Muff's Modules & More

dougcl · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 1:43 pm Post subject:

Okay rack HP = 7 (seven possible positions) and the smallest module is 1 HP. Should be an easy fix.

I added a vertical line to the right hand side of your background image:

parasitk · Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 11:32 am Post subject:

Can we move this thread out of the Euro section now that the Rack Planner is useful for any format? w00t

dougcl · Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 12:12 pm Post subject:

Done.

BugBrand · Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 11:00 am Post subject:

Hey,

I'm just starting to look at your Rack Planner - great work!

I'll continue to try out making rack / modules -> did a quick try out frac-rack and found it pretty straight forward, so good stuff there. Will try out modules shortly too..

Two quick questions:
- zoom - is that only preset in the rack.xml definition? or is there a keyboard shortcut
- export - are you just using a screengrab to export images at the moment?

Would be great to get my new Bug-modules up and in action so.. more soon!

Thanks for doing this.

dougcl · Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 12:13 pm Post subject:

Hi Bugbrand, yep, just make screen shots, and yes, the only way to scale is in the rack.xml file.

I'm working on an applet version that can be imbedded in a web page. This would probably be really useful for manufacturers like yourself. You could host a little planner just for bugbrand on your site or blog. I'm running into trouble though with the file I/O since applets have to do everything via URLs. I should be able to get it working though. All the modules you are building for Rack Planner will of course be fully compatible with the applet version.

Not sure if I can improve the image quality on scaling, but that is also something that I'm looking at. Build your rack and module images at the scale they are most likely to be used so the effect of scaling is minimized.

Thanks for trying it out!

BugBrand · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 1:40 pm Post subject:

Hiya

First off - thanks to Bananaplug for making up a set of BugModules!

I've continued using the app and would like to give some feedback if that's ok - friendly, of course! I don't at all know the ins and outs of how you've made this, so there may well be things I say that simply aren't possible or realistic.

Scaling - if you could do that within the Planner that'd be really great! A menu setting would be good, a right-click and/or keyboard shortcut would be *fantastic*!

I know you've mentioned the image quality of scaling - things seem alright scaling up, but going down at all quickly renders the images pretty messy. I went for reasonably large images (sent to Bananaplug) so you don't normally see the full rack width on the screen, so you have to scale and, therefore, the end result at screen-grab is less good.

Export - if a jpeg of filled racks could be exported, that'd be really good too.

Save -- is it possible to have a save as function? I guess otherwise you can just copy the rack.xml and rename.

Maybe things could be written so you'd load up a rack - either at startup or with an open function - this'd then load a particular rack_xxx.xml file which would allow quick changing between, say, Euro / Frac / etc ... or Frac_user1 / Frac_user2 / etc.

Adding modules -- a right button click menu could be good here perhaps?
Also, I wondered whether things could be written so any added module automatically got put into the next free space?

Oh, a strange thing -> the horizontal scroll-bar seems to like disappearing off the bottom of my screen (or under the taskbar)

**
An online version would be really fantastic too!
I hope those comments don't come across as negative at all - I'm really impressed by the great little app you've come up with.

dougcl · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 2:28 pm Post subject:

Hi BugBrand, first of all no problem. My aim was to be able to use this at least for myself, and I've accomplished that. Anything beyond that is really icing on the cake, so all suggestions are welcome.

There is a design philosophy here that kept things extremely simple so that it had a high chance of getting done smile

Regarding image quality, I spent an evening this week trying a bunch of different approaches (although I'm not an expert), and after all of that it turned out that the current approach offered much higher quality but over a smaller range than others. So contrary to my earlier advice, it is perhaps best to build your rack image and modules at the scale most likely to be used. I think from there doubling and halving via scaling offers acceptable results (try it I could be wrong). Note that if your rack image is at a small scale, all modules will be scaled into it, so make your rack image the same vertical size in pixels as your modules for best results.

Live scaling is possible, but it conflicts with another feature. The program loads a module once, scales it, and caches it. All instances of that module on the screen derive from the same scaled image stored in memory. In order to scale, all the modules would have to be re-retrieved from disk and scaled. This might be acceptable, but it will lead to a delay. Either that or I could scrap the caching setup, but I kind of like it.

JPEG export is done as of version 1.0.5.

Loading up various racks: My recommendation is to use shortcuts to run the program with different rack.xml files on the command line. I think this can be improved, and at least a Save As option should be possible.

I could probably add a right click to add modules without much difficulty. Make sure you get the latest version of the code because I added hotkeys to the menu, and the Add Dialog now retains its last size (BananaPlug's feedback).

New modules are always placed in the upper left corner of the visible portion of the rack. You should always see them when added (you don't have to scroll back to the origin).

The scroll bars disappear when your window size exceeds the size of the rack as specified in the rack.xml rows and cols.

Still looking at an online implementation. I've actually got it converted already, but file I/O is an issue. Still thinking about that.

Thanks!

BugBrand · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 7:29 am Post subject:

Great developments - I just tried the export function and that works really well (oh, on windows I have to write 'export.jpg' otherwise the file made has no extension).

Good addition of the Alt-A for adding modules quickly!
- would Copy/Paste be possible?

BananaPlug · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 1:56 pm Post subject:

My online Module Library now has a Module Maker tool which will build a module zip file from your uploaded image.

dougcl · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 4:44 pm Post subject:

dougcl · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 9:34 pm Post subject:

sgnhh · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 7:03 pm Post subject:

How do I zoom?

dougcl · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 7:41 pm Post subject:

Use "Save" to save your configuration. Close the program. Use notepad (or another editor) to edit rack.xml. Increase the scale (try 2.0 instead of 1.0). Run the program again.

sgnhh · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 7:58 pm Post subject:

Unbelievable. Now I finally have a way to save my patches. Gracious.

btw, I uploaded all the Harvestman modules, the AFG and Vulcan, a couple more Plan B and a couple more Doepfer with BananaPlugs module maker.

BananaPlug · Last edited by BananaPlug on Wed Feb 25, 2009 8:26 am; edited 1 time in total

Latest update to my RackPlanner library. Save yourselves some work.

UPDATE — Feb 24 2009:

Added several euro modules donated by users of the Module Maker. Thanks!
Added a full set of Modcan B modules. The images all needed to have background cropped away.
Removed a small number of modules which had crooked images. Sorry, just trying to keep the quality up.
Fixed Internet Explorer bug (IE6, Argggh).

Edit: fixed a link

dougcl · Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 11:30 pm Post subject:

Awesome. Thanks for doing this.

Looks like your Rack Planner Library link is broken though. Should be:

http://www.squiggletronics.com/files/RackPlannerModules/index.php

Is the rack image for modcan B the same as for modcan A?

BananaPlug · Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 8:38 am Post subject:

rezzn8r · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 12:26 pm Post subject:

this rack planner app rawks SlayerBadger!

thanks guys!

dkcg · Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:44 am Post subject:

Very nice work! Oh man, this would be a GREAT iphone app!

Veqtor · Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 3:42 am Post subject:

I'm trying to change the HP in a module made with modulemaker, but having changed from 16 hp to 18 hp the module shows up as blank... is it because the aspect ratio is off?