Beta Builds of Xion. These are builds that are not quite ready for Release, but need feedback and bug submissions in order to move it to Release Status
WARNING: This is a Beta Build. That means it has fixes and features that are NEW. It is also possible it has bugs that are NEW! If you are looking for stability, please don't expect this build to be perfectly stable. It may have issues. If on the other hand you are happy to try this build out and post any bugs back in this thread, then please do!
Fixed a crash with the Library manager due to a race condition on Uninstall
Fixed an issue when Uninstalling without running at least once, which caused some settings to be installed, even though we were uninstalling
Fixed the creation of the States and Previews folder
Optimized TimeFormat function to improve performance
Fixed another issue with the track format parser - Thanks Rutabaga!
Fixed the time display in the playlist of selected and all tracks
Fixed bug when Album names were too long and were created ready to pass to MSN - Thanks SLoB!
Optimized the rendering of Text objects so that original pixels are only copied when they are not invisible.
Reduced the memory consumption of Text objects by 75%
Optimized the use of vectors by using the iterators instead of the index accessors
Optimized the way that Indicator states are updated
Optimized various XionMessage functions
Optimized StringHash class for faster compares
Optimized ComponentManager iteration
Optimized the VUMeters to use cached values per frame in order to reduce the calculations to 1, no matter how many VUMeters you use
Added an error dialog if Xion is unable to create its main Skin and other folders
If you find bugs specifically related to this build, please post them here instead of the Bug reporting forum. Any feedback positive or negative should also go in here, no new threads. This way all feedback, etc related to this build will be in the one place.
ABOUT THIS BUILD:
I've been optimizing and fixing with this build. Let me know if this causes any issues for anyone. I'm now hoping that 120 will be the final release. Just waiting on Lance to finish the new skin!
Let me know if you find any issues! Also if everything is running smoothly then please let me know too!
KNOWN ISSUES
The Album art loader is broken. It'll appear as though no Album Art exists. Will be fixed for next build.
Any questions or bugs related to this build should be posted here only!
Enjoy!
Cliff
Last edited by Cliff Cawley on September 2nd, 2009, 2:02 am, edited 2 times in total.
Noticing that you've done alot of optimization, i immediately threw my incredibly resource heavy skin at it.
Needless to say, the optimization has helped. While it still eats up a whole core, it's definetly improved. I'm certain this will help with skins not as heavy as mine, but still demanding.
As for hoping 120 to hit public, your hope is justified. Just a few bugs to look out for.
I still got problems with what are apparently shoutcast streams. The rate is reported wrong to Xion after a new track, which results it either playing at half, or double the Hz.
There are also, apparently, still some Unicode errors, Rainwave displays awkward characters in it's 'name' when connected to the default stream.
Good luck with getting to the build 120 milestone!
There is only one thing that annoy me. The skin choose window always open over the skin interface and you need to move the window every time . When you open the skin coose window and move it than close the window and open it again the window will not appear in the last position it was but it appear over the skin. I think that is aligned with the top left pixel of the skin inteface.
How can you choose a new skin if you don't see the skin you are using.
Pixel-Z Wrote:Thanks Cliff, everithing is working fine.
There is only one thing that annoy me. The skin choose window always open over the skin interface and you need to move the window every time . When you open the skin coose window and move it than close the window and open it again the window will not appear in the last position it was but it appear over the skin. I think that is aligned with the top left pixel of the skin inteface. How can you choose a new skin if you don't see the skin you are using.
Sorry for my English, hope you understand.
Sure, I understand. I've been meaning to add support for remembering the size and I can do the same for the position. The only problem with position is that it could get stuck somewhere off the screen and you can never get it back.
Make sure crossfading is enabled and close Xion while playing a song, then start Xion by opening a music file. The crossfader does its job and plays a bit of the previous song over the song you just opened, even though the previous song wasn't actually playing. It's not really that big of a deal, but it annoyed me a little until I figured out what was going on.
I found something odd, not sure if it's even Xion's fault.
I'm running 7 nowadays, and with it, i also installed a brand new version of the Realtek HD Audio Codecs, instead of the ones supplied from ASRock, as they were terribly out of date anyhow.
Sometimes i switch it's mode from 7.1 to stereo. Today, i noticed that while running a stream, and then turning the system from Stereo to 7.1, Xion doesn't care, and continues to only output stereo. I haven't tried this with regular audio files, but i can replicate the surround sound ignoring just fine. I have to restart Xion for it to realise it has 7.1 output available.
This was not the case in Windows XP and a much older version of Realtek's audio drivers. There, switching audio output modes was piece of cake for Xion.
Not sure if you would consider this a bug, but It's kinda funny.. Not sure if I like or detest it, either:
Reproduce
1) Start Xion, load up a playlist with any number of songs greater than 2 or 3, make sure they have different names.
2) search for a song in the Quick Search field until only one song is found. Play this song by double clicking on it.
3) Right click on Xion's icon and Exit Xion.
4)Reopen Xion, retype the same search string in the Quick Search Box and play the song. Press "Previous Song" button 5-10 times, and then clear the search by pressing the button.
5) Press "Next Song". You'll have to go through the same song however many times you pressed the "Previous" button.
Call it what you will =P
One more unconfirmed bug I've found is that the playlist randomly decides to continuously scroll up until reaching the top of the list or I restart Xion. I'm not sure how or why as there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason. I believe it has something to do with loading a playlist, but that's as far as I can track it.
Also, I'd really like the ability to show/scroll the current song on the Visualization window, maybe in the top left or right corner.. Could this be made into a plug-in of sorts?
Sinusoid Wrote:I see that the oscilloscope finally portrays the waveforms accurately now too! Before i noticed that sines would be drawn with really angular lines.
Sorry; Ignore this. I just realized that the sine waveforms were drawn squarely because of the size that i had drawn the visualisation area in my skin and nothing to do with the programming. The waveform looks accurate when the visualisation window is used instead of displaying it as a oddly-sized layer in the skin. I'm not sure if antialiasing would fix this problem or if it's due to the number of samples in the waveform or what, but i'm sure it's only an issue for a small handful of people who want the visualisation to be extra small.
dragoon Wrote:Not sure if you would consider this a bug, but It's kinda funny.. Not sure if I like or detest it, either:
Reproduce
1) Start Xion, load up a playlist with any number of songs greater than 2 or 3, make sure they have different names. 2) search for a song in the Quick Search field until only one song is found. Play this song by double clicking on it. 3) Right click on Xion's icon and Exit Xion. 4)Reopen Xion, retype the same search string in the Quick Search Box and play the song. Press "Previous Song" button 5-10 times, and then clear the search by pressing the button. 5) Press "Next Song". You'll have to go through the same song however many times you pressed the "Previous" button.
Call it what you will =P
One more unconfirmed bug I've found is that the playlist randomly decides to continuously scroll up until reaching the top of the list or I restart Xion. I'm not sure how or why as there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason. I believe it has something to do with loading a playlist, but that's as far as I can track it.
Also, I'd really like the ability to show/scroll the current song on the Visualization window, maybe in the top left or right corner.. Could this be made into a plug-in of sorts?
I'm pretty sure the automatic scrolling is induced when you attempt to select using the click and drag method and the cursor goes above or below the size of the playlist rectangle.
Sinusoid Wrote:I see that the oscilloscope finally portrays the waveforms accurately now too! Before i noticed that sines would be drawn with really angular lines.
Sorry; Ignore this. I just realized that the sine waveforms were drawn squarely because of the size that i had drawn the visualisation area in my skin and nothing to do with the programming. The waveform looks accurate when the visualisation window is used instead of displaying it as a oddly-sized layer in the skin. I'm not sure if antialiasing would fix this problem or if it's due to the number of samples in the waveform or what, but i'm sure it's only an issue for a small handful of people who want the visualisation to be extra small.
I mentioned this in the last build. I use abnormally small visualizations and I see the square oscilloscope waveforms as well.
