excalibur, to do alpha blending also.

Summer time, holyday and software development.

So what has happened sines last time, I wrote some thing here.

Excalibur 1.4.0 was released, this should have great release whit context menus, and some cool stuff like being able to hide and unhide Excalibur by Clicking the border, it was bit of horror really, last secund changes screwed up the build process, resulting half rebuilt executable, also people started reporting problems whit install and uninstall scripts.

Rebuilding Excalibur was easy, but all the changes that resulted in meny Skins/theams being out date, and was needed a work over, the result was Excalibur 1.4.1, I was not able fix problems as fast as expected because it was lot of work.

So what do I need to fix, I need to fix build horror issue, what it is.

What I have done is that I have decided the program into modules (objects), that are compiled separately and then linked into the executable. This all nice, as I don't need to see warning from modules I don't need to recompile and recompile gets quicker, less text on the screen and so on, and it organized, but his modules include some header files, that I some times need to changes, due to some structs,

but the makefile lacks the dependency and so even if I modify the header file the modules does not recompile. I'm thinking of some kind of auto clean, where if header files are changed all the objects should be deleted, forcing a make clean, make all.

Well thats the idea.

So what else, updated RunADF, well I use it a lot, I don't really have the need to mount adf's, more often I just want start a old game. The old version needed you to install UAE manually, changes stuff in user-startup, and modify DefIcons, this this are not needed in AmigaOS4.1, it was only needed in AmigaOS4.0.

DefIocns has entry for ADF files, I think its because of RunInUAE provided whit AmigaOS4.1, so all I need to do is replace sys icon, UAE is provided whit AmigaOS4.1 and so I don't need to look for it else where, so no need for UAE: Assign.

Then I was outside Norway for a week, enjoyed a week in Prague, walked around the city, I'm bit restless, I can't really sit down for too long, I need to do something, we did see a lot, I did not really dig into history of Prague or anything like that.

A bought a Samsung Galaxy, on airport, it came in heady to check on Amiga news, and look for restaurants and other useful travel information at hotel, it was also possible for me check up on work, but I tried to avoid that, unless it was needed.

Coming back after the holyday, there is some work that needs to be done on my apparent, first off this has been raining for most part this summer or I have been working, and in the weekend has been some what busy too, I have have not really have time for anything, but now, I need to get things done, only started on this, so it want be any major updates in any software until this taken care off.

One small thing I did also was release a new version in Whdload-to-UAE, that I did whit this was simular to what I did for RunADF, every thing is now provided, so made the install process easier, RunInUAE should be able to start whdload I belive but does not work here, I don't care way, all I care is that that it works, and it does after installing whdload-to-UAE, so I'm happy, hope you are.

So what to say? I think its about time to upload a new version soon.

So what to say? I think its about time to upload a new version soon, take a look at picture be under what do you think?

I don't know if notice some thing new....
but look closely, did you see it :-)

Yes the logo can now be on top, but there is some thing else....
We now how icons on About and Quit, maybe not big improvements.

But I have done allot of fixes and I hope every can notice that product is better when they use it, some of the fixes might not be easy to spot, I notice I changed the prefs, so its easier to find what your looking for.

Some of most impotent changes are fixes, found an memory leak, some problems because changing setting on the fly, lots settings did not reload as they should.

Fixed some rendering bugs.

I can say I'm really happy whit what I have done in this version, more impotent I think most of bugs is gone,  if you find a bug now its likely I do not know about it, so please rapport bugs.

So whats next, now that I bugs fixed, its time to look at things that might be nice to have.

* Context menus are on the top of that list.
* I'm also thinking about ways to hide Excalibur, I'm NOT a big fan of iconification.

I believe whit this two on the roadmap, its going to be lots of work, to one implement all the menu items. I think hiding Excalibur should be relatively easy, considering all the work being put into reloading settings, and switching resolution while program is running, it probably going to be lots of bugs during development its always is, I can't give any time estimates.

Her is a list of the changes in this version:

Version 1.3.5

* Changed: Grouping of prefs options, so its easier to find what your looking for.
* Added: A command line argument to reload to ExcaliburPrefs, this forces Excalibur to reload prefs
* Fixed:  Positioning and calculation of app icons coordinates, when prefs was reloaded.
* Added: Support for logos on top of the menu.
* Added: Loading and saving of logo placement (left,top).
* Fixed: Default settings was not set before reloading prefs
* Updated: Use presets scripts, now forces reload of settings in Excalibur
* Fixed: Crashes when changing screenmode due to changes in the way Excalibur open and close the toolbar.
* Fixed: Text length in menu,  bug was only visible when you where using a large font.
* Fixed: Menu editor so when you move a menu item up or down, the selected item stays the same.
* Fixed: Color for clock and screen did not change when config was reloaded.
* Updated: presets for Black, DjNick, 3d and Bloody
* Fixed: min_window height now its height left top+bottom or right top+bottom or center top+bottom border height.
* Fixed: Datatype support, JPG/IFF/TIFF is now converted into ARGB format, (ALPHA is assumed to be 0xFF)
* Fixed: toolbar border size for 3d and XEN, they where default 0.
* Fixed: icons in toolbar is also now reloaded.
* Added: wb96 preset for classic look.
* Fixed: fixed one pixel croping bug on icon rendering
* Changed: Max Icon size now defines height of toolbar icon not the width, (menu rendering unchanged).
* Fixed: Menu selector was misplaced on first menu, but not on sub menus.
* Changed: Logo can now be higher then the menu.
* Added: RGB and BG RGB for memory bars.
* Added: Support for icons on About and Quit menu item.
* Changed: ENVARC:Excalibur/toolbar.csv so the Excalibur menu points to SYS:Prefs/Presets/Excalibur/icons/current/Excalibur.info
* Changed: Theams to copy icons into to SYS:Prefs/Presets/Excalibur/icons/current/

So we are moving forward whit Excalibur 1.3.5.

Some really nice new features in this version, is that you do not need to quit Excalibur to reload settings. When I made the changes I discovered lots small bugs, that I have been addressing, mostly rendering related.

I most say it has been lots of bugs found I'm a bit surprised, mostly not critical, they just need to be fixed, it really does not help having lots of new features if the program is not work as expected, so this has to be fixed first.

And the second new feature is you now can have the logo on top of menus, this was not possible before, some themes might looks better whit logo on top, this was a lot of work to get right.

I also by playing a lot whit the settings I might found a lot more rendering bugs in this version, some of this bugs where not so easy to spot, I don't know if your going to see the difference.

Using datatypes (JPG,TIF,IFF images) is now working again, previously the images became transparent and was not rendered, (this going to need some more work I think, as the images loaded whit datatypes does not scale).

There is also a rendering bug in the menu that need to be fixed, when this done I will upload a new version.

I hope whit this version to have removed all known bugs, so I can start working on new features, and improvements.

I have also regrouped some prefs items so its easier to find the correct settings.

So its that time again, Excalibur is ready for new release candidate V1.3.0

So what its going on well the last version was V1.2.5 I head to do things twice because some source code was lost, in the end, the product was not as tested as it might have been if orignal was released, so this version fixed a lot the bugs and issues that where overseen in last release.

* Fixed: menu editor used wrong type id for divider.

* Fixed: rendering of 3D and XEN screens

* Fixed: Transparency was not the same for menu as toolbar.

* Disable_clock() crashed on exit, added a check if mutex is allocated.

* Fixed: menu editor, when you delete a menu, no text is printed anymore.

And then I added some new features and found a few bugs in the process, most important is the ability to test if your configuration is what you wont whit out quiting excalibur, I also added a few up and down arrows to the menu editor, so now, its not totally useless anymore, it might need some more work, but at lest I have it, in addition Exchange support was improved by not having to click the toolbar to get Excalibur to respond to Exchange, then I added a few tests to make shore Excalibur can't get 100% transparent, I know people should know better, but some go looking for bugs it seams to me.

* Added: improved icons support for only icons / all files in menus and toolbars.

* Added: move up and down to menu editor.

* Added: stupidity check for transparency, toolbar can not be less then 25 of 255.

* BB emu API MakeCommodity(), changed to return MsgPort, so I can do handel signals.

* Fixed: Excalibur should now notice when Exchange event has happened, whit out clicking on the window.

* Added: code to prevent Excalibur to be started more then once.

* Added: test button to prefs

* Added: code to unload/reload graphics, fonts and prefs.

* Fixed: Toolbar height calculation when prefs was reloaded

* Fixed: Fixed a memory leek, background bitmap not freed.

So hopefully all this changes should translate in to better user experience, I know Excalibur has long way to go, there are lots of improvements on the table, or ideas that has not yet been implemented, so don't worry this is not the last version yet.

The release of excalibur is eminent

The release of Excalibur is eminent

There are only a few features, that I can think of that want, but they going to break some thing maybe, it's time think about uploading a new version, there is 30 changes in this update, so this big update compared to few of the older updates, I lost a lot changes, and head to do most of this twice, nothing makes me more annoyed, well its done.

V1.2.5

* Alpha blended Logo
* Menu divider texture is tiled and scaled up or down to fit.
* Added border to toolbar
* save and load of font settings
* save and load of RGB color options for clock and screens
* some settings has changed name
* toolbar icons, screens and clock is now relative to border
* smarter positioning of toolbar icons
* prefs: added fonts to save routine and gui.
* prefs: added border textures for toolbar.
* prefs: RGB color option for clock and screens.
* Fixed black border texture in GIMP.
* Bjornar made a new logo for me.
* Svenn Ove Hansen, created some experimental textures.
* Fixed bug: droping icons resulted in menu being saved to env, menu divider lost bug.
* Fixed best_height calculation in menu, assumed toolbar to be 60 pixels, that was wrong.
* logo is now sacled down if menu is too small.
* ASync memory bar redraw bug when drooping icons fixed.
* Clip background from window instead of background bitmap bug, fixed.
* Background texture in menu is now aligned whit border top texture, to support DjNick theme.
* DjNick designed a theme
* Fixed DjNick theme, created a icon from textures, and left menu texture, cut of some transparent empty space of right and bottom side of theme,
cropped down menu border textures so it worked on toolbar.
* Fixed up black theme, and bloody theme.
* Fixed check_ext() function checked .info instead of .ext (no major problem unless I like to use it for some thing else)
* disk.info is now ignored.
* font shadow option changed to menu and toolbar instead of global
* max icon size option changed to menu and toolbar instead of global
* prefs program: default setings are now set, before config is loaded.
* GFXMEM can't be 64bit int, due to only 32bit api for memory in OS4, changed to unsigned int32, max 4Gbytes.
* Membar drawen too often, due to refresh bug, added draw_gfx option to membar::Memory() function.

DJNick theme, what happened, well some of changes you see in Mokup are implemented, for example the different size of fonts in menu and toolbar, different icon sizes in menu and toolbar, this things might have not been there if was not for the mockup, what is not implemented is logo on border, and the shadow effect.

What you might not know, is that Excalibur allows for more then one menu, so you can have your music menu, and your games menu, and what ever, just drop your volume or folder on the app/toolbar.

So lets hope I have some time to upload it tomorrow, so you all can enjoy it.

This is Kjetil signing out.

So how close are we?

So how close are we?

I done lots of work on fine tuning and improving the code, many small visual improvements that I hope will make it easier to make nice looking themes for Excalibur, what we have her is a improved black theme, whit a logo made by Bjørnar, it show some of new features that is important for DjNick mockup.

There are some complaints that is coming from some of you that DjNick mockup is too windows like, but its just a theme, Excalibur is not one form factor, you decide how its going to look how many buttons, what is going to be shown, the idea is that is customizable in looks, so you make look as just as you want (whit in limits of the program).

So what is new, as you can see fonts can be changed in style and size, the menu selector is a transparent bitmap, the menu divider is bitmap tiled or scaled to fit the menu perfect, the program tries to be smart about it, a number of graphic glitches has been fixed, due small disk crash I head to do it twice, so it was almost ready a month ago, but did take me a extra month, due the crash, what is left is going over etch theme and fix and compatibility issues new prefs, some of settings has changed names, so this has to be fixed.

I have long list of ideas in my head, and there are a lot of things that is on the TODO list, but most of graphical stuff is done, might might be effected by changes in other parts of the code, its always a on going processes, where you changes some thing and it effects an other parts, and every thing has be tested.

I also include DjNicks mockup so you can compare.

Santa is working super hard to make it to christmas.

Bringing the Christmas felling to the Amiga desktop, Excalibur now running on my X1000, I might write some words about it.

It has taken allot more time then expected many of changes has resulted in having to fix new bugs, and many of previews bugs had to be fixed.

The list of changes is not short, its one of the biggest updates so it going to be called version 1.2.

* Button radius option in prefs
* Added border options for toolbar and menu 3D and XEN.
* Corrected many errors in calculations for menu.
* Background color for menu and toolbar are now individual.
* Improved rendering routines for toolbar icons
* Create_script() bug some files did not open when path was a volume.
* Fixed screen open/close notify bug. 
* Added XEN style to screens, clock and border.
* Set_screen_to_front() triggered a unnecessary refresh, bug fixed.
* Now prgram waits for singals like any normal programs does.
* Clock is now running as a subtask, and only renders when time updates,
  less CPU usage!.
* New about window is reaction, and the about event handler is running
  as a own task (bb2 legacy free.)
* CHIPMEM,FASTMEM,GFXMEM and so on, upgraded to unsigned long long int (uint64),
  should salve the negative memory problem.
* Mouse_over_clock() starts clock prefs app when clock is disabled, bug fixed.
* None initialized values in menu, can result in a crash, bug fixed.
* rendering bug when dropping icons on startbar, fixed.
* check_ext() only worked on .info files, bug fixed.
* disk.info was listed on volumes, bug fixed.
* When SYS:WBStartup is missing its created by the install script.
* Menu div can now be a transparent png image.
* menu div image can now be scaled. 

Multi treading in Excalibur

So what was done, the old event loop looked like this, the problem whit this code was that, the program did not wait for signals, it was busy looping due the clock that needed to be redrawn every 1secund, but I was not able to slow it down because that, will cause the events to be not read at correct time, there was a small delay of 0.1 sec in the loop.

 

After rewriting the code, the main event loop, waits for events before checking, it does not do anything unless something happens.

Membar is only triggered every 2 seconds, because we don't need instant update of memory, nor do we want that.

the Clock loop is only updated every 1 seconds.

  

Well so now Excalibur is Multicore ready, allowing Excalibur to wait on many cores at once.

Of cause it more to it then what I written her, most important is the Mutx protection.

Dividing the code.

As it is written in the readme Excalibur was a a BlitzBasic program, typically for basic programs is that every thing is written in as one large source file, (not true for all modern basic programs).

One thing I have done for every version of Excalibur is to split the code up, I will explain it.

A typical basic program looks like this, you have every thing mixed, its complicated to find what your looking for, when every thing is mixed, and also in C there is ways you can speed up complication time by dividing the code in separate .c files.

When the content is split up it looks some thing like this:

As you can see now is easy, now is easy to find what your looking for, but when code is split up the compiler won't find what in the other files until linking. The source won't compile or the compiler will complain about incorrect declarations, to solve this problems you most create .h file that defines the functions whit in the *.c files.

This all well, blitz basic does not know about threads or task, every thing run from start to end, whit nothing running parallel, this is bad, in Excalibur you have a clock it has to update for every second, a good program should only do stuff when something happens, the program should wake up when its signaled to do something, then event routine should check what messages has been revised and act on this, well because clock interfered whit this it was no use checking for signals, and so main loop was running and wasting CPU cycles when noting new head happened, due to being single threaded.

I worked on this and by moving the code out of main application, I have made it easy to handle it all whit the clock.c file, I added a clock_proc function that should be spawned as own sub task, so that all rendering of clock was done in parallel whit main program, whit out interfering whit event loop in the main application, some extra work was need to prevent the code from rendering when window was closed, and allow it render when window was reopened, by using Mutex I fixed it so that variable whit clock.c was set on or off to allow rendering, the main event loop in clock.c was also mutex protected to so that only when variable was not being changed, it was allowed to render.

So way did I go trow all this trouble for just a CPU parentage? Well because Excalibur is a start menu, and its always there, you might need that percentage for your video player so it does not skip frames, or your music, or maybe you playing a game, I don't know but if every one wasted CPU cycles then there wont by any left for your applications.

Its all about the details

Well some work on my hobby, its all about the details.

I'm going back to basic's I know many people like it simple, and are not so interested in all PNG images fancy bling bling, so going back to old colors and styles.

I was looking at workbench prefs and style called XEN, this where you have depth border and you have normal 3d border inside, to make it look like button or fame is not above but inside.

I liked this effect, and so I looked at ways to added it to borders.

Also some work on the selector box has been done, it was not correctly rendered, one pixel wrong there not rendered correct when scroll bar was inside the menu.

I have also worked on the prefs, I have rearrange, the visual effects, so they are nicely grouped by menu and toolbar.

I have also fund a few bugs, they are gone.

Updated a new version of Excalibur today.

Updated a new version of Excalibur today (V1.1.3).

I have been sick a few days after my Italy trip, topically the first day back to work, and you get the flu, anyway that's all over now, the pictures from Italia trip is on my Facebook, so I'm not going to post them here.

I have done few adjustments to Excalibur, nothing to too dramatic, I think I wrote on blog some weeks back some of what did, I hope every one likes the changes, and I hope it runs as it should, I most admit there are lots more to be done, but what's is the point of siting on my changes until every thing is in place, then no one will have opportunity to use my application.

One more thing I forgot note in the changes document was Excalibur now close when you change screen resolution, and reopen when new resolution is opened.

The work never stops

As you all know I been working on NoGuru (NoYellow), so I have been busy whit that for some time, but now I'm back on Excalibur.

I have been working on new menu editor as seen in right window, some work is needed, but its shaping up.

Left windows shows the new prefs program, as you can see I'm now using tabs, some was complained about size of old prefs window being too big.

On Excalibur (toolbar), the screen buttons has been rounded, and so has memory bar, the clock text as been centered, and I have also updated the virtual positioning.

Some at my job asked med create rounded corner on some buttons, as result I came up whit good idea for doing that, its not so often there is synergy between work and hobby.

 

An other project I have been working on, it has stuck on my hard drive for long time, is PublicPaint, I don't know if ever shown you this before, I don't know what to do with it yet..

But did some changes to the source code, so works tiny bit better.

As you can see from screenshot it needs a lot of love, I can't believe how tiny it all looks, most have been using smaller resolution back in 2002/2003.

It says in the about window SDL but its running directly on border less Workbench windows.

I hoping composition can help whit displaying preview graphics like brushes/cut outs, I did not have that when it was ported it to AmigaOS4.

Excalibur v1.1.1

Lately I have been working on Excalibur the toolbar / start button application, I recently uploaded a new version to OS4Depot, some people that did not install application nor read the user guide, noticed some problems that I did not notice, on my optimal configured Excalibur v1.1.0, so the same day I fixed and uploaded version 1.1.1, this version will solve some of the confusion and crashes.

Often when you write a program, you forget to test all conditions where application can fail.

Some developers use beta testers but then beta tester are often lazy and don't report back, so I don't.

Some languages like ruby on rails, run a number of testes to check if some thing is broken, that's not case when my hobby projects, and to tell you the truth it will mostly likely take 3 times as long to complete projects that way, because all test has to be written, in many case you don't know what test before problem is noticed, when many developers cooperate on project test are a necessary evil, because sometime some think they can remove or change some thing, maybe they did not understand way things where written the way it was.

I guess way to do it, is to split up the application in many smaller parts that can be compile and tested individually, sorry people not going to do that its way too much work, and result of test is debatable, of cause 1 or 2 bugs might be found before a application is uploaded that way, but I think of all my users as beta testers, you use my applications freely so that's your job :-b

Some progress information.

As you most likely noticed by now I broken my promise did say it was going to be ready last week on Facebook, some times other things get in the way, its not always easy to estimate what I'm going to spend time on, it might where well be that I change my mind and so I did.

I have decided to spend a bit more time on toolbar, because I know many of you would expect to be able to remove icons dropped on toolbar, so I think this was important to do.

Individual logo for each menu or directory has not happened, I don't know if I should delay the release of this version because of that, it seams silly.

There are many things that can be made easier or improved but I'm not going to do all at once, yes the installation sucks, yes the is no way to edit the menus whit the exception of using notepad, and I think some of you have missed mouse scroll wheel support, at least I have because I'm using my application more and more as it improves.

Some nice progress, enjoyable weekend

This weekend my friend Svenn Ove, been on visit, he has been working on some new logos for Excalibur.

I have also created a new logo in white, I have also been fixing some rendering bugs in Excalibur, and added a new icons to toolbar, the configuration in text file, no current configuration program for it, but its easily editable, the new toolbar uses the csv format. Besides this the weekend has been spent on looking at films going out, and playing some adventure games.

The New Look Of Excalibur whit alphaclips.

Her is tiny blog as promised

I keep it short as not in right mood for writing anything long, after long work week, this blog is to give some of you a idea on how Excalibur looks like after all the changes, I think visual effects will make people interested that was not, I don't write programs so that nobody are using them, I do write programs in hope that some one do find this applications useful, and it does get me sanctification figuring out how to do some thing I have not done before, I do take feature requests, but don't expect me do every thing at ones, this is hobby and a self made programs from ground up and it takes time, its not just find a SDL game you or any one can recompile.

In the screen-shots you find tiny new detail, date is displayed in right corner it was only time before, I used only timer.device, to my surprise the date and time is handled by dos.library.

The black look is to check if the PNG border works, so it has all the corners and upper and bottom, left and right borders, I have turned the general transparency level to 0, did not look right whit transparency on the menu.

The white menu is a joke, my bloody hands has been all over the menus :-)
I have also tiny bit transparent, you can see the icons in the background.

This ester I have been doing a few things :-)

I have been to the cabin whit my family, in weekend I have been partying whit good friends (DJ Vibes is the local DJ), and talked to interesting people:

Some information about DJ Vibes you can find her:
www.house-mixes.com
80's party, LOL :-)

When I have not been parting and play stupid fb games, family stuff I have been working on Excalibur, adding transparent borders to menus, it has been tricky need to experiment a lot, amiga datatypes (default image loader) do not support PNG images whit alpha, PNG images are now loaded whit libpng, and datatypes are now used as fallback for other images types.

The hard part is rendering, because alpha channel has rendered separated from bitmap image, and alpha channel has be prepared before the window opens, so graphic has to be rendered two times.

Its not really possible to update the alpha after its done, because once its applied to the window, the content of window is distorted by some ending swapping crap that should not happen (OS bug), so if I where to do that then I need to redraw the graphics also, it is also slow, so its better to do it once.

There are many things that need to be fixed before its ready, but her is picture how it looks atm.

The spiders is right and left border texture, I will need some help whit textures, to make it look rally nice.

Last weekend Amiga Project work.

Last weekend I was at friends doing some Amiga project work for fun, the idea style up Excalibur start menu whit transparent border, so my friend Svenn Ove Hansen worked on making a 3d object from 2d object image using Maja3d its powerful 3d application.

For some time a go I experimented whit Composition Porter duff stuff, I see other people are working on some thing on Amigans.net I do keep I eye on whats being talked about there.

Before we started I tried using DataTypes to load PNG images, but I'm sorry to say I where unable to get alpha channel in PNG image, so no transparency :-(

So spent some time getting libpng to link whit my program, I don't like to use Linux libraries, when AmigaOS has so advanced system for loading Images, but did not find any other way :-(

I looked up a example for loading png images as textures for OpenGL, it was prefect the only problem it was too old, and spend some time trying to figure out if I compile my program wrong or was missing some include files, finally I looked up documentation for LibPNG, replaced the stuff that was outdated and it compiled, next I need the images in struct BitMap format as that's what AmigaOS uses, LibPNG loads the image in RGBA format, not ARGB format so I need to convert the image as well, not just copy the image data, next I head to copy the Alpha part for ARGB in to 8bit Alpha Bitmap for transparency effect on the window you don't see :-)

Her is the result of work last weekend.

Amiga projects and stuff.

As you all know, I released  Excalibur on New Year, whit many bug fixes and improvements, right now I'm not working on this project, I have moved on to some thing else.

For some time Antique and Me have wondered about making a download manager for OWB it did not happen, but we talked about how etc, too much SCII and Skype and too little work, nothing happened, but now I have started slowly to make that dream come true.

What I have done is downloaded the source code of wget and modified so easier integrated in too a GUI, when ever wget is executed from shell or by a script it will display the progress in the GUI.

There is a lot has to be done, but all in due time.