Messages

26

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: DCDisplay

« on: January 01, 2011, 10:27 AM »

Since it uses .Net & XNA, and needs the DLL for decompressing archives then it would be difficult to do a portable version (unless you have the required components already installed). It also saves settings.xml in the application directory.

Neil

27

General Software Discussion / Re: New duplicate file finder... I am open to features suggestion

« on: January 01, 2011, 12:17 AM »

In DCDisplay I am planning on adding a report of all archives found, which would check the contents of the archives to find duplicates.

Say you have file.zip which has 1.jpg 2.txt files inside it, it would produce a checksum of the contents of those files, so even if it was resaved with compression options, or even as a rar file it would still be possible to detect the fact it is a duplicate (the filenames of the contents would be ignored, so it would allow for even more cases) as well as excluding certains files inside the archive (thumbs.db in particular)

Neil

28

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Release: DCDisplay

« on: January 01, 2011, 12:04 AM »

I just updated the first page with a new version of DCDisplay that fixed a small bug (minimize in windows mode would crash the application), and took the opportunity to add in abbreviation expansion in file names (LSH would expand to Legion Super Heroes for example). I should have a report generator soon (I've already got it so that it will produce a thumbnail of the cover and parse a html template).

Neil

29

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: DCDisplay

« on: October 13, 2010, 12:21 AM »

I am using C# and XNA to use 3D card with a pixel shader, which allows realtime correction of colors (as well as fixing other issues, such as rotation). I plan on having XML script for an issue, so you can set parameters for each page if needed, this is better than adjusting the original jpg and resaving as that will introduce additional artifacts. The other main thing I want to add is the ability to store a database of all the comics / magazines you have, and allow fast access to them.

Neil

30

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Pledge: DCDisplay

« on: August 05, 2010, 07:45 AM »

I used the "publish" application in Visual Studio, but it produces a weird installation. I think it installs in some guid generated path name which seems to be counterintuitive. When you open an archive it reads in the images and decodes them ahead of time (it does this is 2 parts, one to decompress the file from the archive, and another to convert the image from graphic format into a texture for the graphics card). So if you read normally then pressing space for next page will be extremely fast since it has already pre-cached the result. I need to split this into a different thread to maintain responsiveness (and then in the UI thread check if the results are ready, which at the moment I don't need to do since it can assume they are).

Neil Harding

31

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Pledge: DCDisplay

« on: June 29, 2010, 10:19 AM »

Yes it appears as though it was down temporarily (they are supposed to be changing the system they use today, so I guess it went down sometime after I posted the links) and whilst writing the reply it came back up.

32

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Pledge: DCDisplay

« on: June 29, 2010, 08:44 AM »

If you want a sneak peek, then the first alpha version is available at installer and the source is available (you need Visual Studio Express 2008 C#, and XNA if you want to be able to build).

Neil Harding

33

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / NANY 2011 Release: DCDisplay

« on: June 11, 2010, 12:03 PM »

NANY 2011 Entry Information

Application Name	DCDisplay
Version	0.4
Short Description	Comic/Magazine viewer
Supported OSes	Windows XP,Vista,7
Download	DCDisplayInstaller0.4.rar (7231.58 kB - downloaded 1659 times.) Comic Sources: http://goldenagecomics.co.uk//index.php http://www.flashbackuniverse.com/downloads.aspx
Author	Neil Harding

Description
I wanted a replacement for CDisplay (which hasn't been worked on for years), so I am writing DCDisplay. I'm using XNA (although the application will be PC only, no XBox support is planned) as I wanted an excuse to learn C#.

Features
All the basic functionality is now supported, including next and previous (which uses a new sort algorithm that sorts more like English.) I am using a pixel shader to allow the contrast, saturation, brightness, deyellow, gamma, skew, lighten image near spine although the settings are not currently preserved.

Just added the database (which scans your hard drive for the entire contents and allow you to find duplicates based on names as well as contents). This is not the final version, but has most of the features that will be present.

Planned Features
I also want to add some graphical niceties (I want to do a comic style UI).

Screenshots


Usage
Installation
Download the zip file and decompress it, then run the setup.exe file and it will install it.

Using the Application
When you run the application for the first time it will display a small comic with instructions inside.
The main key you need is space, the controls are the same as CDisplay.

Uninstallation
Windows Control Panel / Add Remove Programs, or click the Uninstall DCDisplay link that is now added.

34

Living Room / Re: The little bug who grew up to become a feature

« on: April 11, 2010, 05:41 PM »

Although it wasn't a bug, one of the first games I wrote was Hyperball for the Atari ST. You control a spaceship and fire at a puck to score goals by guiding it into the opponents score line. I had reasonably accurate physics (I think the conservation of angular momentum was just hack rather than correctly implemented from memory), which give the masses of the ships compared the projectiles you fired meant it was better to ram the puck than to fire shots at it. So I made it so that it wouldn't ram the puck (unless the player started to do so, and which case I would up the aggressiveness of the AI). It worked well, but since it would use prediction, so it would work out how far the puck was from the ship, what the movement vectors would be when the shot would get there etc, that it was almost impossible to beat the AI. I just added a difficulty level, on hardest difficulty it would run the AI code every other frame, (it originally ran every frame), and would just run it less often on the easier levels.

All the code was in 68000 assembly language, I miss programming in assembly language now (well I don't miss x86 assembly language that much )

Neil Harding

35

Living Room / Re: Flattr: New Micropayment System - Gets the Model Right

« on: March 09, 2010, 09:58 AM »

I like the idea of true micro payments, less than 1cent that would be tied to page views (click to read more, this will cost 0.5c). Paypal does not support micro payments because of the cost of paypal transactions.

36

General Software Discussion / Re: New duplicate file finder... I am open to features suggestion

« on: December 22, 2008, 07:49 PM »

One thing I was planning on writing on a DC++ modification (so that the same is not downloaded more than once) is to investigate the contents of a rar / zip file. So it would ignore the files, directory names, compression settings inside a rar/zip file, by getting all of the crc's & filelengths inside the rar/zip and then would be able to say Downloaded.zip is the same as Recompressed.rar.

I normally use the Duplicate File Finder mentioned above.