Mon Oct 14, 2019 8:41 am
ISBoxer 2 Development Update - October 2019
It's been a minute or two since my last ISBoxer 2 Development Update, so let me bring everyone up to speed on where we're at now.
So first of all let me explain a little about the Inner Space and ISBoxer/ISBoxer 2 development cycles. If you didn't know any better, you'd think almost no progress was made on ISBoxer 2 since the last development update. About 2 and a half months ago we left off at "this is nearly the last ISBoxer 2 Alpha update". Yet here we are, with the same version of ISBoxer 2. So Lax, where's this ISBoxer 2 Beta?
The way progress tends to be made with Inner Space and ISBoxer/ISBoxer 2 is in kind of a tick-tock fashion. Tick, Inner Space updates. Tock, ISBoxer updates. Sometimes the updates are released together, but generally I'll push along on ISBoxer 2 until things really need to be done in Inner Space for the next steps of ISBoxer 2. Well we just had a 2 and a half month Tick, with some major updates to Inner Space in pursuit of making ISBoxer 2 Module development awesome. Now it's time for some Tock, and it's going to be a hot one.
Great. Sooo... anything good in the last 2 and a half months then?
Most of the work in the last couple of months has been on the in-client GUI system, which just got some new controls and awesome features both visually, and for GUI designers. Here's something to look at.
Inner Space now fully supports MIDI devices such as the Launchpad, including pressure-sensitive buttons, knobs, sliders, etc., with input support built right into the in-game GUI system used by ISBoxer 2. It's so good, personally I am ready to junk my old PC input devices -- and once you see what we can do with something like this, maybe you will too. MIDI devices of different shapes, sizes, style, etc are available plentiful and cheaply, and it's going to be fun. Imagine DPSing away and you need to really turn up the heat, so you physically press the button harder in order to throw in your extra DPS (pop cooldowns, switch spells, etc). Or if you're just clearing trash mobs, lightly tap the button to save your resources (using less powerful/costly spells, etc). With some devices (including the previously-mentioned Launchpad), you can send signals back to your device to change colors on different buttons, etc; we will have a lot of fun with both the utility -- such as partitioning sections of a Launchpad -- and the ability to play with visual effects. Put on some Daft Punk or Deadmau5 while you multibox
As /u/enode shared on Reddit a couple months ago (their post was not in any way related to Inner Space's new MIDI support. I don't know this person, someone just linked it in ISBoxer Discord during recent related discussion, and now I am sharing it with you):
So there's that....
Then there's this ...
Inner Space GUI designers have been waiting for this for a long time. The above gif demonstrates a custom-rendered canvas, which can be used to render things in 2D. This can be used to provide custom scalable images (similar to -- but not -- SVG, "Scalable Vector Graphics"), animations, etc. So among other things we'll be seeing this used for effects, graphs, maps and heatmaps, on-screen keyboards and mice (etc), and ... well who knows? We're just getting started thinking about it. But suffice it to say, it's going to be awesome, and despite my stick figure in the amazing demonstration gif, I promise it provides huge improvements visually. This canvas support is already in use in a subtle way: if you right click Inner Space and select Patcher, the title bar of the Patcher window has a slight gradient, fading to a dark gray in the bottom right corner by the close button.
There's much more added and updated in Inner Space on the developer side. More information on that is going to be coming out in the coming weeks with a new round of documentation, tutorials and videos. We'll also see major updates to most existing ISBoxer 2 Modules, and *gasp* I'll be revealing a really fun Module I've been working on for a particular game, and here's the only hint I'll give you: it's not World of Warcraft!
So I'll leave you with that for now. As always, I welcome any feedback. I think people will have a lot of creative ideas, so if you have something you want to make sure will be possible, I suggest asking sooner instead of later!
As always, please feel free to join us in ISBoxer Discord -- https://discord.gg/ESxEzhs -- and for any ISBoxer 2-specific discussion you can have a chat with us in the #isboxer_2_public channel
So first of all let me explain a little about the Inner Space and ISBoxer/ISBoxer 2 development cycles. If you didn't know any better, you'd think almost no progress was made on ISBoxer 2 since the last development update. About 2 and a half months ago we left off at "this is nearly the last ISBoxer 2 Alpha update". Yet here we are, with the same version of ISBoxer 2. So Lax, where's this ISBoxer 2 Beta?
The way progress tends to be made with Inner Space and ISBoxer/ISBoxer 2 is in kind of a tick-tock fashion. Tick, Inner Space updates. Tock, ISBoxer updates. Sometimes the updates are released together, but generally I'll push along on ISBoxer 2 until things really need to be done in Inner Space for the next steps of ISBoxer 2. Well we just had a 2 and a half month Tick, with some major updates to Inner Space in pursuit of making ISBoxer 2 Module development awesome. Now it's time for some Tock, and it's going to be a hot one.
Great. Sooo... anything good in the last 2 and a half months then?
Most of the work in the last couple of months has been on the in-client GUI system, which just got some new controls and awesome features both visually, and for GUI designers. Here's something to look at.
Inner Space now fully supports MIDI devices such as the Launchpad, including pressure-sensitive buttons, knobs, sliders, etc., with input support built right into the in-game GUI system used by ISBoxer 2. It's so good, personally I am ready to junk my old PC input devices -- and once you see what we can do with something like this, maybe you will too. MIDI devices of different shapes, sizes, style, etc are available plentiful and cheaply, and it's going to be fun. Imagine DPSing away and you need to really turn up the heat, so you physically press the button harder in order to throw in your extra DPS (pop cooldowns, switch spells, etc). Or if you're just clearing trash mobs, lightly tap the button to save your resources (using less powerful/costly spells, etc). With some devices (including the previously-mentioned Launchpad), you can send signals back to your device to change colors on different buttons, etc; we will have a lot of fun with both the utility -- such as partitioning sections of a Launchpad -- and the ability to play with visual effects. Put on some Daft Punk or Deadmau5 while you multibox
As /u/enode shared on Reddit a couple months ago (their post was not in any way related to Inner Space's new MIDI support. I don't know this person, someone just linked it in ISBoxer Discord during recent related discussion, and now I am sharing it with you):
So there's that....
Then there's this ...
Inner Space GUI designers have been waiting for this for a long time. The above gif demonstrates a custom-rendered canvas, which can be used to render things in 2D. This can be used to provide custom scalable images (similar to -- but not -- SVG, "Scalable Vector Graphics"), animations, etc. So among other things we'll be seeing this used for effects, graphs, maps and heatmaps, on-screen keyboards and mice (etc), and ... well who knows? We're just getting started thinking about it. But suffice it to say, it's going to be awesome, and despite my stick figure in the amazing demonstration gif, I promise it provides huge improvements visually.
This canvas support is already in use in a subtle way: if you right click Inner Space and select Patcher, the title bar of the Patcher window has a slight gradient, fading to a dark gray in the bottom right corner by the close button.There's much more added and updated in Inner Space on the developer side. More information on that is going to be coming out in the coming weeks with a new round of documentation, tutorials and videos. We'll also see major updates to most existing ISBoxer 2 Modules, and *gasp* I'll be revealing a really fun Module I've been working on for a particular game, and here's the only hint I'll give you: it's not World of Warcraft!
So I'll leave you with that for now. As always, I welcome any feedback. I think people will have a lot of creative ideas, so if you have something you want to make sure will be possible, I suggest asking sooner instead of later!
As always, please feel free to join us in ISBoxer Discord -- https://discord.gg/ESxEzhs -- and for any ISBoxer 2-specific discussion you can have a chat with us in the #isboxer_2_public channel