Beta Mandelbrot Set Generator For Pandora

[centus]

Great! Thanks for testing it out for me.

Now I just need to clear it up a bit, package it in a PND and then the next big update will have to wait till I have a Pandora so that I can finish the key mapping so that it is easier to use (use the Dpad and L/R buttons makes more sense for many of the features).

In the meantime, if you scroll up a bit in this thread you'll find the current key configuration, try the J key, one time should add a Julia set at the corner of the screen which updates live as you move the mouse around, second press of J changes to full screen Julia which you can Zoom in and out and third goes back to Mandelbrot.
+ and - on the keypad change the number of iterations, I wonder if that maps to anything on the Pandora...

If you get a chance to try out the Julia set, let me know how the performance is in the real time mode, I wonder how bad it lags.
It is currently setup for windowed mode with a resolution of 800x480, does it come up that way? I'll change it to full screen in the next build, the ESC key closes it.

Thanks!

 

[centus]

OK, here's my first attempt at a PND.

Please go easy on me... I know it's huge (1.5Mb for a simple 75Kb executable) but I'll make it smaller when it works, promise!

Please test it out (no Pandora yet), let me know if it works and if the opening image and icon appears.
PFractals.pnd
Thanks!

 

[joseluisjazz]

The 2 Julia modes & the pnd works. The icon doesn't, I suspect it's because it's not square. Do it 64x64 or 48x48 for example, and remember that you must append it to the end of the pnd file. Also you didn't provide valid menu categories in the pxml so it appears in a generic menu.

And if you don't plan to change the bmp to a png yet, at least use squashfs instead of iso for the pnd. I'm using my phone's internet connection these days and it hurts to know I'm downloading a 1,5MB splash image for a 75kb binary .

For windows you can download squashfs tools here. In linux you would do it like this:

mksquashfs PFractals-folder/ fractals.squash -nopad -no-recovery

and then:

cat fractals.squash PFractals-folder/PFractals.pxml PFractals-folder/PFractals_icon.jpg > PFractals-squashed.pnd

Compare the sizes:

$ du -sh PFractals*
280K	PFractals-squashed.pnd
1.6M	PFractals.pnd

You maybe have to adapt the commands for windows.

regards


EDIT: and you can always zip the pnd for download

 

[centus]

thanks for testing it out man!
I appreciate the tips, however i wont be home till the weekend so it'll have to wait.↲sorry for the huge download,i should have thought about zip.

 

[dflemstr]

The 2 Julia modes & the pnd works. The icon doesn't, I suspect it's because it's not square. Do it 64x64 or 48x48 for example, and remember that you must append it to the end of the pnd file.

Non-square icons are fine, but a default sizes of 64x64 or 128x128 are recommended.

cat fractals.squash PFractals-folder/PFractals.pxml PFractals-folder/PFractals_icon.jpg > PFractals-squashed.pnd

Never ever ever ever use anything except PNG for icons and preview pictures et cetera. JPG is not accepted. BMP is not accepted. It's the way the PND format was made; it uses a model similar to MPEG in that it's stream based (err, kinda. This is the only model that the PND format seemingly adheres to in any shape or form ), so a PND reader will specifically look for the PNG header when looking for the icon. So, anything else will horribly fail, no exceptions.

EDIT: and you can always zip the pnd for download

That is not recommended, since it will make it impossible to create any kind of "AppStore" front end outside of the web page. Don't do it unless you absolutely must. If Squashfs is an alternative, use Squashfs.

I'll analyse the PND using my tools now, hold on for a sec...

EDIT: So your PXML file... Where did you generate it? It's quite bug-ridden; I suggest redoing it using this template:
http://pandorawiki.org/PXML_archetype

Then there's the issue with the JPG icon. Just convert it.

 

[joseluisjazz]

Thanks for the info. specially the jpeg related. I didn't know it.

On the zip side I meant only for this special case, not as a rule.

 

[centus]

interesting input, i used the pnd generating script to make the pnd.↲i'm still out of home till thursday, i'll look at your template when i get home.↲the png only icons are a documented feature? I haven't seen that anywhere.↲thanks for the help.

 

[dflemstr]

the png only icons are a documented feature? I haven't seen that anywhere.↲

It is documented, and it's kind of like an implicit rule anyways. The Free Desktop Specification used by all desktop environments (GNOME, KDE, XFCE, ...) states that the only supported formats for image data are PNG, XPM or SVG. PNG is for raster graphics, XPM for palleted images, and SVG for vector graphics (unsurprisingly).

When skeezix implemented the scanning algorithm (and when I did it again in my tooling) we decided to only scan for PNG headers, because the other formats don't really have headers that are scannable. If the PND format had had a central directory system, it would have been possible to support other formats that aren't stream-based.

 

[centus]

Hello again,

Finally back home, finished converting the program to use a PNG splash screen (was really only a matter of reading a bit about SDL_image).
Anyway, when I use the pnd_make.sh script to make the PND out of the executable and image, I get a weird result, the size of the folder i am using to make the PND is about 300Kb (image + executable), the icon is about 12Kb, the resulting PND file is a whopping 683Kb!!

Any ideas?

I'm also trying to get squashfs installed on my virtual box to try it out that way, but still, I would like to understand what I'm doing wrong, I looked at the script, it basically merges the three files together so there really shouldn't be any increase in size, right?

 

[centus]

In the meantime, here's the PND I did create, it's still too big, but is much smaller than before.
I've added a PNG icon so that should be working now, and I've changed the default display mode to full screen.

Please let me know how it goes.

Thanks!

 

[sebt3]

Anyway, when I use the pnd_make.sh script to make the PND out of the executable and image, I get a weird result, the size of the folder i am using to make the PND is about 300Kb (image + executable), the icon is about 12Kb, the resulting PND file is a whopping 683Kb!!

Any ideas?

ISO files do have an overhead. So does squashfs...

 

[centus]

I didn't end up using squashfs, only the regular ISO, would a reasonable overhead be in the range of 350Kb? sounds excessive...

 

[dflemstr]

I didn't end up using squashfs, only the regular ISO, would a reasonable overhead be in the range of 350Kb? sounds excessive...

Guess why I've been complaining about the PND standard for the last 2 years? It's broken; ISO is a Compact Disk image format, and was never meant for anything else. It eats space and is extremely limited. It's a small remedy that we've now got SquashFS as an alternative (But the PND standard is still broken and should be redone from scratch!)

Anyways, the PXML file is perfect.

The icon... it seems that you took your JPEG image and just re-saved it as PNG, which is fine except that it has terrible quality because of that.
(JPEG is a lossy compression format, so anything you save as JPEG loses quality very quickly)
If you don't care, it's fine, no prob, but I'd recommend rendering the fractal image again and saving it as PNG directly so that you don't lose quality if you've got the time.

 

[centus]

Thanks a lot!

I was waiting for someone to test it before I upload it to the Appstore...
I'll re-do the icon and re-make the PND once someone confirms the PNG splash screen works on a Pandora.

Thanks.

 

[centus]

will no one test my pnd?
I would gladly test it myself if i had a pandora, but i don't have one yet.
I would hate to put it up on the app store without a test.

 

[centus]

OK, I gave up and uploaded the latest version to the Appstore.
I hope it's not broken, I guess it's the best way to get someone to look at it.

I placed it under Misc/Other since there's no relevant Category for it.

 

[joseluisjazz]

It works well

 

[centus]

Great! thanks!
I was afraid of the switch to full screen...

So it's full screen now?

Were you able to find the + and - keys?