AGENTNEWS
Today, 13/mar/2004 I wondered:
Thanks to comments from and conversations with CaL who have offered to help me developing agentbeats, I am now in the process of putting the agentbeats project on sourceforge and thus donate the code to the world.
I hope this will lead to better progress in the development, that have been stalled for the moment.
END (for now)
Today, 05/september/2003 I wondered:
AGENTBEATS II is now in very first stage of BETA. I'm coding it in C++, but intends to build versions for Mac OSX and Windows.
The graphics will be 3D, and the whole thing will be completely different in looks, but the basic concept remains: MUSIC generated by "artificial life".
END (for now)
Today, 11/juli/2003 I thought:
OK! I admit it! I haven't finished v.2 on time (I had promised something like 01/07/2003)
The reason, however, is my unsatisfaction with Java stability. I've already come a long way with v.2 but have stopped development as I have encountered some irritating errors that seem to be out of my control, i.e. they are not linked to my development but to the handling by the JRE of some simple and standard code, for example sliders that don't show, sudden program crashes, MIDI listeners that stop listening without any error messages etc.
All in all these problems have discouraged me enough to start thinking about other ways of reaching my goal of having a COOL, STABLE and USER-FRIENDLY version of AGENTBEATS available and RUNNING.
Currently I consider doing the whole thing in C++ using wxWindows and PortMusic. I would very much like to be able to stay cross-platform which is the reason that I'm not just going straight ahead coding in Cocoa etc. So the current delay is due to a comlpete change of scope and development tools.
I hope, however to be able to have some kind of BETA ready during the summer, and a more or less complete version ready after the summer. Come back to this page to get further news.
And as I currently don't have access to a PC I'm still looking for a PC person that can help me do the PC porting (maybe I should make the whole thing open-source?)
OVER-AND-OUT (for now)
Today, 28/05/2003 I thought:
Version 1 of AGENTBEATS is a piece of highly experimental software with main focus on CORE-FUNCTIONALITIES and is more of a prototype than an actual "product".
I'm well aware of this, which is why I'm currently working HARD on getting version 2 ready.
I'll give a short pespective of the things that can be expected of version 2:
- USER INTERFACE. Following conversations with my friends at IXI-software, and lessons learned from my own use of the program, I have thought of alotta ways to generally improve the USER INTERFACE, so that tedious tasks become more easy and intuitive. A few examples:
- "Feed the AGENTS" (thanks to the ideas of my beautiful and intelligent girlfriend).
- In v.1 users have to click around alot in order to create patterns.
- In v.2 a MIDI file can be "fed to the AGENTS" or AGENTS can be created via a MIDI-keybord.
- "Visual state".
- In v.1 it can be difficult to realise what state the patterns, AGENTs and other entities are in.
- In v.2 I will create various means of visualising the "state of affairs".
- "Even horizon".
- In v.1 only the "current" frame is visible.
- In v.2 the user can specify an "eventhorizon", so that the progression and patterns can be easier understood and viewed.
- "DragNdrop".
- V.1 does not have dnd functionality.
- This will be available in v.2.
- TIME FORMAT.
- In v.1 a pattern had a "fixed" grid.
- This will be dropped. Instead the AGENTs/patterns will have "rules of movement" that can be defined by the USER.
- "SCRIPTING".
- In v.1 the CORE of the relations between the Life of the AGENTs and the patterns were predifined and only parameterizable.
- In v.2 I will introduce the possibility that USERs define "what-happens-when".
- MIDI HANDLING. improved as I will build the interface between AGENTBEATS and MIDI/AUDIO on CoreAudio, which implies that AGENTBEATS will be Mac OS X only! However, I'm structuring the program in a manner so that MIDI handling and the "AGENTCore" are strictly seperated. So when version 2 is released I will start as fast as possible porting the MIDI/AUDIO-interface to a Windows based system. Unfortunately MicroStof does NOT supply a general JAVA port to their MIDI/Audio system like Apple does, so it'll have to rely on "3. party ports". I found JMusic that may be a possible platfrom. Any interested developpers willing to create this WIN MIDI/Audio interface will be very welcome to join the AGENT MUSIC world of mine.
- AUDIO! Currently AGENTBEATS is a "MIDI-only" application working on a "theoretical" level with the musical patterns. I will supply a simple "sampler" and a simple "synth" so that users are not obliged to connect AGENTBEATS to sound modules in order to experiment. This SMALL audio interface will be very SMALL, as the concept of AGENTBEATS does NOT (so far) include sound synthesis.
Well, this is some of the thoughts I fiddle with currently.
As usual all advice and ideas are welcome.
OVER-AND-OUT (for now)