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1996-12-01
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Texture Garden's History
========================
The history of the Texture Garden in reverse chronological order
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note: * Readers are advised that this file provides information of quite a
technical nature in places.
* An up-to-date version of this document in HTML should be available
on the web at: http://www.varuna.demon.co.uk/tmc/tghist.htm .
v1.00 - 01-Dec-96.
• The 'fix' for the optimised two dimensional inverse FFT routines
implemented in v0.58 now no longer corrupt some textures (bugfix).
• The backdrop animation routines did not work on RISC OS 3.7.
This has now been cured (bugfix).
• Memory allocation problems (introduced in v0.58) fixed (bugfix).
• What happened to version numbers 0.60 to 0.99? The version numbering
is dictated in part by the fact that the files are timestamped with
the current version number...
v0.59 - 25-Nov-96.
• Pinboard animation can now be quit from the icon bar menu (bugfix).
• Escape key made more responsive during virtual sprite processing.
• Remote control can not be quit by closing the main window (bugfix).
• Remote control will never open the preferences window (bugfix).
v0.58 - 25-Nov-96.
• By popular request, and after a discussion of the matter in the
c.s.a.apps newsgroup, dragging an animation (in the form of a
directory of sprite files to the icon bar icon now animates these
sequentially on the pinboard (using *Backdrop). The animation may
reversed using the normal interface, and stopped from the icon bar
menu. The files are not cached, so for maximum speed, animations
should be played from withing a RAM based filing system. For those
who want to be able to play back multiple image sprite files on
their backdrop with full cacheing, it seems worth pointing out at
this juncture that this is not the job of an algorithmic texture
generation program, but should be performed by the program which
manages the backdrop. It is hoped thet the author will be able to
point interested parties to such a program in the near future.
• Texture Garden is less likley to exit with an ungraceful beep when
encountering errors when generating animations (bugfix).
• The two dimensional inverse FFT routines used have been optimised a
bit more, producing a significant speed increase. Further
improvements may well be possible if some mathematical elbow grease
can be applied.
• Texture Garden can now be started up with no icon bar icon. The
syntax for doing this is "Run !TexturGdn -Remote".
v0.57 - 21-Nov-96.
• Cured serious bug which stopped resized textures from animating
(bugfix).
• Cured problem which had crept in affecting the "Error command"
(bugfix).
• Added "Registered" function which returns 0 if the user only has the
Freeware version of Texture Garden.
• Low memory reports now no longer contain complete gibberish (bugfix).
• ZapTexture now offers support to files from PhotoDesk2.
v0.56 - 18-Nov-96.
• "DefineLightSource" command tweaked to reduce non-linearities near
the zenith, and and its theta parameter's sign has reversed (to
make the syntax sensible). These changes mean that this command is
not backwards compatable with the one in version 0.55 (bugfix).
• Messages file now reflects the changes since version 0.53 (bugfix).
v0.55 - 17-Nov-96.
• "DefineLightSource" and "ShineLightOnVirtualSprite" commands added
These are used to produce a range of bumpmapping effects by drawing
on techniques used in ray tracing. More details are provided in
"Docs.Language", "Docs.Technical" and "Docs.Features".
• Added options and preferences for changing the mutation of the
location and colours of the light sources.
• Templates significantly redesigned as a consequence of this, with
redesigned icons and new options added to the control window.
• "Specular", "Gourad", "Phong", "Specular" and "SpecularPhong"
commands added. These affect how individual lightsources interact
with the textures' surfaces.
• Added "ResizeBumpMap" command to allow the front end to resize the
new textures.
• Dragging a sprite file to the icon bar icon now tiles it on the
backdrop by using *Backdrop with the -T option. This will also
work with JPEGs. Although Acorn's Pinboard does not offer support
for this yet, other programs do.
• Fixed problems associated with saving files to desktop programs
which would not respond to WIMP messages (bugfix).
v0.54 - 14-Nov-96.
• "CreateColours(Model)" command added. This is intended to replace
the "CreateColoursUsingRGBData", "CreateColoursUsingHSVData" and
"CreateColoursUsingCIEData" commands. It takes as parameters
either "RGB" (0), "HSV" (1) or "CIE" (2). Parameters greater than
2 are reserved and should not be used. The use of the old commands
is still allowable, and they will remain available.
This fairly major has been made partly so that it will be easier to
implement an editor for palette files, and partly for the sake of
consistency with the new "SetColour" command.
• "SetColour" command added. This chooses a colour to be used when
painting directly to a virtual sprite, or when selecting the colour
of lightsources.
• ZapTexture updated. The RPC-specific SHIFT-cursor-left bug has
been fixed and the following commands are now supported by the
module: "CreateColours", "SetColour", "RGB", "HSV", "CIE",
"Specular", "Gourad", "Phong", "DefineLightSource", and the cheesey
"ShineLightOnVirtualSprite".
v0.53 - 10-Nov-96.
• Floyd-Steinberg dithering now used on the palette display. This
has the minor disadvantage of being slightly slower to generate.
• Palettes are now displayed with the lowest "height" on the left.
This is more logical than the reverse and it now corresponds to the
display produced by the raw palette files.
• Released onto the net 10-Nov-96.
v0.52 - 08-Nov-96.
• 1024x1024 icon added and template options text made clearer.
v0.51 - 07-Nov-96.
• Added option to save animations as either directories of sprites
or as multiple image sprite files. This offers support to programs
that produce animated GIFs from multiple sprite files now that
Fresco supports animated GIFs as web page background images.
• Added support for playback of multiple image sprite files. You
can now view any sprite file using the program. Documentation
for these features is contained in section 01 of the
"Docs.Technical" file.
• Resized "Aborted" sprite so that it now fits properly inside a 64
pixel wide icon (bugfix).
• Extended the percentage commands to support fractional percentages.
• Loading of textures speeded up by using OS_EvaluateExpression.
• Mating modified so the father sometimes contributes his palette.
• "Docs" directory moved out of the application directory.
• Floyd-Steinberg dithering improved to eliminate horizontal
lines in images. It still produces more artefacts than !ChangeFSI.
• Palette directory reorganised to use Floyd-Steinberg dithering
when the textures are displayed.
v0.50 - 27-Oct-96.
• Floyd-Steinberg dithering implemented. This currently works in
16, 256 and 32K colour modes. The biggest improvements may be seen
in 16 colour modes. No dithering is required in 16M colour modes.
2 and 4 colour mode dithering could easily be implemented, but would
cause code bloat that is currently felt to be unjustifiable.
See the "