A few updates on development progress:
First of all.. though I'm still making good progress on the feature list (with a few additions & exceptions), it has been at a slower rate than i'd hoped for recently, and hence I've decided to push the release date back a bit.. I'll keep updating the demo build and look at proper betas and etc soon, but just want to make sure we've got a proper stable, mature and worthy release version before publishing anything fully here.
Meanwhile, here's the highlights list of changes in recent updates:
Particle emitters can output to source channels (for extra flitering and mixing options)
Midi Mapping Editor
Import/Export options milk playlists
Default set of 'Starter Pack' milkdrop presets included
Loads of new filters, effects and controls
And full release notes for 0.20 -> 0.21.5:
V0.20
Import & export options for milk playlists
Particle Emitters can now be set to output to a source channel rather than just directly to the display
Demo version now has 3 channels available
New boot screen
Preferences option to modify the default particle type (Blurry or clean), adjusted a few default settings slightly (including default particle scale)
UX: Various minor improvements : Milk playlists autoplay by default, Video component alpha mod defaults to 1.0, Added a 'negative' flag to the mask filter, added Brightness/Contrast filter
Various UI tidyups
BUGFIXES for:
'dynamic' properties (e.g. ones that are part of a shader set within a source filter) not loading up correctly, (e.g. losing their envelope settings on load).
preferences checkboxes not being selectable
v0.21
Midi Mapping Editor ; (Select 'Elemental' menu bar -> Edit Midi). Includes import/export options, details on this post
Added better support for multiple midi devices. Active midi devices are shown on the preferences panel.
Added F9 - Debug texture view, which shows the various render-targets being created during the output pipeline (useful for debugging mask and filter outputs etc)
Improved the display of folder names in the preset browser
Various default filter additions/improvements:
Added 'Absolute' flag to rotation component (Rotation then is set directly by the component, rather than being additional to whatever the current rotation is). Same for the offset component
Added greyscale flag to the brightness contrast filter so we don't need to have a separate greyscale filter.
Added invert and 'Ignore source alpha' to the default ChromaKey filter (for various reasons)
Default pixellate filter treats a 0 pixel-size as the same as 1 (rather than just drawing nothing, which is strictly correct but pointless)
Added cutoff and threshold options to the default mask filter
Added tooltips to the milk playlist view to show the full paths of the presets in the playlist
Added a default set of 'Starter Pack' milkdrop presets to the steam builds. This is basically a lightly filtered version of the publicly available, Isoceles 'cream of the crop' collection ( https://www.patreon.com/posts/pack-nestdrop-91682111 ).. but with a focus on fewer subfolders and removing some of the cases which can be done through particles or filters in elemental. Sure most folk will have their own preset folder arrangements already, but this is really handy for beginners wanting to jump straight in and helps allow more interesting default compositions to be distributed that reference known .milk paths
UX: Collapse all components button on the element header bar
UX: file select dialog on video component shows correct current folder if there's a video already in place
UX: Make the
BrightnessContrastAdjustCol filter default when adding a new Source FilterImproved ui display of ELEUI_INT shader/filter props
Added (mappable) 'prev instance' button on channels. Fixed behaviours when using the next/prev instance buttons so that it loops back to the start of the list as needed
Added (dev) menu option for regenerating UIDs (hopefully won't be needed if nothings broken..)
Every time a new instance is activated, older instances that are still in their fadeout transition phase speed up the fade out transition (to help reduce the amount of lingering instances when moving rapidly between em)
(Full vers) Whole bunch of optimisations, fixes and improvements for the video player (so it can properly handle varying playback speeds without just throwing its toys out of the pram)
BUGFIXES for:
the milk preset browser missing one file from every folder
certain milkdrop presets leaving the renderer in an invalid state and hence subsequent SourceFilters not always working
deletion of milk component not cleaning up properly (possible crash)
using f11 to set display back to the preview window not saving that in settings
the initial shader parameters for the default source filter not being shown when the component is first added.
transition time weirdness when rapidly switching between instances in a channel
for crash if selecting 'next instance' on a channel with no instances
v0.21.5
Added support for different value mapping modes
Added 'open data folder' option to the main menu bar
UX: property values without a range will default to having a midi mapping range of -1 to 1
added extra info on the midi mapping editor window, (including the device the mapping is associated with), made the textbox editing work and tidied the UI
Added placeholder REST api structure and preferences option to activate the http server port (more to follow)
Added some new filters (bulge, mirror/radial mirror) and added a few extra parameters to others. Changed BrightnessContrast to AdjustCol, which does a lil more (UI needs sortin).
Added midi mapping editor options to map to the content instances, the bpm +/- buttons and the prev/next column buttons
Sorted all the channel view stuff out so we can have any number of instances in a channel (well, within limits), and the view deals with appropriately. Buttons to scroll through the channels and center the view on the specified active instance (etc)
Added Menu option to merge compositions (combine the currently loaded one with another previously saved one) and shuffle compositions (randomly mix up the position of instances within channels - cheap way of getting some new combinations and variety to a composition)
Added multiply blend mode
Added concepts of Editor mode and Performance mode, which can be selected from dropdown in the midbar. 'Performance mode' will turn off most of the editor display, leaving just the channel view and channel controls panel active. (Turning off some of the editor UI can save a few milliseconds on the frametime, and just makes it easier to keep your windows tidy).
(Full vers) Videos now display their current playback progress etc
BUGFIXES for:
non-selectable textboxes in midi mapping editor
Q and W keys causing the rename text input dialog to exit weirdly
the midi mapping selection not being reset when finishing edit
channels using subtractive modes making particle emitters outputting to a source channel not do anything
a newly added instance showing as selected in the channel view but not appearing in the effect stack
a bunch of leaky memory issues (and started looking at some of the more gnarly bits left to do with async initialisation and memory consumption)