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[Gold Cray]

You also get basic keyboard and mouse input and a high resolution timer, plus portability across

Pixels are 32 bit truecolor PC, Mac and Unix boxes with quality open-source code.

To use PixelToaster, all you need to do is ‘open’ a display at the desired resolution, then each frame, render into an array of pixels and ‘update’ your pixels to the display.

That sounds a lot like SDL, except that SDL doesn't do floating pointer color as far as I know. Instead it does 32-bit, 24-bit, indexed, and maybe a few others.

It also has a bunch of stuff to help with the process of "[rendering] into an array of pixels"

[FoxBlitzz]

PixelToaster sounds really cool, though my concern is with how it will handle 8-bit indexed color. Perhaps the red channel could be used for this, and the green and blue channels ignored? Just throwing something out there.

When I have more free time, I'll probably reorganize this thing a bit and create spots for possible developer roles, and one or two extra threads to split up discussion so that things don't become too crowded in here.

[Laremere]

I would suggest a technical thread, and a user interface thread.

[Gnarf]

Did anyone check out PixelToaster ?

PixelToaster sounds really cool, though my concern is with how it will handle 8-bit indexed color. Perhaps the red channel could be used for this, and the green and blue channels ignored? Just throwing something out there.

I've messed around some with PixelToaster quite a while ago. It's really cool. I don't see what we'd gain from using it in this project though.

It's just a framebuffer. The framebuffer is not what would hold the image data (that is, the 8 bit representaion of the image that is being worked on). That'd be somewhere else in memory, and we'd use that data to render some/all of the image to the framebuffer at the right level of magnification and so on.

We do need some sort of a framebuffer for that, but seeing as the rendering part of it is not that complex stuff, I'd say it's far more important to have a good UI library than a really good framebuffer library. So like, unless PixelToaster plays nice with some UI thing or someone has made a super-awesome widget library for it...

[Hideous]

http://www.bramz.net/projects-code/pytoaster/

Would that work, if we're doing it in Python, then?

[Gnarf]

I'm not really sure what the reasoning for using PixelToaster for this would be. It's very cool if you want to make crazy ass software raycasters or something. But as far as this thing's concerned, unless it is really easy to get a ton of GUI going in it, I don't think we'd gain much by picking it. (and I don't actually know if that'd actually be hella straightforward to do, and apologies if someone has already pointed out that it's super-easy to shove it into wxWidgets or whatever, but it's really not the focus of the library)

Also. After reading most of the rest of the thread:

Mouse wheel zooming. And while holding ctrl or whatever to zoom with the mouse wheel is fine by me, I don't personally see point in scrolling with the mouse wheel anyway so I would just as well have it as default behaviour.

It'd be neat to have some key you can hold down and then click and drag the view, rather than having to use the scroll bars/wheel. Scroll bars are inconvenient and scrolling horizontally with the wheel is too (unless you have one of those super-mice from the space-feature that someone said something about), so it'd be neat to just like be able to drag the view like totally all over the place.

The brush container thing Pro Motion has going is real sexy.

[agj]

What about keeping the program as small as possible and then adding additional functionality through the use of addons (like firefox)?

This should be the top priority. Create a usable and functional interface, keep features to a minimum but make everything robust, and let a modules system do the rest of the work. This is especially relevant with a group effort such as this.

I want to suggest that the GUI be fully customizable, kind of like foobar2000's if you will, and in the same vein, add the ability to import and export presets. Maybe more complex GUI elements could be left for modules, but be fully integrated once installed (I mean stuff like the pie menus).

[Gazillion]

I read this thread a few days ago and I'm super excited about it. I don't have the know-how to help but I'm more than willing to be the scope creeper guy 

If you guys do decide to go along with the addon approach then may I recommend that you also implement perspectives like Eclipse does it? I think that would help the interface from getting out of control.

Also a suggestion on something that really annoys me when I do pixel art; when the selection box is being dragged it would be awesome to have a key that would force it to only move 1px at a time instead of clipping on a specific value (like every 5px). Knowing me, I bet this feature already exists in all my favourite apps

[coderneedsfood]

basically what is needed is a nice crossplatform way for raw framebuffer access , since OpenGL has been poo poo'd SDL is probably a good bet right ? SDL inside WxWidgets ? or is there a wxCanvas that is pure 8 bit rendered ?

 

[Gold Cray]

SDL is the best bet I know of.

[Michael Buckley]

SDL can use quite a bit more CPU than is warranted on some systems. I would just use wx's built-in Panel class.

[FoxBlitzz]

Okay, if anyone knows they can dedicate some time and effort to this project, please leave a reply in this thread with regard to which role you wish to assume. Programmers should also state which languages and libraries they are fluent in, in order to resolve language disputes quickly and begin work on the project.

Basically, it should work like this:

Developer Sign-ups -> New Thread Creation -> Establishment of Project Guidelines -> Decision on Language and Libraries

So let's get moving!

[Gold Cray]

I can contribute some code. In know C++ (with SDL, OpenGL, and FMOD) and Java, and I've started learning Python.

[Decipher]

Count me in, coder, I am the most fluent with C++. And I still am favouring the use of C++. Python is all good and stuff but C++ would fit better...

[Nitro Crate]

I will be an innocent bystander who throws in ideas every now and then. :D

[Renton]

I will be the guy who talks to Decipher on MSN about irrelevant subjects.

[policedanceclub]

I'll be the guy who checks the thread out once in a while.

[GregWS]

I'll be the guy who checks the thread out once in a while.

I will also be this guy.

[Melly]

I will be the guy rooting for everybody working on this and giving feedbck on any builds that may be shown here.

[Corpus]

I'd be up for helping port it to mac further down the line.