Developer Notes

[cjmaddy]

All those changes are working fine in Win2K, - however, might the last button be better worded, 'Fullscreen or Windowed', - or even just, 'Fullscreen' ?

.... Ah! - I see you've used the same pop-up after a right-click on the fullscreen! - Make that..... 'Fullscreen or Windowed'

[Yodelking]

If I select 30 fish, and then press "All Random", it sets the number to 16 fish. In my opinion, this option shouldn't change the amount of fish.
Other new things seems to work fine.

I noticed the crystal have one vertical line and one horizontal line.
ma.jpg

The vertical "brown" line looks intentional, but the vertical thin line doesn't look right.

[rctneil]

Removed the Titlebar auto-removal feature.
Thats great!

Added a Program Settings button for the Titlebar.
Works fine here!

Added a right-click pop-up menu.
This is a fantastic addition. Love how it appears wherever the cursor is when the mouse button is pressed

Window can now be dragged by clicking anywhere within it.
Hmm, When the title bar is off, clicking the button on the taskbar for the aquarium to minimise it doesn't work but when the titlebar is on then this method works fine.

New icon experiment.
New icon looks awesome and is sooooo much better suited! - Couldn;t it be enlarged to match the massive Vista-esque icons which are something like 256x256pixels? but scale down. Currently your new icon when files are viewed in Extra Large mode your icon sits in the middle of a massic white square with the 2 fish and star at the centre looking lost!

Important note: The alternate Logo image has been renamed to AltLogo.png.
Still works fine!


When will the background animation and new fish models/behavior start to appear as I think those are what will make MA3 look much more feature complete and finished!

Thanks

Regards,
Neil

[Jim Sachs]

Yodelking - That's actually the interior of a real crystal. They are bound to have some sharp edges and planes in them.

Number of fish - The final version will probably not change the number when All Random is selected, but for now I want to encourage people to use less fish. With 16 instead of 30, there is a lot less strange behavior as they struggle to keep out of each other's way.


rctneil - Thanks for the comments. Re: the minimize box - good catch. In my euphoria over discovering how to make the whole window draggable, I overlooked the fact that I'd be losing the normal functions of the drag bar (like the minimize button). A simple solution is to only use the full-window-drag when the titlebar is absent.

Next additions - Many people consider getting the clock/crystal functioning at least as well as the one in MA2.6, so the first efforts will probably go there.

I haven't tried it on Vista yet, but I'll look into the bigger icons.

[Bob]

I've been running 7j for about a half hour. Everything seems great. You haven't left me anything to complaine about. ;-)

The title bar fixes are perfect. No more blink/jump problems. Moving the window around is also working perfectly for me.

I haven't tested the alternate logo since I don't use the crystal.

Jim, you said this had not been tested on Vista. Well, now it has.

It looks to me like you will be moving forward to creating the new fishes and moving background items soon.

Well done as always, Jim.

Thanks,
Bob

[jroseone]

Changing the logo using the L works on vista as well, but I have not tried adding my own logo on the 7j version as of yet.

[ESHIREY]

I don't know what happen but in this latest one I got the garbled background again on one monitor.

Also I was thinking what would look good for the first release would be to add the moving clams. What do you think? After all I think Jim said he had them working, or something like that.

Just my

[Jim Sachs]

If I had them working, I'd put them in. Most of the hard work is done, though. Should take less than a week, but I'm still chasing down bugs.

[rctneil]

Maybe having one part of the tank animated will be a sort of teaser for whats to come. So when people buy it they will see one animated clam and think thats good so they will hopefully click the check for updates button to keep checking for more features.

[Jim Sachs]

I'll probably have the fan corals waving slightly, and possibly the purple Gorgonia.

[rps]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

Just uploaded Beta 7j. http://www.fish-byte.com/MA3Beta.zip
Added a right-click pop-up menu.  

It looks great! My only comment is that I had envisioned something different for the pop-up menu. I dummied up an example and took a screenshot. (See attached.) This would be more "Windows Standard". [Just an observation - what you have now works fine, and I personally don't care if your interface is windows standard or not - just pointing this out in case you care.]

[Jim Sachs]

I'll probably leave it the way it is. By the way, I just added a "Settings" option to the mini-menu.

[Stew2000]

Would it be possible to make a "skinable" menu?
Obviously it would be a bit trickier to do then the .png of the logo.

[Jim Sachs]

Eventually when I get the new website done, I'll redo the program menus to match. It's a teak wood look.

[rps]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

I'll probably leave it the way it is.  

Fair enough.

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

By the way, I just added a "Settings" option to the mini-menu.  

Nice touch!

~Ralph S.

[Jim Sachs]

Yeah, I'm finding that I use the right-click Settings exclusively. That way, I never have to actually touch the keyboard

[Stew2000]

And if you're in a presentation with a remote mouse and the keyboard is about 10 foot away it's very useful.

[Jim Sachs]

It started with Cliff asking for a way of closing the program with a right-mouse click because he didn't have a keyboard handy when using his big screen. Now I just need to decide where to draw the line on right-click features.

[Stew2000]

How many more features could you possibly need for a virtual aquarium?

[Jim Sachs]

Apparently there's no limit, as evidenced by the 85 pages and 1700 messages in the Marine Aquarium Wishlist section.