Start Predefined Aquarium? - Page 3

Swede · 05-12-2002, 05:03 AM

Yes, I too got it to work now when I moved it to a folder without space in the name.

Thanks!

Mountainmaster,

You mean you have the 64-bit version? But I thought that only runs on an Itanium processor!

hehe, I didn't check my info first. Sorry!

That path:

%systemroot%\Syswow64

in the helpfile didn't even work!

And now one more wish:
In html (or is it a Javascript?) you can create an imagemap for a picture, so you can click directly on it on different positions and get different results. Maybe a clickable starfish position image could be created also with whatever language you program in?!
(Just an idea, for future versions.)

James · 05-12-2002, 05:30 AM

Swede
Bad news for u, with ur wish it is nearly impossible to be accomplished. I'll explain why to u

First, in order to create a image pixel map, the designer has to know all the possible position values of starfish and then scale down into the small pop-up window. But without knowing the core of the SSA program(Jim sure do), we never figure out how the SSA program calculate the starfish position values, we don't even know the boundary of the starfish's moving area, that's why I spent two hours waiting starfish to went across the tank and choose the 9 position to recorde the values. of coz I can record more values, but I have to close and restart the SSA every time I recorde the value from registry(becoz the starfish's position only saved in the registry when SSA exit or refreshed by double hitting the space bar), furthermore, it is unrealistic to record the value each time when starfish move a pixel, then I have to repeat the previous process thousands of times!!!

Even I have all the values avaliable and collected as pixel map, it is very hard to scale the coordination of the clicking point from a small pop-up window to match the full screen size.

So now u know the difficaluties of implementing this kind of mechanism, hope u won't feel so bad!

Mountainmaster
Nice new avatar and waiting for u to add the path converting into ur later version!

Swede · 05-12-2002, 05:45 AM

Thanks for your reply James.

Ok, maybe I asked for too much here, but maybe it can be limited to 10 areas, like the position of the letters today a-j. Each position could have a symbol or a letter, so it's easy to understand what to do with the picture. Then just run your pointer over the symbols, and they change color so you know which one is active...

No calcualtions or anything! Just use the values available, and maybe add a few more.

Mountainmaster · 05-12-2002, 06:31 AM

Problem solved!

New version is up at http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/picker.zip

James,
The dosname converter actually was the only tool I didn't make just for fun. I use it for my work, part of which includes installing network applications in hospitals (our customers). Our software needs to know paths on mapped network drives in short names.

Swede,
I suppose you are right. Since you can click images in the main screen you would expect the same in the popup window. I'll look into that.

memilm,
I was not succesful with the system tray icon. The code I used before somehow did not work.

Mountainmaster · 05-12-2002, 09:32 AM

Swede,
I added the imagemap. It was surprisingly easy. New version is up at the download link above.

...Later...
Added some graphical effects to the imagemap. A starfish icon now sticks to the position that was last clicked. Also moved up to a final version. So unless anyone still finds serious bugs I consider this project finished for now.

James · 05-12-2002, 05:52 PM

James, which is why pathnames on Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP should always have quote (") marks around them.

Morgan

Thanks for ur remind, but I don't qute get what u mean, what's the quote (") marks for? is it used to indicating the absolute path or does it act like a flag which tells the OS to parse it into short name when ever OS is accessing the path?

Mountainmaster
Very nice, but I found a little problem, it is not a bug but just a level of design that developer didn't considered.
When saving the setting, u only saved 7 fish choice in the registry but u didn't save the choice of the position of the starfish, I suggest u can save the choice of starfish position as letters in ur own registry place (Tank1 is an example of saved name)

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SerenePicker\Tank1]
"StarFishPosReg"="e.reg"

so now u got it saved and when applying it to the SSA, u eventually apply the value in e.reg to the StarFishPos in SSA, futhermore, when the user selected a saved setting, then wish to change the starfish postion, once starfish position selection window pops up, I wish I can see the starfish icon stick on the position which is according to the previours seting, so this gives the user better idea on what's starfish's postion in this particular setting.

Call me a perfection, I would to fine tune the interface for better looking, if u like, take my suggestion or just level it
I like the pop up window for starfish postion with no fish around, that'll be more realistic looking, and the starfish icon is actually a smaller size of the apperance of the starfish, not just a hand drew icon. In addition, if some one doesn't like the starfish, ur program can just make the starfish disappers by setting its position to
ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff dc 0c fd bf
and make another button or radio box and label as "No Starfish" or "Starfish Off" which does this, so u also need one more registry file

here's my attachment for u if u want to take my suggestion:
the starfish at the bottom is for u the to shrink it down as a icon
I make the starfish in the white area below for u to easy to select in ur image processing application (just use the magic wand to select the white area and invert the selection.)

Mountainmaster · 05-12-2002, 07:23 PM

James,
It is by choice that I don't save the starfish position in the custom settings. What if the starfish has crawled to a position the user prefers to the presets? Then he won't be able to change to another custom setting without losing that. Sure, I could make an option "leave starfish alone" but I believe yet another option would make things overly complicated for not so advanced users.I agree that the graphics need some improvement. I'll see what I can do with your image. They also need to be somewhat larger to avoid the current pixel hunting, but that requires recalculating the entire imagemap

As for making the the starfish disappear, I have decided not to do anything that would not normally occur in the aquarium. I do not want to risk jim's disapproval, who - by the way - has been remarkably silent in this thread.

feldon34 · 05-12-2002, 09:35 PM

Thanks for ur remind, but I don't qute get what u mean, what's the quote (") marks for? is it used to indicating the absolute path or does it act like a flag which tells the OS to parse it into short name when ever OS is accessing the path?

It's neither.

It is the proper way of specifying pathnames in a world where spaces are a possible character within the pathname. You should ALWAYS specify pathnames in quotes in any programming you do.

feldon34 · 05-12-2002, 09:37 PM

As for making the the starfish disappear, I have decided not to do anything that would not normally occur in the aquarium. I do not want to risk jim's disapproval, who - by the way - has been remarkably silent in this thread.

Hmm, that's one of the first things I thought of to add. Then again, I'm a rebel, much to Jim's shagrin.

James · 05-13-2002, 04:09 AM

You should ALWAYS specify pathnames in quotes in any programming you do.

Yes Indeed, but I reckon it is because the path name are treated as string data type in programming lang...not becoz it is a path name so that it uses quote.....
well...correct me if I was wrong

Mountainmaster
Arr.so it is intentional, no wonder ur application doesn't support this feature, well, for ur explaination, I think u still can avoid the addition of interface complicacy by not adding the "leave starfish alone" option but still accomplish the need by implementing the logicalness of the programe's intelligence. If the user didn't set the starfish position when he/she was creating a new set, then ur programe can just omit the additional starfish information in that custom seting, nevertheless, if the user did select a position for starfish while creating the new set, ur programe will then add this information in to the setting as usual as u do for saving the fish information.
Afterall, the goal of ur programe is to predefine the SSA, by the defination of "predefined" means everything is defined as the user prefers, so if the user did select a position for starfish then this information should also being saved, this is more logical in sense I reckon.

What do u reckon then?

---EDIT---
the message I'm trying to convey here is that for this kind of situation, it is a conditional situation, and if the condition(emplying "leave starfish alone" here) can be observed by user's interaction(if the user doesn't select starfish's position, that means "leave starfish alone"), then the decision(emplying save or not to save the starfish postion value) from this condition can be done by the programe itself since it can determined from user's interaction, therefore, there's no need to explicitly to ask the user about the condition first and then take the decision.

Hope u understand my saying. I think I still need to improve my English when it comes to explaing stuff.

Mountainmaster · 05-13-2002, 11:57 AM

New version is up with improved and larger imagemap.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/picker.zip

Morgan,
James is right. The problem is that I could not figure out how to put quotes around the string that is passed as command-line argument. When defining the string I already use quotes so I would have to place quotes between quotes, but then VB gets confused.
---edited---
Found it, quote in VB is Chr$(34).

James,
I like the way you can set the fishes and starfish independently now. Especially because I made the starfish position selector look so good and I want the user to go there instead of recalling it from a save.
I know the original goal was to predefine the aquarium but I already deviated from that by not implementing light and sound etc.

Swede · 05-13-2002, 02:12 PM

Nice surprice when you click the starfish to its position, Mountainmaster!

I like it. The starfish maybe looks a bit bigger than in the real aquarium but thats ok!

So, how do you create programs like this? I saw you mentioned VB in your post. Visual Basic? Is it like modern html programming, or more like old time Basic programming? Line, by line programming with a lot of subroutines... Seems like a very usefull and fun thing to master, anyhow.

feldon34 · 05-13-2002, 02:46 PM

Neither HTML nor Basic.

It's a scripted real programming language, not web pages.

And you can do BASIC programming without line numbers you know.

And even the latest C++ still has subroutines.

Swede · 05-14-2002, 03:06 AM

It's a scripted real programming language, not web pages.

Well, html can either be programmed directly in code or by using a WYSIWYG type editing. I was curious if there is a similar way of using VB. A combination of readily made functions that you just paste in and move around, and then go to the code to adjust it...

- Do you mean it's only a scripted language this VB?

And you can do BASIC programming without line numbers you know.

Hehe. In the 70s, when I programmed my Vic20, and later my C64, I had to use linenumbers...

The question I have is: What programming language do you guys recomend then, if I want to learn a quick, useful and easy language?

BTW, is it C++ Jim uses for the Aquarium?

feldon34 · 05-14-2002, 08:44 AM

I was curious if there is a similar way of using VB. A combination of readily made functions that you just paste in and move around, and then go to the code to adjust it...

In a way, yes, that's what Visual Basic is. The visual part rather.

You drag pieces around and do very little actual writing of code. It produces incredibly inefficient code, but it is a piece of cake to write programs for it especially with complex interfaces.

The question I have is: What programming language do you guys recomend then, if I want to learn a quick, useful and easy language?

I don't know if it's a ringing endorsement, but Prolific is really getting behind a language called Rebol. Now, you have to write it all yourself (no automatic code writing), but it seems very accessible.

BTW, is it C++ Jim uses for the Aquarium?

Yes. I'm not sure if he uses all (any?) of the OOP aspects of C++.

Jim Sachs · 05-14-2002, 09:08 AM

Yes, the Aquarium is written in C++, and Morgan's right -- I use almost no object-oriented features.

James · 05-14-2002, 05:48 PM

Mountainmaster

Especially because I made the starfish position selector look so good and I want the user to go there instead of recalling it from a save.

Haha, nice reason but don't let this reason to ruin the level of ur programe, the friendly user interface become degraded.....
Well, it can be say that if the user select the starfish pos b4 and then save the setting, that means the user did actually go into ur starfish pos selection interface b4 and exprienced the nice imagemap, so if u make the user to go back to the starfish pos selector everytime when the user recalls a particular setting, that'll become a bit annoying, in fact, I made a few sampling by asking 12 ppl in my software enginerring classmates to use ur programe and 9 out of 12 asking me why did I have to select the starfish pos again everytime when I recall my setting, trust me, I didn't tell them anything about how the save setting function works.
Maybe it just we software engineering ppl like the better user friendly interface, after all our goal is to make a perfect software in the world providing better life to ppl. maybe we were been brain washed by doing so many programming and the way of thinking we face a thing is quite different then usual ppl...

I start explaining ur reason to them why u didn't plan to add that feature, and tell them maybe it requires a large amount of work on coding so that u don't wanna adding more functions and then they start telling me how can it be done in a persudal code way.
I can tell u how if u wish to add this feature in the future.

and btw, the starfish is a bit big as Swede said but it's alright.

Finally, I think making starfish to disappear is a many-request features in this forum, in fact, Jim did planing to make the feature to turn on/off of any invertebrate critter in the SSA in the later version, so why don't u alter it do make more pll feels better?
just simplely add another button labeled as "Turn starfish off"
and apply the regitry value when it's pressed.
anyway, it just another suggestion for u.

A very nice job done man!

Mountainmaster · 05-16-2002, 08:37 AM

James,

Allright, you convinced me. I think I found a good way to save the starfish position in the custom settings and also integrate it all logically in the interface.
And since there seems to be such a demand for making the starfish disappear I will add that feature too like you suggested, though I suppose in time it will crawl back into the screen area that way.
However, I am not sure if I can find time to work on this as much as I did last week. But who knows...

James · 05-16-2002, 12:27 PM

Mountainmaster
don't stress urself too much man, I just suggest u a way to improve ur programe, if u decide to take my way that's great but u can do it in any time u like, there's not deadline or something, by the way, your programe is good enough for most of the ppl despite of those engineering ppl I lived with....

if u need any help just ask.

Mountainmaster · 05-17-2002, 11:07 AM

Ok, here it is. You can now save the starfish position if you have set one or hide the starfish!

http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/picker.zip

James,
Yes I know, no deadline, but programming is just so addictive. How nerdy can you get eh?

I didn't use your hex code exactly but ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff. Then I tested by leaving the aquarium running for a full day, but the starfish hasn't crawled back in the screen area yet. I seems to be gone for good, but I wonder to which demonic dimension it orbs this way...

05-12-2002, 05:03 AM	#41
Swede Registered Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Karlskrona, Sweden Posts: 172	Yes, I too got it to work now when I moved it to a folder without space in the name. Thanks! Mountainmaster, You mean you have the 64-bit version? But I thought that only runs on an Itanium processor! hehe, I didn't check my info first. Sorry! That path: %systemroot%\Syswow64 in the helpfile didn't even work! And now one more wish: In html (or is it a Javascript?) you can create an imagemap for a picture, so you can click directly on it on different positions and get different results. Maybe a clickable starfish position image could be created also with whatever language you program in?! (Just an idea, for future versions.) 4x / F C Am G F C Am G // Chorus: 3x /F C Am G F C Am G// Last edited by Swede; 05-12-2002 at 05:06 AM.

05-12-2002, 05:30 AM	#42
James Principal Engineer as SDET Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Was in Auckland, New Zealand, Now in Taipei, Taiwan Posts: 1,406	Swede Bad news for u, with ur wish it is nearly impossible to be accomplished. I'll explain why to u First, in order to create a image pixel map, the designer has to know all the possible position values of starfish and then scale down into the small pop-up window. But without knowing the core of the SSA program(Jim sure do), we never figure out how the SSA program calculate the starfish position values, we don't even know the boundary of the starfish's moving area, that's why I spent two hours waiting starfish to went across the tank and choose the 9 position to recorde the values. of coz I can record more values, but I have to close and restart the SSA every time I recorde the value from registry(becoz the starfish's position only saved in the registry when SSA exit or refreshed by double hitting the space bar), furthermore, it is unrealistic to record the value each time when starfish move a pixel, then I have to repeat the previous process thousands of times!!! Even I have all the values avaliable and collected as pixel map, it is very hard to scale the coordination of the clicking point from a small pop-up window to match the full screen size. So now u know the difficaluties of implementing this kind of mechanism, hope u won't feel so bad! Mountainmaster Nice new avatar and waiting for u to add the path converting into ur later version! James C Chen Principal Engineer as SDET, Connected Services HTC Corporation 88 Section 3. Zhongxing Road Xindian District, New Taipei City 231, Taiwan www.htc.com

05-12-2002, 05:45 AM	#43
Swede Registered Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Karlskrona, Sweden Posts: 172	Thanks for your reply James. Ok, maybe I asked for too much here, but maybe it can be limited to 10 areas, like the position of the letters today a-j. Each position could have a symbol or a letter, so it's easy to understand what to do with the picture. Then just run your pointer over the symbols, and they change color so you know which one is active... No calcualtions or anything! Just use the values available, and maybe add a few more. 4x / F C Am G F C Am G // Chorus: 3x /F C Am G F C Am G//

05-12-2002, 09:32 AM	#45
Mountainmaster Liopleurodon Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: 3rd planet Posts: 314	Swede, I added the imagemap. It was surprisingly easy. New version is up at the download link above. ...Later... Added some graphical effects to the imagemap. A starfish icon now sticks to the position that was last clicked. Also moved up to a final version. So unless anyone still finds serious bugs I consider this project finished for now. Last edited by Mountainmaster; 05-12-2002 at 03:25 PM.

05-12-2002, 09:35 PM	#48
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,938	Thanks for ur remind, but I don't qute get what u mean, what's the quote (") marks for? is it used to indicating the absolute path or does it act like a flag which tells the OS to parse it into short name when ever OS is accessing the path? It's neither. It is the proper way of specifying pathnames in a world where spaces are a possible character within the pathname. You should ALWAYS specify pathnames in quotes in any programming you do. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

05-12-2002, 06:31 AM	#44
Mountainmaster Liopleurodon Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: 3rd planet Posts: 314	Problem solved! New version is up at http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/picker.zip James, The dosname converter actually was the only tool I didn't make just for fun. I use it for my work, part of which includes installing network applications in hospitals (our customers). Our software needs to know paths on mapped network drives in short names. Swede, I suppose you are right. Since you can click images in the main screen you would expect the same in the popup window. I'll look into that. memilm, I was not succesful with the system tray icon. The code I used before somehow did not work.

05-12-2002, 07:23 PM	#47
Mountainmaster Liopleurodon Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: 3rd planet Posts: 314	James, It is by choice that I don't save the starfish position in the custom settings. What if the starfish has crawled to a position the user prefers to the presets? Then he won't be able to change to another custom setting without losing that. Sure, I could make an option "leave starfish alone" but I believe yet another option would make things overly complicated for not so advanced users.I agree that the graphics need some improvement. I'll see what I can do with your image. They also need to be somewhat larger to avoid the current pixel hunting, but that requires recalculating the entire imagemap As for making the the starfish disappear, I have decided not to do anything that would not normally occur in the aquarium. I do not want to risk jim's disapproval, who - by the way - has been remarkably silent in this thread.

05-12-2002, 09:37 PM	#49
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,938	As for making the the starfish disappear, I have decided not to do anything that would not normally occur in the aquarium. I do not want to risk jim's disapproval, who - by the way - has been remarkably silent in this thread. Hmm, that's one of the first things I thought of to add. Then again, I'm a rebel, much to Jim's shagrin. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

05-13-2002, 04:09 AM	#50
James Principal Engineer as SDET Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Was in Auckland, New Zealand, Now in Taipei, Taiwan Posts: 1,406	You should ALWAYS specify pathnames in quotes in any programming you do. Yes Indeed, but I reckon it is because the path name are treated as string data type in programming lang...not becoz it is a path name so that it uses quote..... well...correct me if I was wrong Mountainmaster Arr.so it is intentional, no wonder ur application doesn't support this feature, well, for ur explaination, I think u still can avoid the addition of interface complicacy by not adding the "leave starfish alone" option but still accomplish the need by implementing the logicalness of the programe's intelligence. If the user didn't set the starfish position when he/she was creating a new set, then ur programe can just omit the additional starfish information in that custom seting, nevertheless, if the user did select a position for starfish while creating the new set, ur programe will then add this information in to the setting as usual as u do for saving the fish information. Afterall, the goal of ur programe is to predefine the SSA, by the defination of "predefined" means everything is defined as the user prefers, so if the user did select a position for starfish then this information should also being saved, this is more logical in sense I reckon. What do u reckon then? ---EDIT--- the message I'm trying to convey here is that for this kind of situation, it is a conditional situation, and if the condition(emplying "leave starfish alone" here) can be observed by user's interaction(if the user doesn't select starfish's position, that means "leave starfish alone"), then the decision(emplying save or not to save the starfish postion value) from this condition can be done by the programe itself since it can determined from user's interaction, therefore, there's no need to explicitly to ask the user about the condition first and then take the decision. Hope u understand my saying. I think I still need to improve my English when it comes to explaing stuff. James C Chen Principal Engineer as SDET, Connected Services HTC Corporation 88 Section 3. Zhongxing Road Xindian District, New Taipei City 231, Taiwan www.htc.com Last edited by James; 05-13-2002 at 05:48 AM.

05-13-2002, 11:57 AM	#51
Mountainmaster Liopleurodon Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: 3rd planet Posts: 314	New version is up with improved and larger imagemap. http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/picker.zip Morgan, James is right. The problem is that I could not figure out how to put quotes around the string that is passed as command-line argument. When defining the string I already use quotes so I would have to place quotes between quotes, but then VB gets confused. ---edited--- Found it, quote in VB is Chr$(34). James, I like the way you can set the fishes and starfish independently now. Especially because I made the starfish position selector look so good and I want the user to go there instead of recalling it from a save. I know the original goal was to predefine the aquarium but I already deviated from that by not implementing light and sound etc. Last edited by Mountainmaster; 05-13-2002 at 06:01 PM.

05-13-2002, 02:12 PM	#52
Swede Registered Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Karlskrona, Sweden Posts: 172	Nice surprice when you click the starfish to its position, Mountainmaster! I like it. The starfish maybe looks a bit bigger than in the real aquarium but thats ok! So, how do you create programs like this? I saw you mentioned VB in your post. Visual Basic? Is it like modern html programming, or more like old time Basic programming? Line, by line programming with a lot of subroutines... Seems like a very usefull and fun thing to master, anyhow. 4x / F C Am G F C Am G // Chorus: 3x /F C Am G F C Am G//

05-13-2002, 02:46 PM	#53
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,938	Neither HTML nor Basic. It's a scripted real programming language, not web pages. And you can do BASIC programming without line numbers you know. And even the latest C++ still has subroutines. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

05-14-2002, 03:06 AM	#54
Swede Registered Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Karlskrona, Sweden Posts: 172	It's a scripted real programming language, not web pages. Well, html can either be programmed directly in code or by using a WYSIWYG type editing. I was curious if there is a similar way of using VB. A combination of readily made functions that you just paste in and move around, and then go to the code to adjust it... - Do you mean it's only a scripted language this VB? And you can do BASIC programming without line numbers you know. Hehe. In the 70s, when I programmed my Vic20, and later my C64, I had to use linenumbers... The question I have is: What programming language do you guys recomend then, if I want to learn a quick, useful and easy language? BTW, is it C++ Jim uses for the Aquarium? 4x / F C Am G F C Am G // Chorus: 3x /F C Am G F C Am G//

05-14-2002, 08:44 AM	#55
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,938	I was curious if there is a similar way of using VB. A combination of readily made functions that you just paste in and move around, and then go to the code to adjust it... In a way, yes, that's what Visual Basic is. The visual part rather. You drag pieces around and do very little actual writing of code. It produces incredibly inefficient code, but it is a piece of cake to write programs for it especially with complex interfaces. The question I have is: What programming language do you guys recomend then, if I want to learn a quick, useful and easy language? I don't know if it's a ringing endorsement, but Prolific is really getting behind a language called Rebol. Now, you have to write it all yourself (no automatic code writing), but it seems very accessible. BTW, is it C++ Jim uses for the Aquarium? Yes. I'm not sure if he uses all (any?) of the OOP aspects of C++. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

05-14-2002, 09:08 AM	#56
Jim Sachs Developer Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Southern Oregon Posts: 9,771	Yes, the Aquarium is written in C++, and Morgan's right -- I use almost no object-oriented features. Jim Sachs Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium

05-14-2002, 05:48 PM	#57
James Principal Engineer as SDET Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Was in Auckland, New Zealand, Now in Taipei, Taiwan Posts: 1,406	Mountainmaster Especially because I made the starfish position selector look so good and I want the user to go there instead of recalling it from a save. Haha, nice reason but don't let this reason to ruin the level of ur programe, the friendly user interface become degraded..... Well, it can be say that if the user select the starfish pos b4 and then save the setting, that means the user did actually go into ur starfish pos selection interface b4 and exprienced the nice imagemap, so if u make the user to go back to the starfish pos selector everytime when the user recalls a particular setting, that'll become a bit annoying, in fact, I made a few sampling by asking 12 ppl in my software enginerring classmates to use ur programe and 9 out of 12 asking me why did I have to select the starfish pos again everytime when I recall my setting, trust me, I didn't tell them anything about how the save setting function works. Maybe it just we software engineering ppl like the better user friendly interface, after all our goal is to make a perfect software in the world providing better life to ppl. maybe we were been brain washed by doing so many programming and the way of thinking we face a thing is quite different then usual ppl... I start explaining ur reason to them why u didn't plan to add that feature, and tell them maybe it requires a large amount of work on coding so that u don't wanna adding more functions and then they start telling me how can it be done in a persudal code way. I can tell u how if u wish to add this feature in the future. and btw, the starfish is a bit big as Swede said but it's alright. Finally, I think making starfish to disappear is a many-request features in this forum, in fact, Jim did planing to make the feature to turn on/off of any invertebrate critter in the SSA in the later version, so why don't u alter it do make more pll feels better? just simplely add another button labeled as "Turn starfish off" and apply the regitry value when it's pressed. anyway, it just another suggestion for u. A very nice job done man! James C Chen Principal Engineer as SDET, Connected Services HTC Corporation 88 Section 3. Zhongxing Road Xindian District, New Taipei City 231, Taiwan www.htc.com

05-16-2002, 08:37 AM	#58
Mountainmaster Liopleurodon Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: 3rd planet Posts: 314	James, Allright, you convinced me. I think I found a good way to save the starfish position in the custom settings and also integrate it all logically in the interface. And since there seems to be such a demand for making the starfish disappear I will add that feature too like you suggested, though I suppose in time it will crawl back into the screen area that way. However, I am not sure if I can find time to work on this as much as I did last week. But who knows...

05-16-2002, 12:27 PM	#59
James Principal Engineer as SDET Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Was in Auckland, New Zealand, Now in Taipei, Taiwan Posts: 1,406	Mountainmaster don't stress urself too much man, I just suggest u a way to improve ur programe, if u decide to take my way that's great but u can do it in any time u like, there's not deadline or something, by the way, your programe is good enough for most of the ppl despite of those engineering ppl I lived with.... if u need any help just ask. James C Chen Principal Engineer as SDET, Connected Services HTC Corporation 88 Section 3. Zhongxing Road Xindian District, New Taipei City 231, Taiwan www.htc.com

05-17-2002, 11:07 AM	#60
Mountainmaster Liopleurodon Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: 3rd planet Posts: 314	Ok, here it is. You can now save the starfish position if you have set one or hide the starfish! http://home.wanadoo.nl/sfinx98/progs/picker.zip James, Yes I know, no deadline, but programming is just so addictive. How nerdy can you get eh? I didn't use your hex code exactly but ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff. Then I tested by leaving the aquarium running for a full day, but the starfish hasn't crawled back in the screen area yet. I seems to be gone for good, but I wonder to which demonic dimension it orbs this way...