That all sounds great Jim.

How about System Require to run MA3 smooth?

Most any recent system should run it fine. Older systems, or ones with graphic chips instead of video cards are probably going to have troubles.

The requirements for MA3 are going to be higher than for 2.6, and as things progress and the background adds movement and fish/creatures become more complex it will go higher.

It does run well, and Jim is working to have it run on as many systems as possible, but you just can't have this many polygons without upping the requirements some.

Sounds fantastic Jim, any news on how far we are away from a beta?

It all depends on when the Alpha testers run out of bugs to report.

lol... and interestingly enough... just around the corner from the proverbial 'October' time-frame. :-D Very excited!!!

The closer we get to Oct 2008 it seems that we may actually be looking at Oct 2009 instead.

patiently wating...
 

ah now... its not all that bad... believe me... we've waited for some time now. but like all good things, it is worth the wait. Jim & crew have been working overtime to get this bad-boy up & running so I'm sure it's just a short matter of time now. I'd rather have the aquarium Jim's envisioned all along rather than a little stop-gap full of bugs & hang-ups.

:-D

Well, technically it is a stop-gap measure in the sense that it won't be "finished" upon initial release. More features and refinements will come very soon. Downloads will be available each time a different background object is brought to life. The music playlist is very rudimentary, and several features will be added. The new fish models and behavior are right around the corner.

The things that the Alpha testers are concentrating on are crashing bugs, or vital components that are either missing or not working yet. The list grows shorter by the hour.

[quote=Jim Sachs;104833]Well, technically it is a stop-gap measure in the sense that it won't be "finished" upon initial release. More features and refinements will come very soon. Downloads will be available each time a different background object is brought to life. The music playlist is very rudimentary, and several features will be added. The new fish models and behavior are right around the corner.
QUOTE]

Speaking of all the things to be added after the initial release, will there be an auto-update feature, or will we get an e-mail each time something is added?

Ya know.... Dream Aquarium has a beta for those of us who have the license... he's ALWAYS making adjustments. Why can't Marine Aquarium do this? It can't be THAT bad as it is right now... and as far as I'm concerned, it's fun to see the progress...

Besides, if you offered it to us on the forum, you would get the sales of the program up and going! I'd LOVE to spend my money on this thing now... just reading this freek'n forum about it's release is KILLING me...LOL.

Come on, you can wait another 10 years, can't you?

Jim,

Would it be possible to at least build excitement, especially for those not privy to forum life at Feldon, by having some sort of screenshot bonanza, some visually tangible bits to tingle our eyeballs?

Hmmmm....eyeballs....tingling....

There are a few screens back within the thread if you want to look for them.

I don't think it will be that much longer before forum release. I think Jim is chomping at the bit to release it just as much as fans are to see it. :)

Right now multi-monitor support is being worked on, along with a few other things. Once a few more bugs get ironed out I would guess Jim is going to go with it.

It's close. :)

I know there is the temptation to see screen snapshots but I think they would really diminish the impact of MA3 since screen snapshots don't exhibit how the coral really is a 3D object. This is evident only when the camera is moving.

I understand not opening the alpha version of the program to the forum members. But I think it would be interesting for the members to be able to read the alpha forum to see the bugs and also see the process of moving the alpha into the beta stage.

Some of the time getting bugs tracked and reproduced needs to include screen shots of what happens or what the error produced. That's one of the reasons it's hidden.

Jim has enough problems after the fact with people stealing his work and putting it on toilet seats or some other stupid thing. Having it happen before the actual release would be totally out of the question. Once it's in Beta and released here then you'll be able to see the process as he refines or adds movement to other sections.

WOOT!!

One of the bugs we are working on:

DirectShow is required to play MP3 files.
MIDI files (and most other music files) can either be played by DirectMusic or DirectShow.
Wave files (like the bubble sound) can either be played by DirectSound or DirectMusic.

Problem: We were using DirectShow to play all music. This works fine for Win2000 and XP, but on Vista we have no control over the volume of a MIDI file.

Now we have to decide whether to give up on Vista or rewrite the code to use DirectMusic when it comes to a MIDI file. We've had other volume problems in the past when trying to play both the bubble sound and music with separate volume settings in DirectMusic.

Microsoft is no help in this matter, since they have virtually abandoned all three systems.

The bubbles can be saved in MP3 format instead of WAV format. And don't you have an API to convert the user's MIDIs to an MP3 format? Then all you have is one file format to deal with.