Category: Programs📈

  • 2022-25 Stunt Rally 3 🏁

    2022-25 Stunt Rally 3 🏁

    ⏱️Overview

    The continuation of our Stunt Rally game using latest Ogre-Next rendering engine.

    📂Sources

    Available here.

    Forum topic with key progress steps and few screenshots.

    SR website has Videos, Gallery, Download, etc.

    ✍️Motivation and progress

    Intro

    Well it’s probably time I write something about how this goes, it’s been months already.
    I took about 5 years break from old Stunt Rally. I was occasionally playing and enjoying it, but also ignoring any flaws, and thinking hard not to get into developing it again more (well that’s also the way for any commercial software).

    Forum Q&A👥

    In January 2022, I started thinking of checking out the new rendering engine Ogre-Next and posted on Ogre forum my topic with many questions to get more knowledge about it’s state.
    I has been developed (and used) since years (probably 2015 or so) but I haven’t seen few key features like: Gui, fog, old plugin for grass, no demos for particles or water etc. Old Ogre had plenty. Ogre-Next had many, but not the very broad palette of game related components.

    Terrain Demo⛰️

    Shortly after I gave it a try and started a small demo (sources here) with nature scene. I was quite surprised by performance, how high and smooth Fps was with lots of vegetation. Contrary to old vegetation plugin we still use in old SR, which was also the worst thing, causing lags and delays while driving. But back then even fog wasn’t part of engine and had to be added with some knowledge. Luckily new Atmosphere component for fog and sun was made not long after.

    No Gui

    Since there was no working MyGui fork (was earlier) and all else was difficult, I didn’t move much further.
    Even though Ogre-Next is still technically Ogre, about half of everything in code changed. Even using terrain was completely different as the system was new. It was good since it has better performance but it also meant a lot more trouble to use it and later port Stunt Rally stuff into it, and we have an editor for it too and own custom blendmap I made with noise.

    Continued

    Half a year later in October 2022 I got back to my terrain demo, which was based on Ogre-Next terrain sample.
    Sources for it are there and I even made a gallery, it looked cool.

    Gui🪟

    I also managed to build MyGui with Ogre-Next (forum topic) and with some help continued its fork, after some trouble later, it was fixed and started working well. This was likely the key point to start porting SR, while also knowing particles work, and my demo works smooth with better Fps and no lags for vegetation.

    SR3 start🚗

    I then started porting SR still in Oct 2022 and calling it SR3 (3.0 was also latest Ogre-Next version). First by disabling almost everything in old SR code and making it build with Ogre-Next. Then by slowly restoring stuff one at a time and I mean really slowly.

    Restoring stuff🌐

    It took months and literally almost everything was causing trouble or not working at first in Ogre-Next. It’s like normal developing, I mean I code then test and fix it to work (yeah the old way, no unit tests, seriously). On top of that, there were few annoying new bugs due to how Ogre-Next works and needed something extra to fix, what was already working normally in Ogre before.

    Fast forward⏩

    In Feb 2023 MyGui started working and could be used in SR3.
    Worse still, during my endless forum topic we found many bugs in Ogre-Next too. It’s like half of my problems end in one. A bit disappointing TBH, but that’s the way with software nowadays. It’s buggy and needs updates constantly. Which brings me to support aspect. If it was great I wouldn’t mind. And mostly it was, but lately I’m waiting 1-3 weeks for response and have many ongoing issues and unanswered questions. It’s a pity that it’s just (putting all contributors aside) mostly a one man’s project. Kind of like with SR too, especially after that one year when there were more programmers.

    Water🌊, Effects

    Last major features were: water and effects (like SSAO), probably the biggest thing. Worse still, it wasn’t developed by me, but mostly by scrawl (and others) back in 2013 or so. So I had to redo another thing in Ogre-Next by myself now. It was difficult but good learning experience. HLMS shaders, are big, complicated, have lots of code and variations, and yeah it’s much more difficult than just using a shader editor and putting together blocks or just installing a water add-on.
    We still are missing a few essential ones like: soft particles and HDR with bloom, that old SR had around 2013 already.


    📊Other engines

    Well this section might be of use and have some info. Not just SR3 history like above.
    Meanwhile I did think about other engines and shortly looked at 3 of them. There is a big list on wiki too. And I did recently write a tutorial page on CG graphics its Engines section could be better too.

    This is my personal view, and let’s keep in mind that I did look at them after SR was already made (took 5 years) and it has its own track / map editor made by me. It is FOSS too.

    Unity

    Bit older than UE I guess but also a huge hub for commercial stuff. Even the tutorial mini game had paid crap one could buy for it. That’s really the first thing that pops out instantly for me. I do hate commercial stuff. I guess you could find something “free” but its like looking for free money in city, roughly for me. It will only be a free commercial for paid stuff.
    Sure you can find stuff made already like rivers, vegetation and what not but given that this has a price, it’s instantly not for me. And it never has any other license than “you can only use it for Unity”.

    UE5

    This thing certainly got on my nerves. Turns out I don’t even have a PC for it.
    I started by trying to download. Nope, you need to get full sources with deps and then build them on Linux. I tried few times before I realized this needs over 100GB to complete IIRC. Yeah my SDD with OS is still just 128GB and the one new I got has just 512GB and doesn’t really have that much free space.

    Whatever, the next thing was a real killer for me. When it finally started (after building for hours) it showed a tiny logo with a tiny text showing that it needs to build shaders, over 4000 of them. I can’t even. And it did compile them on like 6 CPU cores for 30 minutes. Seriously WTF.. and I don’t even use this term. I don’t know for sure, but it wasn’t just once that it had to do this. I remember few times that “building all shaders” time waste, possibly even on each new project created or so.

    Well then I realized my PC (with 12 year old CPU) isn’t even in same era, UE5 would need you to first spend a lot of money for PC with latest hardware.. to probably still take a long to even start.
    Needless to say it is also a huge hub for commercial add-ons etc.

    If we look at SR which has over 200 tracks already and on average 1 of them is just 5MB, not GB we can see the huge gap. One demo in UE5 was 100GB.

    Godot

    I was pleasantly surprised to find waterways plugin for rivers and also seeing it’s MIT license. Feels like the proper way of doing stuff for FLOSS software and games like SR3. Would be nice to have it in SR for sure, but at least I can learn from it and even use sources if I ever find the time for this.
    Well, getting back to Godot, it’s big, I don’t have much of experience. It has its way of doing things and may be even extended. But let me sum this all up next.

    Common

    So let’s end this quick look around. Each game engine has lots of stuff. And I can’t even judge how long would I need to learn it, to estimate how long it would need, to port SR to it (any engine). And how would loading tracks look in it, or how much more complicated editing them would be. I’m pretty sure it’d be a waste of time and effort.
    As for game simulation, I guess I could build as a DLL or something to run in it, but that just doesn’t feel right at all. I mean what for, so that I could use engine’s features sure, but I’d need to waste a lot of time (in total) for starting it, clicking everywhere, etc. Lastly learning its issues and their solutions. Every big engine has something specific to it and problems with some things for sure.
    Meanwhile I already had a lot of code written to do what and exactly how I wanted it to be, e.g. editor for creating SR tracks.

    🟢Ogre-Next

    ❔Is it good for you?

    Obviously it depends. It is a rendering (by rasterization) engine only. So contrary to the game engines listed above, you don’t get anything beside rendering, i.e. no physics (e.g. bullet), no sound (e.g. openal), GUI, scripting, network etc.

    It is for advanced users / programmers.
    This means you need advanced programming skills to use it fully. Right now I also believe it means you need to find bugs in it yourself too. Surely there are some still and the more I use it the more I find. And I’d expect it to have none OFC, sadly that’s not possible.

    There is documentation for it, but I can’t say it is covering all topics you might need. Some features I needed later had solutions that needed to be found in older forum topics. This wasn’t easy since they’re old and I don’t know if it’s still valid and there is also plenty of unneeded text in posts.
    And support? Yeah it’s nice and great when it happens but otherwise you’re left alone with it.
    I also can’t say it’s popular. Seems it was much more earlier around 2010 and also the Ogre 1.x version is still more popular.

    Good things last, it surely has many features, modern ones too like few types of GI, HLMS shaders, etc. It is low level, meaning it can give you more control and optimization. But I don’t have any comparison here, I haven’t used any other just older Ogre.
    Surely there are others, eg. bgfx.

    ✅Why I use it

    The biggest reason is really simple. I made SR in Ogre so moving to Ogre-Next sounded like least effort. Surely old Ogre changed and I got myself stuck to shiny material generator which again scrawl wrote back in 2013 or so. Meanwhile RTSS shaders got better in Ogre, and lately even got auto instancing.
    I decided to skip all that and make a bigger step, biggest possible for better hardware and that was using latest Ogre-Next. Even with few things or components missing. It also featured auto instancing by itself which I liked most, secondly the new terrain has less batches too (more performance).

  • 2024 Unreal Engine 5 tryout

    2024 Unreal Engine 5 tryout

    ⏱️Overview

    I’ve spend over 1 month in total, exploring the Unreal Engine 5.3 on Linux and gathered some opinions about it. I’ll say upfront: I don’t really like it and this version is not even fully working on Linux. And no: I will not make or port Stunt Rally to it, I know for sure now. This isn’t a strict tutorial, but my gathered experience, many complaints, with some useful links.

    📂Gallery🏞️

    Short gallery with showcase here.
    Long gallery with many more things shown and including visible bugs.

    ✍️Motivation

    Well I have been using Ogre rendering engine since about 2007. Over a year ago moved to OgreNext, which is even less popular. I can simply say there is just one person (the developer) who is able to, and does usually answer my questions, or fixes issues.

    Naturally at some point I wanted to get at least a basic knowledge of other engines. Since they’re so highly popular and have big forums and communities. And get my own opinion, also regarding what’s best for Stunt Rally (rendering only since we already have simulation and even own track editor).

    I made 3 initial choices due to highest popularity: Unreal, Unity, Godot.
    I did already check them in 2022, and wrote a little in my Rendering “tutorial”. But ultimately for me, Unity died a sudden death due to their freaking license changes (which shocked lots of developers and made them move). I did check out Godot and so far its best demo for terrain and nature, and it didn’t seem too great at performing there. Which seems also a popular opinion that it doesn’t handle big 3D scenes that well.

    So, the goal was not really to move SR to any of them. It was to assess if that’d be even reasonable, and logically prove that it’s not (even only for rendering purpose). Last and quite important reason was to learn “the other side”, new effects and technologies, and know what would be possible to achieve in SR too (someday).

    📜Earlier try

    I did try UE on my old PC. Back then in 2020, UE5 had to be built from sources on Linux. Took me like 50 GB of space to download. And few tries to finish, as there was no info (and I had a small SSD). Then few hours to even build. Lastly at start it took 30 min to compile over 5000 freaking shaders. So ugh, yeah, clearly my PC was too old for UE5. I did try later after I bought a new PC. It does still need 5 min for shaders now. And that’s needed when major options are changed.
    Still, my impression is that most people would need to buy a new PC to use UE5, unless they already got a new gaming PC. It is really demanding on hardware.

    🔍Observations, Issues

    Of course, these are specific to me, using it on Linux. Also to what I was testing: for Stunt Rally try, so in 3D, mainly for driving cars, on gravel and for stunts.
    Also I didn’t spend years using UE just maybe over 1 month total. I could be wrong, or assumed something using my anti-commercial logic, or just didn’t care to investigate longer.

    I list here all my issues I had using UE5.

    • UE is a big commercial hub, feels like a shop. Not for true FOSS projects. Lots of assets, meant to be used for Unreal projects only. Nothing is CC Licensed. They also have own binary file format for everything, only .ini readable for options. I did import e.g. trees from .fbx (which can be exported from Blender) but that needed more work, making materials later.
    • Aimed at Windows and making big profits. Obviously if someone paid for Windows, they’re more likely to pay for its software. Linux is the least popular so least supported.
    • Not meant to be used on Linux only. Nothing can be downloaded, as this needs the freaking Launcher application which has only msi installer. Even their demos don’t support Linux, e.g. this and that. Thus IMO they don’t fully support Linux, just wanted to add it to platforms list, as only the engine works but not the rest of their ecosystem. The Quixel Bridge is also not working at all. I don’t care about that integration, to add assets directly to project content. I’m a fan of simple download buttons or repositories. But big companies progress by buying other companies and so “improving”, which is also a way to be more monopolistic.
    • Editor GUI. IMO it’s utter garbage and a mess. I wouldn’t enjoy using it daily. There is a “magical” way to scale whole GUI. But no real options to choose font sizes, icons, themes or other visual stuff. Seriously, in such a big editor, used by so many people every day? Sounds like a joke to me. I can’t take seriously any* programs which don’t allow user to (at least) change their theme and font size. *even small, but except my own. I have made my own themes for every software I used for longer.
    • Tons of properties, written in same tiny, plain text, no idea which important, no icons for settings or e.g. even colors or bigger fonts for more important/significant ones. No way to bookmark properties or settings to know which I want to remember easily. Should I like write them on paper or something like in middle ages, or remember all that? Some have tooltips (white) with decent text, some very little. At least the worst stuff is bottom in properties usually. And the (rhi) statistics texts are even smaller and less readable. I made my own Fps and statistics bar in SR and it has few detail modes now, medium size font, and even coloring from value, if it’s red that’s bad.
    • Editing terrain. Seriously cumbersome. If you ever seen or used Stunt Rally Track Editor, it should be pretty clear what I mean. Sure, I wrote it myself so it has what I find best already. I mean using just mouse wheel to adjust brush size and force. Also having keys that increase those. Then plenty of terrain brushes to choose from. All brushes using floats and computed for needed size. I could go on. We made over 200 tracks just using those tools. Seems like UE doesn’t care much about such tools. There are some other software programs (big and commercial too) that will make a terrain which you can import instead of editing. BTW I saw no way to import raw float heightmaps which we use since years for best quality.
    • Gizmo. Well it may be my personal hatred for that thing. But how am I supposed to drag that one axis if it’s covered by another. Probably need to focus, rotate around or use ctrl, meh. We don’t have a gizmo in SR editor, yes it may not be obvious how you’ll move etc, but you’ll always be able to do it, directly from anywhere.
    • Physics. I’ve seen some opinions on internet that it got worse in UE5 (has Chaos), from UE4 (had PhysX) if I got it right. So far I had plenty of sudden car jumps because of what looked to be normal wheel force from contact, getting weirdly high. Also had some sudden object jumps, flying far very quickly. All not looking good or real, seems like an unstability. I did increase substeps and decrease interval to get better simulation at high speeds, and I did surprisingly fix that wheels wobbling suspension. I could drive even over 600 km/h in big glass pipe loop and 450 in smaller one. That’s probably the only thing better than in SR with Bullet physics, but I’m still using old version and didn’t try new in years.
    • As of UE 5.3 which I tried, I was not able to turn on Nanite at all, and neither HW ray tracing. And those are UE’s biggest, prominent features. I used Debian 12 and AMD GPU with Vulkan. Saw some post that 5.4 could fix it, maybe.
    • Lumen software reflections. Man, those look laughable. I guess most would use HW ray tracing now or in few years. But I’d rather have my own cubemap rendered and used for other parts too. Instead of looking at Screen Space Reflections (a recent disease) or those blobs (done by Lumen software reflections) when screen space didn’t cover. Plus I’ve never seen car underside reflected properly here. Lastly I tried adding reflection captures and thoses didn’t work. Could be my fault, whatever.
    • Many effects are iterative, updated partly over time, and so they work best when not moving. E.g. volumetric fog lit from car lights, is moving inside car when driving. Reflections also have some noise, changing pixels. Global Illumination with Lumen, also does fluctuate and spread unevenly over time. Sure, it’s new technology and best if it didn’t melt GPUs doing impossible today. But it feels to me like these are just targeted for those indoor furniture designs and static shots, not games.
    • Many things even vehicle parameters need that Compile pressed after changing, then running to test. Really not convenient. The default vehicle simulation is completely nonsense. I guess it could be good for basic arcade games. That’s to be expected. Can’t touch dedicated C++ code for vehicle simulation like VDrift or even RoR with deformation. I found an older UE4 vehicle simulation, whole made with blueprints. Is good to learn from, didn’t feel great to drive though, but I’ve spend not much time with it.
    • Lots of thins are still done from console with typing commands. I guess no need to add them to that pile of unrecognizable settings list yet, probably translated though. But on the up side, there are plenty of options to customize for sure.
    • Crashes. Last but not least. IDK if it’s just because I use Linux, or Vulkan, or AMD, or their drivers. Doesn’t matter, either way I had many UE crashes. Luckily I didn’t loose much, seemed to be at end mostly. Still, not a good sign, not for stable software, not for daily use. Also seems to me like UE is favoring NVidia GPUs or maybe they have better hardware ray tracing, IDK and don’t have time to investigate. Ah and trying to start profilegpu did reset my PC instead.
    • Whenever you change key options it will be building over 5000 shaders again, which takes for me 5 min. And Package project at first takes like 30 min, but later it does much faster even less than 1 min. There are slow downs of like 5-15 sec whenever you save a material etc, there are structures in UE that need to be rebuild and this a slow delay when editing.

    🎛️Blueprints

    I’m kind of in the middle with this topic. Both good and bad.

    Quite a lot of stuff can be done using Blueprints. There are games made just using them.
    But then you’ll be dependent on them, which means no full control over what’s happening, and just doing what others tell you to do their (commercial) way. There is no avoiding blueprints, even with C++ code.
    Another thing is that the list with blocks in blueprints is again huge. Here even a video with main ones. So usually you’ll have to type more to find a block. Even if + or * etc is enough to get simple operations, that’s still just ridiculous for me as a programmer to put a block and connect those lines to it, instead just typing + in code.
    But yes, they’re easier to understand for non programmers. Still, I felt like I didn’t know how to do anything at all, when I was starting with blueprints. So it’s not like those were easier to start, just less to set up (no external IDE, compiler).
    Lastly big, complex games would require a lot of code, which in blueprints means few times more clicking connecting, picking blocks, to me it feels like slow playing with toys instead of developing. And then area is huge, also hard to find stuff, lots of moving around and zooming. Sure there are comments, same as in code. But much more code can fit in text editor. And it doesn’t go both vertical and horizontal (when done right). Doesn’t need zooming. I find code easier to navigate (definitions, references) too. All can be done faster by keyboard.

    There is a cool webiste with lots of blueprints here.
    One good part for blueprints (similar to scripts) is their safety, since they show errors, won’t break, etc. While code can crash, corrupt memory, loop infinitely etc. And could take more time to build and test too.

    ☑️ Good parts

    At least at start, because I seem to end them with a view that’s not good.

    • A lot of stuff working already. But as the saying goes: if something is good for everything it’s also good for nothing (i.e. not great for anything particular). Also if you wanted a change in their sources then it’s a huge amount of it to even grasp (like 50 GB total). And more games using UE will mean more will look the same due to its technology.
    • Plenty of (free) Plugins. Even fancy things like Niagara (3D smoke and fluids simulation, rather not for my/current hardware). But Water is still Experimental (yet essential), and I had some bugs with it (underwater fog was bad at times, even white flashes, then after publish it was at random level above sometimes). Very many plugins are also in Beta and version 0.1. Seems like it’s still too early. IDK maybe UE5 is still too young. I’m obviously only considering free plugins.
    • Useful modelling tools included. E.g. video. Can quickly edit and draft a scene with basic models, already inside UE. For me not needed, as we already have our assets, and tracks made.
    • Many possibilites to generate and place stuff (meshes, vegetation etc) with PCG. Still, those are rather new UE features. Which I’d expect much earlier. E.g. someone using UE4 didn’t have them, years ago. And frankly, in Stunt Rally we had automatic vegetation placing and road generation with LODs since the beginning in 2010.
    • Can move camera with W,S,A,D and Q,E, that’s cool, even bookmark places. But I didn’t find a way to change the speed by keys, and sliders don’t allow any values just predefined, IDK.
    • Plenty of debugging view modes and visualizations. Well the rendering engine is very complicated and “heavy” (high HW requirements) so these will be needed to optimize, probably even if you don’t want to. A very good (but older UE4) video series pipeline bottlenecks, passes.
    • Seems like Visual Studio is again default for C++ but at least VS Code is supported. So my setup with clang and VSCodium won’t work. And OgreNext supports clang officially. UE C++ is also in its own style. Quite old, not even similar to new C++ versions. All variables used and methods use big letters. Video here. Yes it’s a matter of preference (or getting used to) but yeah I dislike this too.
    • Many resources to learn from. Still those are commercials for Unreal and their addons etc but if you filter this out and ignore, then there can be plenty of useful, or universal information to learn in general.
    • UE is definitely huge and complex. With high popularity and big community it’s easy to find solutions to problems. But that doesn’t mean less problems. Actually I found many topics on forum which didn’t solve anything and seemed like unnecessary distraction, like from people not knowing English not only UE. Surely it was easy to find out why I got gray models after Packaging, but why on Earth weren’t shared wrap samplers the default, causing this issue. I think there is a lot of detail to be known to get UE working for any project.

    ⏳Summary

    Well definitely you can learn a lot, not only from using UE in practice, but also from that big number of videos either in their playlist, or lots of other videos from creators around UE. There is also a decent amount of documentation. This can help when starting or using UE, but also for getting information on various subjects around rendering or games etc (just at a smaller fraction).

    So it was a cool experience, completely opposite to mine. I mean using an advanced rendering only engine, built from C++ sources. Not just installed, and already with most needed tools. There is a gigantic gap or difference between those. And not only in software size and thus difficulty, but also in the community. It’s a complete opposite too. In UE (or Unity, Godot etc) you can simply even put your question in youtube and find a video (or few) with answer. When I was searching for UE vehicle tutorials there were even few playlists with that.

    Still, it’s not reasonable to change rendering or game engine far in production. Only possible at start. And SR is and already was far in production, having my own coded features, even when those engines weren’t available, that popular or so feature full. So clearly just because of that I won’t really be able to change engine. And neither would I have patience to spend 2 years or so, right after I’ve spend over 1 year to move “just” from Ogre to OgreNext.

    UE is big, and very commercial, so Windows, NVidia, Visual Studio are default, if not only option here for all things to work. So definitely not for me as a Linux only developer. I think they also use some telemetry, I’m not sure, but I saw urls, sent to their website from UE, as warnings in log, when I didn’t have internet.

    Lastly there are plenty open source engines, e.g. listed here, or new list here, also tools here, and a big collection of engine related links here with lots of libraries and sources.

  • 2024 Rigs of Rods tracks

    2024 Rigs of Rods tracks

    ⏱️Overview

    This is a notable but short entry, not much of a project, rather a contribution.
    I developed an Exporter code in Stunt Rally 3 Track Editor allowing tracks export for Rigs of Rods (also FOSS game).
    BTW also gathered many (CC licensed) assets from SR for use in RoR.

    📂Media

    Downloads
    for RoR tracks are in this topic. Also require assets from here.

    📷Screenshots
    gallery from many tracks start here on RoR forum topic. Also older WIP here.

    ▶️Video here
    Shows drive in RoR on one SR track and at end (somewhat outdated) Gui for Export in SR3 Track Editor.

    Documentation here.
    Explaining differences and how to use SR3 Export for SR or own made tracks for RoR.

    🔍Details

    I first noticed some interest in this topic. It also has a lot more detail in my posts, screens, and RoR bugs listed too. There wasn’t a lot of interest, so it was actually much more a challenge for me to try. And well it consumed me for like 3 weeks. A lot of C++ coding (76 kB in total) for that Export functionality and even my hands started hurting after (was too much typing late into nights).
    The Export also allows others to create tracks for RoR using our SR3 Track Editor.

    Finally 130 tracks from SR are available in RoR, so about 55% from 229. Is quite significant at once I think. It was also a lot of fun to drive SR tracks in RoR simulation and BTW learn about RoR code and people involved. Of course I got back to developing SR3 after.

  • 2022-24 Terrain Demo ⛰️

    2022-24 Terrain Demo ⛰️

    ⏱️Overview

    This is a project I started to learn and test newer version of Ogre rendering engine: Ogre-Next.
    Later I moved Stunt Rally 3 to use the engine too.
    Now also a showcase for nature scene rendering using the engine.

    📷Gallery

    Screenshots here.

    ▶️Videos

    Are here: new, old.

    📂Sources

    Available here. Licensed: MIT.
    Unlike my other projects, where I choose GPLv3 that requires releasing modifications, under same license.

    It has no Gui or other dependencies and should be easy to build.

    🔍Details

    At first it was a project to test Ogre-Next and code needed to get things done in it. Surprisingly half (or more) is done different way than in Ogre. But I am also surprised by better performance and optimizations done by the engine.

    It is also a good tool to test and fix bugs in Ogre-Next, e.g. many for planar reflections used for water.

    Recently I also updated it with some media from Stunt Rally 3 to make it look better and be a showcase.

  • 2022 stm32 console 🎛️

    2022 stm32 console 🎛️

    ⏱️Overview

    This is a tiny project, that took about 2 days. It uses the “Bluepill” MCU board with small OLED display for info texts and has few buttons to toggle LED lights and relays for audio outputs.

    ✍️Motivation

    For many years (seems about 20) I was using just old logic chips. And it felt ancient, so I finally decided to do it with bluepill.
    Having a small display is nice and informative. With many inputs and outputs left, there is still room for later changes.
    This “console” is very useful and has a place just left of my keyboard.
    Has no case yet, and I’m not sure if it will, I’m just covering it with a black cloth.

    📂Sources

    Sources are here.
    Actually just using that Arduino .ino since it’s a small project.
    I was editing code in VSCodium, then building and uploading using the worst Arduino IDE 1.8.19.

    📊Features

    • STM32F103C8T6 “Bluepill” MCU – cheap, but decent
    • Small OLED display – for OSD info texts, saying what pressing button did
    • Few (8) buttons, for toggling:
      • 3 LED lights – and adjust their brightness with PWM
      • Audio DAC output to: speakers / headphones / bathroom (12V relays)
      • USB switch (5V relays) – directs keyboard (KC4) and mouse to PC or laptop
    • Just as a place to mount my 2 other important buttons:
      • LCD monitor input switch
      • PC power on/off
  • 2020-22 cAmp2 ▶️

    2020-22 cAmp2 ▶️

    ⏱️Overview

    New implementation of my audio player, based on my older cAmp.
    Works on GNU/Linux (and should on Windows).
    Now using SFML for graphics, and ImGui for the new GUI. Still using (not FOSS) bass for audio.

    📂Sources

    Available here.
    Now with CMake and newer C++17 syntax.

    📷Gallery

    Screenshots here.
    Starts with normal playlist, find, track backgrounds explanation with time coloring, tabs adjust, later 3 visualizations, their themes, and rest of Gui windows.

    ✍️Motivation

    Old cAmp was WinAPI and DirectX only and had bad style, old C++03 too. It was still one of my last college projects.
    I did once try moving it to SFML, and almost succeeded. I had no pressing motivation until I started moving to Debian GNU/Linux instead of Windows which required this new version. I made things differently this time and with more experience, hence the Gui and visible options.

    Missing Features

    The old cAmp was using GPU shaders and cAmp2 doesn’t use them yet. Seems not that needed. And it doesn’t even have hotkeys or threads implemented here. Well there is always something on my “to do” list for this project, like for any other.

    📊New Features

    Apart from most of the old features (with few important missing) it has some new ones too.

    Most notable addition is the Gui with few windows having controls for changing view parameters, adjusting with sliders or showing info. Since ImGui is such a joy to use it was also easy to implement bindable all program keys list and move all options to Gui.

    Other new features:

    • Colored tabs, sliders for their background and text brightness. Empty tabs as separators.
      Can be seen on screens. I find it quite useful, e.g. for now I have 4 rows, first is for Trance style, 2nd for older trance, 3rd for rock, 4th for metal genres (about 31 playlists total).
    • In between markers. E.g. if I filter tracks so that playing cursor or find matches become not visible then it draws a shorter marker still, to show they are between those visible. (It’s best shown on 2nd screenshot also 3rd and this).
    • New visualization type (screens, parameters): FFT above and spectrogram below.
    • Visualization themes and sliders for adjusting colors.
    • Rebindable all key shortcuts list with filtering. And help for mouse actions.
    • Queue tab(s). Any tab can be set as queue. It will be marked in 4 corners. Then you can add tracks with one key (E) to queue end. Good for temporary playlists or “best of” ones.

    ⌛Conclusions

    Well it is definitely useful. It’s one of those key programs I need to have at start of any OS (first is my DoubleCmd fork, then this player, 3rd is Firefox with many add-ons).
    Yet it’s still missing one crucial feature like moving (reordering) tracks. Kind of funny, but I still don’t need it that much. I just delete whole playlist and add its main folder again to refresh once a while, and keep order in my filenames and subdirs. There are few other features missing too from previous version. But if I’m doing bigger projects (like Stunt Rally 3) or smaller and more interesting ones, then I don’t have time for this nice useful program which I still use every day. If we count the older one too, made in 2009, this would be the longest used program I made.

  • 2021-22 Fan Controller 🌡️

    2021-22 Fan Controller 🌡️

    ⏱️Overview

    This is a nice gadget I made recently for controlling speed / power of my PC fans (all are 12cm, 12V, 3 pin, with RPM output).
    It has way more features than my old & basic 3 knob regulator which I used for over 15 years.
    And since this is open source (and I wrote it), it surely has and can have any feature (commercially unavailable, not even thought of, or way too expensive).
    Obviously it isn’t badly needed, that’s why I made it after so long.

    📷Gallery

    Pictures here.

    📂Sources

    Sources for Teensy 3.1 or 3.2 are available here.

    I do not recommend Teensy 3 at all. All Teensy boards are quite expensive and aren’t that needed for a fan controller. I think a bluepill or blackpill would suffice and be much cheaper. More info and detail in my MCU tutorial.
    I simply used Teensy 3 since I had it available, doing nothing and I had code for it from my older keyboard firmware, so it was faster to adapt it.

    ✍️Motivation

    For many years I was using just the simplest LM317T voltage regulators with 3 knobs (for 3 fan sets).

    Obviously a basic analog fan controller is very simple and extremely useful. I had 3 knobs (5k logarithmic potentiometers) with LM317T (even with no capacitors or radiators), mounted in the 3½” floppy disk bay. It was working very well for years and I could still use it.

    I did try once a Gelid Speedtouch 6, wasn’t very cheap, and it was hopeless. Even worse, when I realized that I can make a better one myself, like usually.
    Additionally, after being rather finished with my keyboard features, I had some Teensy 3.2 boards left, lying around, doing nothing, simply asking to be used for something. Even better, I could use my older keyboard firmware for Teensy 3.2 and adapt it fast for this controller.

    So I finally got to creating it. I called it “Fancy” from Fan C(ontroller).
    There was something new to learn too. I even used a cool circuit simulator to find out resistors around transistor, wasn’t exactly the real value later though.

    And of course not everything went as planned.

    For example: I wanted to use thermocouples for temperature which I had few of already. I tried an op-amp with differential amplifier for them and used ADC to read voltage which seemed working on breadboard. But after doing that for real (and using bigger resistor values) something didn’t work and I saw noise. So after few days trying I dropped it and just used DS18B20. They are bigger (3pin package) but have more precise measurement (at higher cost too).

    Unfortunately I also killed one Teensy 3.2 board by accident. I’m not even sure how. I’m guessing some 12V was still left on capacitors and I could touch 3.3V pins with it.

    📊Features

    A shorter, bulleted list of all features can be seen in sources readme with more detail on electronic parts and schematic (image here).

    GUI

    It has a 3×3 keyboard and a LCD color display (diagonal is 1.8″, 4.5 cm). I did years ago my keyboards this way, so it also came with 3 levels menu (GUI), many options and even full screen demos (why not).
    Of course it permanently saves all settings, in EEPROM.

    📈Regulating

    The main advantage of my digital fan controller is that it allows lower RPM than analog, which then makes PC slightly quieter.
    This is because a fan needs shortly higher power (voltage or PWM) to start, but can have it lower after it started rotating (I don’t mean the power started rotating ?).

    Next, it monitors RPM (revolutions per minute).
    So a natural safety feature here is: stop prevention (or in general RPM guard). It can increase power shortly to start again, even if user picked too little power to spin, or something stopped the fan.

    Additionally PWM outputs can be used, for fans that allow it. Actually all of my old PC fans didn’t work with PWM, so I had to also make analog outputs (channels) for them at some point. I don’t know if it could be more universal, these channels require some other parts.
    So it can control analog fans (changing constant voltage) and PWM fans (changing modulated pulse width at medium frequency).

    Optionally, temperature is measured. It can be used as feedback to automatically set fan power. This is naturally useful if sensor is on (or near) the heating part which fan is cooling.
    Sure, this can be possible to do with some software, that came with PC motherboard, GPU or a separate program. But it may not work on Linux or have all of my custom features.
    During summer I had my fans set higher, also even did set them lower when I wasn’t using much CPU (e.g. playing games or building C++). So hopefully this feature will make controller do it now, not me.

    Since the display is 160×128 pixels, it can show graphs of RPM or Temperature over time. Even few smaller at once, but with less detail.

    ⌛Conclusions

    Well it was a cool project, not just with digital chips, I had to use transistors with other parts too. I’m glad that one of the boards I have unused got to do something everyday.
    I hope it will last long. After all, my old regulators were really basic and much easier to repair (which wasn’t needed).
    Surely this thing is heavy, probably has too many parts too, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not like my PC weight matters at all.

  • 2020-22 K.C.4 Controller ⌨️

    2020-22 K.C.4 Controller ⌨️

    ⏱️Overview

    This is my newest keyboard controller software (based on my previous one) used in my keyboard CK9 (upgraded CK6), running on Teensy 4.0 with a 2.8″ color LCD display (320×240, ILI9341 chip).

    📷Gallery

    Album with pictures here.

    ▶️Videos

    Here are videos of keyboard CK9, showing most of K.C.4 on its display:

    • View – Short video of keyboard and closeup at display.
    • Demos – Showing all demos (in auto mode): Plasma, 3D Polyhedrons with diagonals, Wave, Fire (meh), 2D waving CK Logo with shadow, and old Rain.
    • Features – A detailed look at features, no voice or commentary though. Editing mappings, sequences, testing etc.

    Link to my channel with all keyboard videos so far here.

    📂Sources

    My firmware sources are on github.
    It’s called K.C.4 (“Kacey”) simply from Keyboard Controller and 4 from Teensy version.

    The readme with all key features is visible on github. Here is more practical description.
    At end of page I wrote a comparison from my previous version (for Teensy 3.2) and quickly with other controllers / keyboards.

    📊Features

    The current code features are (and were mostly present in my previous K.C. version):

    • Display with menu, where you can edit everything possible.
    • Mapping (key binding).
      So which USB code will the physical key send to PC when pressed. There is a pick list with all common keys (and internal functions, sequences, etc) to choose from when binding. It has group colors and group filter for easier orientation.
    • Keyboard layout drawn on display.
      Shown when editing mappings (for currently chosen layer). Has a cursor to move around between keys. It’s also possible to jump to a key by pressing it.
    • Layers.
      If you hold a key, whole keyboard layout changes giving you other keys. Kind of like the Fn keys on laptop but much more useful and customizable. A common feature of custom controllers.
      Locking layers is also possible, either by lock/unlock key, tapping layer key fast or holding it for longer. Of course can be disabled and delay parameters are changeable.
    • Mouse keys.
      Keys that will move mouse, press mouse buttons or scroll mouse wheel. Also featuring acceleration with parameters for it and speed in GUI.
    • Sequences aka Macros.
      Basically any key combinations (for key shortcuts) and any sequences of key presses (for e.g. passwords). I am showing sequence previews where possible too, so when editing Mappings (for a sequence key), when picking a key from list or Testing pressed keys (if a key runs a sequence). I am also showing in sequences View, all mapped keys that run selected sequence.
    • Sequence commands are just a further extension.
      • They are special commands (beside sequence keys), that e.g. wait for few seconds (0.1s resolution), or change how slow the sequence will run (1ms resolution, useful e.g. for putty).
      • Others allow putting comments (for sequence purpose), and hiding sequence from preview (e.g. for passwords).
      • There is also a command to run other sequence(s) from this one. Also a repeat command that will do sequence (keys) continuously, until interrupted. This is e.g. useful e.g. if you want to watch a video faster, skipping parts with arrow keys after a short delay or take screenshots while watching etc. Normal keys can be used when a sequence runs too.
      • All mouse actions are available as commands too. So for example you can press a key (for a sequence) that will press button or move mouse etc. I have this way a mouse gesture done.
    • Internal functions.
      Keys to e.g. dim brightness, toggle GUI, toggle LED light, quit sequence, lock/unlock layer, change default layer etc. This a direct way, faster than adjusting parameters in GUI.
    • Testing and Setup pages.
      Useful when developing and to check if everything is working properly. Scan setup is advanced and adjust which strobe delay, scan frequency, debounce time I need. Matrix page shows the 18×8 keyboard matrix, with my anti-ghosting code working and any issues from too low strobe delay.
      It now also features X marks on keys that are available in matrix but not present on layout, this makes locating new extra keys very easy.
    • Demos and Game.
      Were already present in previous version and even on the first tiny display I used (128×64 mono). Since I have a display, and a powerful MCU, they show their drawing possibilities.
      They got extended to new resolution with few added extras. Best shown on videos, links below.
    • Clock.
      With date (uses internal RTC, needs 3V battery).
      Also showing Temperature, read from attached DS18B20 1-wire sensor (optional).
    • Statistics.
      Clock also displays (on its extended pages) keyboard use statistics:
      • Uptime.
        Time since power on or plugged in USB.
      • Late hour background.
        Will start slowly showing top of display orange at 22:00 and every 0:30 min going more visible, being yellow after 0:00 (midnight). This is to notify and motivate me to go to sleep when I sit too long at night.
      • Active time.
        I.e. how long I use keyboard without a break (at least 5 min, can be adjusted). Changes color from value.
        This is helpful to know if I’m doing something too long on PC. After all, it is recommended to take 5 min breaks every hour, it is healthy for spine and hands.
      • Inactive time.
        The opposite. Useful to know how long was I away from PC (keyboard). Also changes color when over 1 hour. Meaning I probably should have turned it off, to save power.
      • Press/min.
        Typing frequency, so how much key presses are done every minute. A colored value on left, going e.g. red at 120, yellow starting at 50.
        Also a second value below with total average since power on, with slowly changed value. So it is useful and directly corresponds to how tired will hands be. It’d be great to keep this value below 50, but sadly writing any text (e.g. chat, email etc.) or playing a game makes it go even above 150.
    • Graphs.
      As a part of clock, they show history of using keyboard (key presses/minute in the past hours). Second one is for temperature history. There are 320 points on display width and parameters for how often a value is added to graph.

    ⌨️Keyboard CK9

    I upgraded my 2018 keyboard CK6 with this bigger display and K.C.4 and it became CK9. I also added tiny extra keys, lots of them. Above Numpad, 2 rows of 8 or in other words 4 groups of 4. Surely will come handy for e.g. internal functions or could be extra F13-F24 keys for OS.
    The keyboard has visible tear on few keys already, well I use it since 2016 (was CK3 first). Nothing yet, compared to the 14 year old one (CK7/4/2).

    ✍️Motivation

    My previous version of KC and keyboards with it were quite useful and the 1.8″ color display was good too. The keyboard drawn on screen was minimal. Keys with one letter/digit/symbol had a 5×7 font, but 2 letters needed a tiny 3×5 font. It worked, but didn’t look great.
    So the new display is bigger 2.8″ and has about 2x resolution (320×240 vs 160×128).

    The main reason for this upgrade though was the new Teensy 4.0 with a MCU that runs at 600MHz. It seems to be the fastest one available (on a board with USB, ready to use). And is even way faster than all previous. I already didn’t like Arduino in 2014 when I got interested in MCUs (again), seemed like a stone age relic compared to Teensy 3, but today I can say they probably have computational power of a rock, when compared.

    The result is constant 45 frames per second almost always. This is what 600MHz MCU with SPI set at 60MHz for this display does, while using DMA for transfers and double buffered drawing (one buffer is being sent by DMA to display, while MCU draws new frame in second buffer, at the same time).

    ⚖️Comparisons

    Of course, there were many projects of using a big display with slow MCU even. A MCU not having enough RAM for screen buffer. But this means very low refresh rate (low Fps) and flickering (blinking when redrawn).

    There are few open source keyboard controllers, I think none of them even have a display, and some still use ATmega 8bit MCUs. Their requirements for program and RAM (memories of a MCU) are minimal, way lower than mine. And the price will be lower too. But the main flaw coming from it, is having to compile on PC and upload to MCU after any change. This is a big nope for me.

    📢Rants

    So for me, this is now the present (not the future anymore). And well honestly, whenever I see a custom keyboard picture I’m just asking: “where’s the display?”. In addition, seeing Cherry MX or any switches turns me away immediately.

    Because there is one more very important thing that is the light press modification. All my keyboards since 2005 have it and it’s just the default for me. Sadly all commercial keyboards are garbage in this matter and people continue to produce keyboards that have a tactile feel, 4mm travel and around 50 gram force to press. Well for me this is the middle ages era. This can cause injuries (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome). And I guess it feels awful for those having pain from using such keyboards.

    For my modding process (of reducing rubber dome keys press force and travel) pictures are in this gallery and I made a video of it recently (it is CK5).

    ✅Summary table

    For reference, here is a table with current status of all my keyboards, since start until present day:

    NameAssembly yearOriginal keyboardKeys actuation
    [gram force]
    Notes
    CK3 > CK6 > CK92016 > 2018 > 2020A4 Tech KX-10023 gCheaper, bit wobbly, but more keys
    CK2 > CK4 > CK72005 > 2016 > 2018Logitech Ultra X Flat33 gStiff foil, old, extra keys
    CK5, CK5b2015, 2020A4 Tech KV-300H9-18 gThe lightest foil
    CK12004Logitech Ultra X Flat25 gFirst, old, had extra keys,
    now only for testing, 1 row dead 💀
  • 2019 DoubleCmd Fork 📂

    2019 DoubleCmd Fork 📂

    ⏱️Overview

    This is my modified version (a fork) of Double Commander (DC), a two panel file manager. I first forked it in 2017 and in 2019 I finally moved to using it daily instead of Total Commander. I will describe few aspects here.

    ℹ️How to start with DC

    Here is a short paragraph upfront, for those who didn’t use a commander or are new to DC and want to start using it (or give it a try). I recommend the main website (for download and support) and the documentation (help) about how to use its functions.

    Double Commander

    DC is cross platform, so it runs on Windows and GNU/Linux. It is inspired by TC. There are of course many other file managers, (some even in text mode like MC), but I think DC is perfect for me and I highly recommend it.

    The best features of DC though (for me), are being Open Source (FOSS, this gives Freedom) and still developed. What it means (especially for me) is that I can learn how it works and can change it myself. Or even add new features, including those that only I will use. And I can contribute to the project.

    📜My History

    I started using a file manager as a kid, already on my first PC which had DOS. It was Norton Commander (NC, in text mode). I quickly got to using it daily, as my main program to do all file and directory operations. I didn’t even know how to do them using DOS commands for a while. Well I barely started learning English and wasn’t able to read any documentation too (it wasn’t needed BTW).

    When I was moving to Windows 98 (around 1999), I naturally wanted a similar program. I didn’t like Windows Explorer at all or even windows in general (I was still sometimes going back to DOS). Fortunately there was a similar program, at the time simply called Windows Commander (WC ?). It was later renamed to Total Commander (TC). Using NC in Windows was possible, but not always, since DOS had short file names and Windows has longer.

    WC was better than NC, my favorite feature probably being that it could color file names by extension. I think it’s when I started adding my colors for file extensions I got to work with.

    Naturally, when I started using Kubuntu and later Debian, I wanted something like TC.

    ⏳Before I started

    I actually reported a couple of bugs that affected me the most and honestly prevented me from using DC. I was also too inexperienced to even try fixing them myself. Lastly those weren’t easy things to fix.

    These were:

    • Very slow File Filters. It took 4 seconds of delay to view 24000 files in a directory with my settings having 123 file filters. Directories over 1000 files were already entered with noticeable delay. And yes, my file extensions list grew and became something that I enjoy since years. Surely not something that I would throw away and just not use it.
    • Freeze on entering unreachable network paths. It happened often at work (where I had to use DC not TC) and also for more people. Application froze for nearly a minute. So quite an inconvenience to kill the process every time someone accidentally tries an unreachable path or a tab with it.
    • Compare by Contents not Implemented from Search result and archives. A simpler bug for a useful feature.

    After a few months the first issue was fixed. So I started making my own program to deal with my file extensions list for both DC and TC. I had a lot of them 96 in 2017 and 239 in 2019, this is just the count of unique colors (file filters), though I split some for readability (e.g. for Stunt Rally track sceneries).

    The program has its own page and is called Crystal Color Center. I’m sharing it with my list included. It allows an managing the list on an even higher level, with features like: groups, search, quicker editing (with R,G,B sliders) and of course import / export for both DC and TC. Thanks to it, moving my list from TC to DC was easy and any changes to it is fast and conveniently done in my program.

    The second bug was fixed after a year (still, I can’t complain since I didn’t do it earlier). But earlier it became not that needed anymore for me.

    After that it was probably the time, when I realized I should fix the rest of my issues with DC. I mean just missing things from TC that I got so used to. It also turned to a nice learning experience and woken up old memories from Pascal.

    ✍️How I started

    Well the start is the hardest part of any software (program or game) or even any project in general. To start, the page Building from source is crucial. And I believe it’s probably the most important page for any FOSS project. Of course beside a good documentation for users. Fortunately the instruction is not long or difficult.

    Sources are surely different, because DC is written in FreePascal. Lucky for me, I knew Pascal since DOS and later Delphi in Windows. So I had some start and the rest is nicely explained on internet and in language documentation and wiki. But basically I prefer to just search on internet for particular problem. It doesn’t matter where I land (doc, wiki, forum, stackoverflow, etc.) to read the solution or hints.

    At first I was building just from command line. After installing packages for Lazarus IDE (a bit more trouble) I could develop in it. Naturally I created my own color theme for Lazarus IDE as a result. And I also saw that weird build “Internal error 200611031″ plenty of times (well count – 1 too many).

    FreePascal

    The DC code is quite big and it surely requires time to get a hang of it. Learning FreePascal adds even more time. But it is a very nice (almost funny) language which also reminded me of my earliest years of programming (at college I moved to C++ and later also C#).

    Pascal language doesn’t use so many symbols, making other languages look more like a forest. Pascal code looks more like a book. Not a phone book, a novel. An English book where people write what should happen. Assuming that comments are written in English too, which I recommend always.

    Well let’s have an example, I have cut and pasted few very readable lines here:

    uses
      Forms, Controls, Dialogs, Buttons, Menus, Classes;
    
    procedure LoadSettings;
    function GetOptionsForm: TfrmOptions;
    function GetAName: String; virtual; abstract;
    destructor Destroy; override;
    
    const
      allowed : set of char = [ '-', '.', '_', '~' ];
    
    var
      I: Char;
    begin
      for I := #0 to #255 do
      begin
        case I of
          '_', 'a'..'z', 'A'..'Z', '0'..'9': Identifiers[I] := True;
        else
    
    implementation
    
    if not Assigned(Operation) then Exit;
    Operation.Execute;
    
    with Operation as TMultiArchiveCopyInOperation do
      begin
      if cbEncrypt.Checked then
        repeat
          ..
        until sPassword = sPasswordTmp;
    
    finally
      Free;

    ⚖️Pascal vs C++, quick rants

    Well I can’t say I’m finally free yet ?, but surely many things from Pascal are great and make it very nice to read. E.g. that uses statement at start, compared to #include each in own line in C++. Or the with do statement that shortens a whole block below.

    C++ is a horribly unreadable at start. And just to mention, some terrible mistakes made by just one symbol, like if (i = 0), instead of ==, that compiles fine. But I did like { } brackets for blocks, instead of begin and end, how many times did I spell them wrong.

    I also remember my favorite thing from Turbo Pascal: F9 key to build project, if there is an error it jumps to it in code. Far too many times in Visual Studio I pressed: F1 to show error list, Enter to go to error and Shift-Esc to close that bloody thing. I can’t even ? (and those are my own shortcuts, just Esc won’t work).

    It is much better with C# where it compiles in background and underlines bad expressions in code already.

    One great thing in Lazarus IDE is that it makes tabs for each search you do. Why on earth can’t VS do it??

    I could go on. But the point is, it was really nice (for a change) to code in a completely different language. I think I’d put Pascal after C++ and before C#. Okay then, that’s it from off topic.


    📊My version

    Now we finally arrive at the main and most interesting part (at least for me).

    After I was able to use Lazarus IDE and felt good with Pascal (again), I wrote new features and customized DC to my liking. I also made source patches for some features on DC BugTracker.

    📂Sources

    Full list of my changes (in commits) can be browsed here (or locally after cloning with Git).

    Here is what I changed and why:

    • Undo Close Tab
      I simply can’t imagine having dynamic tabs anywhere without this. We’ll see if it gets into final DC release, and when.
    • Multi Rename tool
      More compact look and new functions listed here. Probably the biggest update.
      I use this tool a lot at home, e.g. dealing with thousands of screenshots, deleting later half or one third of them, re-enumerating them with this tool and doing it again.
    • Status bar
      New look, visible on screenshot above.
      I really like to have a different status bar (text and color) for when anything is selected.
      I once had selected files, not visible at cursor, forgot them, wanted to delete a file at cursor and deleted them all.
    • Size colors
      Next, why shouldn’t I have different colors for different sizes (K, M, G etc)?
      Sure for some it’d be too much color. But I’m using the same idea in my audio player (cAmp), coloring track times and I find it informative.
    • Gradient for cursor (blue) and selection (orange).
      Also visible on screenshot above. I think it’s nice, more futuristic.
    • Follow links to destination.
      With Ctrl – (Left,Right or Up), quite a useful thing.
      I have few dirs with just such links (.lnk files) and use them as my starting point e.g. when developing one of my projects.
      And BTW a quick feature to use Ctrl-Shift-S on cursor to make a link to it, without asking.
    • Find Files results, Color by file types.
      Another useful extension. Seems natural for me, to have any list of files use coloring by file type (extensions) especially when I have so many in my list.
    • Some smaller things.
      Not very important, but definitely nice to have and a cool exercise to find it in code.

    Another thing of mine is file and directory rating. I use it constantly since years too. This is visible on screenshot above as symbols ` ^ ~ + after name. It makes it easy to spot more interesting files/dirs and makes them change color (usually intensity). It is also an internal feature of my player to apply the symbols to filenames.

    ⚙️Contributing (in general)

    There are a few different change types to software, that anyone can report, contribute, or have on own fork.

    • Bug or issue reports.
      This is relatively easy to do as user. And is surely a good thing to receive as a developer. With more features in project and more systems where it can run, it is difficult to catch bugs. I didn’t like those reports as a Stunt Rally developer, but without them it would be a more buggy game.
      But still, there is probably nothing worse than a post “help, it doesn’t work”, without any (not to mention all) data required like version, OS, steps, etc. In that case it’s better not to post.
      There is a general guide for “how to report a bug” and some project have specific ones.
    • Bug fixes.
      Like those above, but better. They requires programming skills though. It’s when you fix a bug yourself and submit it (to developers).
      In Git that would be a pull request (from your fork, name is surely misleading). It is less trouble to merge and test, also more convenient to discuss (on website Codeberg, GitLab, Github, Bitbucket, etc.). But sometimes a patch is enough.
    • Ideas.
      Well that’s just the worst IMO. Everyone has them, just having is not much worth. Discussing them could mean wasted time on development. And developers have usually their own ideas and vision of project. Having more doesn’t help. But, I guess, it could be some help for starting projects, with not set vision yet.
    • New features, implemented.
      That is way better than just having ideas. Being able to turn them into reality. One can submit those to developers. But there is a catch. Not all will be attractive to put into project. Having too many features makes a project more difficult to test and more bugs are possible. And could make it more cluttered in GUI or Options (wasn’t an issue in my projects).
    • Custom own features.
      This is why I have so many forks. I do have plenty of ideas, I implemented them and I’m pretty sure nobody (from the developers) would care or want to add them (reasons above).
      Additionally, since I have a lot of preferences, it is natural to keep them in my own forks. This way I can keep up to date with upstream (main) project versions and have my stuff too. Priority for me is to keep my stuff.
      But merging upstream versions is needed too (once a while) even if it takes time. If not done, it would at some point accumulate too much, making upstream update too time consuming. Sometimes in that case, it could be possible to apply (merge) own changes (only if not too many) to a fresh upstream version.

    ⏳Conclusions

    My move to DC was surely long and took many steps. But I’m glad to use FOSS, not just as an alternative to commercial, but to prove that it’s simply the only logical way for me. It was obvious already earlier, when I created my own audio player (I use it everyday).

    If you’d ask me why I didn’t yet move to GNU/Linux (from that Windows crap) it is because of all those steps needed. DC was one of them. Rewriting my audio player for GNU/Linux is next. There are few other programs I customized and got used to (Video player, Image browser, etc.) but those two (DC and my cAmp) are crucial.

    I think I also showed some aspects of FOSS and the great things it brings. In particular, opportunities to: learn, express creativity and adjust to own needs.

  • 2017-21 Build Console C#

    2017-21 Build Console C#

    ⏱️Overview

    BuildConsole (BC) is the program I created and developed at work*, using C# (syntax here), in WinForms.
    Specifically to visualize output from build process. It surely is my biggest and most useful C# project so far.
    Unfortunately I can not open source it’s code because of that*. But I can share my experience from this process.

    📷Gallery

    Screenshots here. Starting with latest version from 2021 and its features, then with older until first from 2017.

    ⚙️How it works

    At its core, BuildConsole replaces the Windows cmd.exe command prompt (terminal) and will run any command too.

    It does so, by creating a process and redirecting its output, error and input streams.
    For the core part, it was quite useful to browse ConsoleControl code and many stackoverflow answers as usual.

    The main needed part of creating process is located here with redirecting (all 3 RedirectStandard*).
    It is also using BackgroundWorker classes (e.g. outputWorker) that run on own threads and read those redirected streams, to show output immediately when it comes.

    Textbox

    I used the richTextbox control (included in WinForms) since the beginning. It turned out to be garbage for this purpose.
    It makes few easy operations really too difficult:

    • Centering view to a line not even possible.
    • Adding a text line, is slowing down the more lines it already has.
    • View always jumped a little (jittered) when adding lines.
    • Having a user selection while adding text was a PITA, got it almost working.
    • Had to be unfocused before browsing text above.
      Otherwise new added lines would jump to end (even if turned off).
    • Finding text needed a lot of code. Mark all was painfully slow.

    So I recently found and adapted BC to use the FastColoredTextBox control instead. Which is on the other side of spectrum. It is so feature packed (almost like a real IDE) that I probably only use 10% of it.
    Still, it is way faster at drawing text, has all needed features and even some extras already (like bookmarks). It needs using only fixed width fonts though (I used variable before). But it is understandable that e.g. selecting text (block mode too) was much easier to implement because of that.

    ✍️Motivation and rants

    Well everybody in company was using just cmd.exe to build (nearly all) projects, with a custom .bat file. I can’t post how it looked like exactly, but I can surely tell that at some point, it looked like a black and white TV noise. It happened when building with VxWorks started, using GCC (which is awesome). But here, it was outputting full build command, for each file, with all include paths too (like 8 lines of junk). In other words, it seemed like somebody was shoving a black and white sand at my face. Well I couldn’t even ?.

    About 6 months after I started working there, I was building a project very often, to test an upmerge of some stupidly outdated branch. This required to look for build errors in that white text sandbox. It is when I realized I seriously can’t look at this trash and I simply can make a program, that filters out and colors this junk (firstly errors).

    So after asking and getting approval, I started implementing it. Then after about 2 weeks I had a first working release. It was pretty basic, but already way more useful. It still had a couple of bugs, which I fixed later.

    Screenshot

    Now I can’t provide a real work example (also because of that*), so I’m including an artificial example on the screenshot (above). Output is similar to real and more general.
    The good part is that it has like 1 to 3 lines of each common message. Normally there are many similar lines on one screen, but only few unique. This way screenshot shows the whole process on one screen with already most of line types included.

    📊Features

    Here is a list of all program features from current version. Starting from basic, first implemented and ending with additional extras, added much later (not essential, but useful). I am describing them in place.

    🔨Basic

    • Changing font on Settings tab.
      Zooming already present, with Ctrl-Wheel or Ctrl-Num+
    • Unlimited buffer scrollback.
      cmd.exe has very small default value, and even doesn’t allow more than 9999 lines, in settings.
    • Settings in a XML file, saved in user folder.
      I’d say a standard thing. Holds both user set options and all line rules (find text, color, skip and more).
    • Combo boxes for user paths and commands.
      With buttons on left to add, delete, set as default.
    • Filtering (skipping) useless lines.
      There is a lot of rubbish, e.g. coming from MSBuild (also visible in Visual Studio), like:
      “Compiling…”, “Generating code…”, something up to date, lines with just “Microsoft Visual Studio” (a greeting commercial) and more.
      With a simple xml option to skip a line, the final output becomes cleaner and to the point.
      There is a textbox with last line present (just below console) that shows those skipped ones too.
    • Coloring lines
      By regular expression (RegEx), more info on its syntax here.
      • Later replaced (and extended) by simple find (String.Contains).
      • Advanced RegExes
        Use groups and replace (change) the incoming line (to make it cleaner and shorter).
        Still doing a simple string check first, to make the whole process faster.

    ⚙️Utility

    • Progress list. On right, it has just key build steps.
      Copied from output with time since start. It shows only 0:00 here because this test was fast.
    • Double click on a line in progress list jumps to it in console.
      This was pretty easy with FastColoredTextBox and it also centers (impossible and awful in richTextbox).
    • Find.
      Searching for text in console, with:
      find next, previous, mark all and clear marks.
    • Program icon turning green when idle, yellow when running, red when build has errors.
    • Saving current console output to a text file.
      Loading saved files into console, to view them later, in same colors.
    • Log file, optional.
      Auto incremented for more program instances.
      There are checkboxes for disabling line skip in log file or in console.
    • Tooltips with info text for nearly all controls.
    • Icons for most controls, also in menu.
    • Help menu with full documentation in about 10 chapters.
      Also Changelog and nice About dialog.
    • Opening VS solution and VxWorks with workspace
      By button (all with hotkeys), you could open the project in path quickly.
      There sometimes were more in one path, so new settings were added in xml.

    🛠️Advanced

    • Auto loading settings.xml file when it changed.
      Open by button on Settings tab, and on save in editor, program already loads it.
      Useful with many instances, all will do it. Also if one saves settings, other will load it too.
    • Queue.
      Ability to run a command in a number of paths sequentially. Done in settings.xml.
      Main thing here is that if a build fails in path the queue will quit, leaving the failing project path in combo.
    • Actions.
      Ability to start or kill a process, at command start, end or fail (build error).

    💡Observations

    So first, just as a warning, this is my point of view.

    There is a number of things I realized here, some I still don’t get and can only suspect.

    It is certain that I made an extremely useful tool. What bothers me here, is that nobody did it, in like 10 years. Well, I guess I’m the one guy who could create it so far and that is rare.

    Next, which is even more odd, some people still don’t use it. I can only suspect a few factors here, they:

    • Don’t know of it.
      It is obvious for me that even the best software (FOSS, well made and useful) will go unnoticed without promotion (or commercials) and spreading information about it. That’s why I am always announcing each new release in local emails and some also further.
    • Are too lazy to try.
      Sure all programs have a learning curve, but this one is easy and well documented.
      Sadly that can happen, even worse if it takes years. I guess I can’t really expect ability to change especially from people who work for too long in one place.
    • Are so addicted to old methods, that they can touch the future. Actually the present, for nearly 2 years. That’s for me even worse than laziness.

    ⏳Conclusions

    Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter that much.
    A software engineer has to deal with users. Sometimes even those who “didn’t even try turning it off and on again”.
    Also, developers need to balance listening to already users (wanting something) versus shouting at not yet users (to gain new ones).

    Lastly, I’m glad I could develop this tool, because otherwise I would hate building even more (now it is nice to look at, just old and inefficient). Also I’m glad if anyone found it useful (beside me).