What ever became of Hexen-Beta1.4?

I love the graphic for it!

 

encouragement reminder (if welcomed)

 

i am slowly putting time into this, but i have other priorities right now. honestly once i get down to it, it is probably only a day or two of work to get a prototype up and running. More about setting up the graphics so they look okay than anything else.

 

I'm just thrilled to hear you are working on it at all

 

maybe its time to get someone help doing the graphics.
it hurts seeing you spending time on a nice gui, while you could do so many other creative coding thingies, which we can't...
but i like nice guis at the same time.

 

sorry, but it's not about designing the graphics, that takes a few minutes. it's about creating an interface with over 700 buttons and over 100 knobs, that fits on to one screen, allows the knobs to light up (so that's another 100+ graphical elements that need to layered on top of the other ones), wiring all the knobs and buttons into core, wiring all the lighting data back out of core and hooking it up to the 100+ lighting elements, all while having a structure that i actually feel like working with.

the reality of the matter is, the programming on an ensemble like this is quite trivial. you've got 'active nodes' and they move in simple linear fashion across a hex grid. there really isn't anything more to it than reading through some arrays and changing the address of the various active nodes. the interface that the user sees is by far the most important element of the whole thing.

read an interview with twisted tools and you'll see that those guys often spend a substantial amount of time re-designing the GUI until they get it right. and it shows. it's not the sort of work that can be handed off to somebody else.

 

I know what you mean. The seq of Pandora's Box has more than 1000 panel elements. You can't see all together.

 

pretty much working now, just needs some polish in terms of features, and a minor bug fix. i added some features, like you can set multiple direction change arrows in a single hexagon, and it will choose one of the active directions randomly. helps add some randomness to the whole thing. also added a reverser type which simply reverses the direction of any node that enters it.

you can have up to 240 active nodes at once, which ought to be fine since there are only 160 hexagons to fit them in.

probably release something in february at some point.

 

This is great news! I've always loved your work, so this is particularly exciting! In awe that you can do this so fast especially with everything else it sounds like you have going on!

 

It becomes a Super-Ottomata!

 

beta.

no circle - re-direct nodes in the direction of one of the activated arrows, or keep on path if no arrows activated.

green circle - generate new nodes, one for each arrow activated.

yellow circle - trigger MIDI note

orange circle - reverses all nodes that enter

red circle - kill all nodes that enter

 

Why do some states have a double hexagon?


Pretty cool work! Seems much simpler in design compared to Hexen.

 

the arrows do nothing on those ones, so they are turned off

 

now is the time to make suggestions.

suggestions for suggestions:

transpose knob
auto clear function to go with the auto generate function
etc.

 

Thanks for the upload!

 

salamander: a game of marbles

 

I really like the interface a lot. Setting the node's state is very intuitive and workable! And I love the way it looks too!
(though hivemind area could be more graphically pretty)
in a short time playing with this, I got some very interesting results!!

What comes to mind is:

- what if you make a green dot in the center which is like the green circle but means if a node passes through it, it re-generates/re-triggers.
(so mousewise, you scroll one more increment and add a small dot in the center along with the circle. appending the functionality.)
- how about a loop switch that restarts automatically if there all nodes lead to a dead end
- yes, transpose would be great!
- what about a init button that starts with a initial clean layout? (guess you could also just have a snapshot )
- any chance of being able to select from different scales?
- what about a "boundary collision" switch that makes all nodes on the edges reverse (orange circle)

 

O! and also.

I just noticed that randomizing the preset kinda works. Got some crazy interesting stuff going on, but, the more I randomize, the more the active nodes accumulate. so after a couple randomizing clicks, the screen starts to get messy fast. Wonder if there's a way to have a custom slightly smarter randomizing function? Would be so great. I know that's asking a lot but just thinking out loud...

 

really cool

 

Greg do you have a look on the 4 snapshot banks? It's smart randomized!