FracFan Forum :: View topic - Plug-in Detector?

Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 3:00 am

Hello!

Currently I have the problem, that many (foreign) flames won't work, because one or two plug-ins are missing ... and mostly, I simply don't know, which ones.

So: Is it possible to program a kind of "plug-in-detector", so that you can see, which plug-ins are missing ...? Understand me?

Thank you! Cheers!

Frank

Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2009 7:37 am

Hi Frank,

You don't need a plugin detector, all you need is to be able to read the param file. The list of variations used is in the first few lines of text. Here's a partial param file to show what I mean:

---
<xform weight="0.5" color="0" linear="1" coefs="1 0 0 1 1 1" />
<xform weight="0.8" color="0.415" linear="0.3" boarders="2" coefs="0.035264 0 0 0.035264 0 0" />
<finalxform color="0" symmetry="1" loonie="1" coefs="0.240936 -0.240936 0.240936 0.240936 0 0" />
----

Note that after the xform it tells you what variant is in each transform (I've highlighted the "boarders" variation in the above code so you can see what I mean). The flame also uses the "linear" and "loonie" variations.

If you are wanting to get hold of most of the Apo plugins, you can download them all in one place and then put the ones you need into the "plugins" folder. Here is a link to Phoenix's Super Massive Plugin Pack
http://phoenixkeyblack.deviantart.com/art/Supermassive-Plugin-Pack-98807426

Just click on the "download" link which you can find on the LHS of that page.

puppy

Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 12:08 am

[offtopic]Weird, I had to use a proxy to get to this forum Shocked

Have someone banned russian IPs ? Neutral

[/offtpic]

Actually this is a useful feature, and the only reason for not implementing it was that I didn't know where to put it in the Apo interface Smile

(popping up a message-box was quite annoying)

Another problem is that Apo can't distinguish variation names from their variable names... Rolling Eyes

Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 7:24 am

It would be cool if there was a tab for each transform which only showed the variations and variables that were being used . . . perhaps a good place to display the missing ones too - in a different colour?

Purely self-interest here, I'd save time if I wasn't scrolling up and down and switching tabs to edit a transform.

Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 6:42 pm

Slobo, I totally agree with you! I find that with more plugins (especially synth Cool

), I'm scrolling a lot.

I was going to request that feature but was a bit shy Embarassed

It would be really brilliant if only the variables that were involved showed up when that tab was clicked. All too often I find myself tweaking variables and wondering why they have not effect, then I realise that I'm on the wrong transform and have to go back, select the correct transform and try again. If the variables did not show up it would help as then I'd realise that the selected transform did not use any variables.

Hope this makes sense to all those programmers out there

puppy

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 12:46 am

Well yes, I wanted to make it like that too Smile

But this was causing huge rewriting of Apo's editor code... Rolling Eyes

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 2:39 am

It sounds like we're experiencing the same problem: http://www.woosie.net/fracfan/viewtopic.php?t=5688

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 6:35 am

Zueuk, thanks for your response. Now you understand my shyness. Its very easy as a user to ask for "simple" changes to the interface. In reality these changes are not simple and require a massive amount of work for something that most of us have managed to live without.

Would the changes be cool - absolutely! Are they worth doing given the amount of time / effort it would take and the benefit to the user - at this point probably not.

puppy

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 2:26 am

Zueuk wrote:

Well yes, I wanted to make it like that too Smile

But this was causing huge rewriting of Apo's editor code... Rolling Eyes

Is that because you were attempting to replace the existing tabs, with one that worked better?

Might it be easier just to add a new tab that just smartly summarised what is already going on in the existing variations and variables tabs, and allowed current varaiations (and their variables) only to be pulled in dynamically?

Sorry if this is a dumb suggestion - I've never bothered with Delphi due to the huge cost to work on Apophysis. So I don't know where the code is gnarly as the images it produces! Laughing

Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2009 5:44 pm

Don't know if it will help any, but I made a few modifications in my own Apo build (well over a year ago now) that may be applicable to this discussion. I never really had time to get all the features ready for prime time, but you can go to http://lu-kout.deviantart.com/art/Misc-Apo-Updates-109845714 to see a few highlights of the trimmed-down build (minus some half-implemented features like layering, and some features that were already implemented in more recent versions of Apo). If there's enough interest, I'll post the code and an executable so you can try it out.

There are a few of the updates that are directly relevant to this discussion (and prompted my posting the info as a scrap on my DA account):
* The previewer (called when selecting a flame file for loading/saving a flame) lists what version of apo was used to save the flame and what variations/variables are/aren't recognized by the current set of builtin/plugin variations.
* The Variables tab value list editor highlights the variations in use by the selected transform, to make it easier to see which variables are applicable. It doesn't collapse the list down to just those elements, but at least it's easier than wading through a bunch of lines that all look alike.

Then there are the (somewhat related) options for setting plugin path(s) and variation/variable name aliases, though the latter was more just me playing around, so I'm not sure how much benefit others will gain from it.

Here's a screen shot showing some of the changes:

[/list]

Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 7:15 pm

Hi Frank,

neonrauschen wrote:

Hello!

So: Is it possible to program a kind of "plug-in-detector", so that you can see, which plug-ins are missing ...? Understand me?

Frank

Last year I wrote a script that does what you're looking for.
I'm kind of busy atm, but I uploaded the script after adding a few simple tweaks to it for the newer Apo versions.
I use the script quite often myself.
There are notes at the top of the script that explain how to use it.
There are two input boxes which also include an option to see a message box with an explanation for the input choices, after which you'll be returned to the input box itself.

Actually I just use the input box defaults. Those will print results to the bottom of the script editor. I strongly suggest you copy those results and paste them into notepad - right click in the bottom pane of the script editor where the report is written and you'll see the select all"/"copy" context menu entries. When you paste the report into notepad you'll see that columns line up instead of being misaligned the way they are in the bottom script editor pane. In notepad they should look something like this:

Code:

Variation 3DH-all 208-ovr 206-zpl 205-zcp FLAM3
noise yes yes yes yes yes
pdj yes yes yes yes yes
polar yes yes yes yes yes
polar2 * * * * -
radial_blur yes yes yes yes yes

That's only an excerpt of the report I just generated for a flame file so that you can see what the result should look like in notepad. In the actual printout, in addition to what you see here, you'll also see some explanations for the contents of the table.
Basically an asterisk means that the variation is probably a plugin. A "yes" means that the variation is included in the version at the top of the column. A dash (-) means that the variation is not included in that version of Apo or is not supported by flam3.

The variations are listed alphabetically so that you can easily check your plugins folder to see if all of the plugin variations used in your flames are currently available to you. Note that sometimes a variation is a plugin and sometimes it's actually built in to Apo. An example is "heart" which is only available as a plugin for 3D Hack, but it's a built-in variation for most other Apo versions.

There are a couple of flaws in the script that I am aware of.
You'll notice that Apo 2.07 isn't included as one of the column headings. Version 2.07 includes "super_shape" which was replaced by "pre_blur" in the 2.08 versions. You may want to keep that in mind if you run across flames that use super_shape, although that variation is also built in to some non-official Apo versions. Other than the super_shape/pre_blur difference though, all the variations in 2.07 are the same as those in both 2.08 versions. (That means that the "208-ovr" column is almost, but not quite, accurate for version 2.07.)

Another flaw in the script is that it reports a couple of variations as being supported by flam3. Those two variations are "split" and "move". The most current version of Flam3 (2.7.16) doesn't support those variations, however flam3 versions as recent as 2.7.14 do support them.

Oh yeah... unfortunately, currently the script works only on all of the flames in a file. Some people save flames from lots of different Apo versions into the same file, so the script might be less help to them. Essentially they may find that no combination of plugins will help them open all of the flames in their file with any one version of Apo.

I will try to add the option to check only one flame in a multiple-flame file soon, but in the meanwhile, the only solution for checking a single flame would be to save it in a file by itself and then run the script on that new file.
Note that you have an option to check any flame file without having to actually open it in Apo. You will see an option in one of the input boxes to browse to and open any flame file for checking when the script runs. The flame(s) don't actually open in Apo, they are only checked for the report generation. However, there's also a (kind of useless) option to open the flame file after checking it. This option is probably useless if you will need to add plugins to your plugin folder before flames are displayed correctly.

Like I said I mainly just use the default options. The script is capable of saving a text version of the report directly to the folder with the flame file you check, but I haven't found that to be so useful either.

One way or the other, the script should make it much easier to check the variations and plugins used in your flames that trying to manually check them by looking through the parameter files.

Please let me know if you have any problems or questions.

Lastly, before I forget... here's the link:
http://drop.io/VariationReporter

Fred

Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 8:36 pm

I updated the script so that it can now check individual flames as well as whole flame files.

I also set the script to default to listing the variations/plugins for only the open flame. So you can run the script and then simply hit Enter (or click OK) to see which variations and/or plugins are used in the current flame.

Optionally you can still check entire flame files.

The link is the same:
http://drop.io/VariationReporter

The version is now 03a.

Fred

Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 2:08 am

...Had to find a new proxy to access this place, again. Weird Neutral

Mr.Winter wrote:

Here's a screen shot showing some of the changes...

Cool! I just did an odd/even highlighting for variations, now I want to make variables highlighted like this, too Smile

Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2009 5:14 pm

Oh. Have to come more often ... :D Thank you, thank you - both of you! This helps A LOT!