steve

26th January 2003 01:06 UTC

Avs
Just FYI. Yes, we know about the fact that you all have requests for AVS. We are aware that there hasn't been any movement on AVS. We love AVS as much as you do.

Just keep in mind, if you hadn't noticed, there's a lot of work to do on Winamp3 to begin with. When we're at a place where AVS will receive love, trust me, you'll all know about it.

We've just got a lot on our plate right now, so please, just sit back... relax... Your emails aren't going to change it's priority level in the immediate future.

-s

anubis2003

26th January 2003 03:16 UTC

Thanks Mr Poopiehead :p (see profile). This is what I figured was going to happen. Any idea when changes could begin in avs?

Jaheckelsafar

26th January 2003 08:33 UTC

Thanks for the reassurance that we're not forgotten.

uNDefineD

27th January 2003 06:15 UTC

It's good to know that someone cares. :) I don't suppose you could give us some sort of time frame?

Tuggummi

27th January 2003 06:34 UTC

I can wait as long as i know there is something to wait for :)

Thank you for giving us hope for the future :up:

UnConeD

27th January 2003 14:01 UTC

Btw this is a response to a mail I sent to Steve... (thanks for replying)

Here's the original:

Hi,

with the risk of possibly wasting a couple of minutes of your precious time with a message that doesn't concern you at all (and which you might not be able to redirect to listening ears), I'm sending you this message about the AVS community. It's not intended for you really, but I've gotten the impression that you're the (only?) person who steps out of the Ivory Tower which is Nullsoft the most...

I'm Steven Wittens, author of the AVS packs 'Whacko AVS' (featured on winamp.com at the moment). Considering I've been making AVSes for the past 2 years, AVS is a pretty important hobby for me. I'm also an active member of the AVS community (I maintained the FAQ and Wishlist collection threads on the AVS forums).

Now I don't know what you people over at Nullsoft think about AVS, but to many people it is just way too cool. Since its beginning, presets have become an art-form in themselves: trying to do the prettiest, most complicated or most unique presets and succeeding in creating something really neat is extremely gratifying. I've personally spent countless hours perfecting my presets and I know many others who have done the same. Not just technically, but visually too.

Now why am I bugging you with this? Well for the simple reason that virtually no-one in the AVS community has heard *anything* about AVS' development ever since v2.5. The most we heard was an unreliable source who claimed that AVS was being refactored completely and integrated with Maki and such.
We'd love nothing more than AVS development: just look at the incredibly huge wishlist on the AVS Wishlist forums, and all the questions about extra features which cannot be implemented through APE's (AVS Plug-in Effects). Trust me, I've tried a lot :) (I've finally figured out a way to share variables between different components like scopes/dms through a very hackish method).

So please, if AVS hasn't been shoved into the Realm of Forgotten Software Projects(tm), inform the AVS community of your progress. Post a simple thread about its status, but don't leave us in the dark. Having to shrug everyone off with "AVS isn't being developed anymore" when they suggest something isn't fun either. I think I speak for most of the AVS preset authors.

But don't just do it for the AVS authors: in case you hadn't noticed, Windows' Media Player 9 has finally gotten a Visualisation SDK and has been touting its plug-in architecture (see wmplugins.com), but creating them requires knowledge of C++ (a plug-in is a COM object) and complicated coding.
AVS is an amazingly easy to use, powerful, unique visualisation plug-in, unique to Winamp3. It gives Winamp3 yet another edge over those sucky rival players: and that's something you guys *are* certainly interested in. Who cares about prebuilt visualisations when you can make your own?

Rovastar

27th January 2003 15:00 UTC

Well that is some good news today.......geez I am having a bad day, week, month, year, decade......

Raz

27th January 2003 16:55 UTC

Thank *&$#% for that, we have something to look forward too, very good news

oh just so people know, you can make a ™ sign by holding alt, then pressing on the number keypad, 0 1 5 3, then releasing alt. ™

dirkdeftly

27th January 2003 20:05 UTC

w3rd, ucd

anubis2003

27th January 2003 21:23 UTC

UnConeD, what is the method that you found to share variables with DM's and SSC's?

dirkdeftly

27th January 2003 22:18 UTC

An APE that he won't let us see :p

anubis2003

27th January 2003 22:29 UTC

NOOOO! But I need global variables!!!!!!!:cry:

UnConeD

28th January 2003 00:06 UTC

It's not that simple, so I'm not giving it out yet until I can make sure it's as easy as it can get.

Basically I found out at APEs can modify the spectrum and oscilloscope data, because APEs receive the memory position of the data and not the data itself.
So what you do is make a superscope that draws dots in certain colors in the upper-left, and then the APE takes those colors and inserts them into the oscilloscope values, so you can read them with getosc(). However you only get limited precision (colors have only 0-255 values) and the APE is not configurable yet.

So, be patient. Don't get your hopes up too much though: unless it's for really complicated scopes, this APE will be slower than calculating everything in each scope. It's not like setting variable 'a' in one scope and reading 'a' in another...

dirkdeftly

28th January 2003 00:23 UTC

dude, if you needed to sync rotating 3D ssc's you can get a random number between 0-256 for each axis - and that's only if you use one point for rotation. you could get a semi-gaussian random between 0-16777216 for each axis if you wanted to, and even then you have 257 global variables left that you can use. and that's only for getspec! "low precision" my ass :p

anubis2003

28th January 2003 00:50 UTC

Well, that's still nice, but I can't wait until they update AVS. Hey, even without random numbers it still offers a way to store more than 64 variables. Very nice.

fsk

8th February 2003 08:40 UTC

Damn it coned where would avs be without you?

Raz

8th February 2003 10:01 UTC

we would be overun with water moving particle and blitter feedback presets and roto blitter and water combinations and that bug that makes all the grey when you add a heavy blur. well simple enough, there would be no Zero-G maze 3 :(.

Scar Da Kookee

8th February 2003 21:53 UTC

oh, I'd like to make a come back tour, soon.