Developer @ Chaotic Box

I've re-written the Mouse Overlord plugin as REALbasic declares and christened it version 2.0. Note that this update has a completely new (and much saner) API and is not a drop-in replacement for the plugin version. Updating to this new code is relatively simple however, and highly recommended. Hit the Open Source page for more details and downloads.

Note: I've also removed the Async Key Events project. It was always a little flakey and the Mac OS X target was using declares that have been deprecated for a while now. Add to that the fact that REALbasic's built-in Keyboard.Keyname function is a total mess (see xyvscglo and sneviauo for starters) and you've got a project that causes more grief than it's worth. I plan on revisiting this in the future but REAL Software needs to fix the broken stuff for this to be practical.

I've uploaded a small patch for the Display Overlord classes that fixes some issues with the gamma fade-in/out functions. Grab it on the Open Source page.

It's officially the "month of updates"! This new release (available on the Open Source page) features a big overhaul of the FMOD Ex start-up sequence and core functionality. The start-up sequence now conforms to these specifications as recommended by the FMOD dudes, and the classes now give you (nearly) full control over every FMOD Ex init parameter. You can also enumerate drivers, pick outputs, choose speaker modes, and so on. Don't worry though, you don't have screw around with all that if you don't want/need to - one simple call will still choose the best/default settings automagically.

Part of the core overhaul means the classes now support multichannel and surround sound hardware. If you've got a 5.1 or 7.1 speaker setup the 3D engine will automatically take advantage that hardware (sadly, FMOD Ex only supports real surround sound on Windows, best you can do on Mac/Linux is Prologic). You can also configure stuff like ASIO output and "raw" speaker modes to manually map audio through pro-level hardware.

There are some other goodies in there, like being able to read (and in some cases modify) raw PCM data, plus a bunch of bug fixes and shiny new documentation. Also, don't let the perpetual "beta" status scare ya off - these classes have been used in shipping products for years now. "Beta" just means they aren't done yet. I have recording and waveform plotting classes near completion, and some big 3D audio updates planned as well.

I've posted an update to my OxMath classes on the Open Source page. I usually apologize when I make API changes, but not this time! Plenty of stuff has changed but these classes really needed a refresh in the API department. What I should apologize for is not sticking a "beta" tag on the previous releases

I also spent some time to fully document the classes (view the docs online). Other than that there's plenty of bug fixes and useful additions, plus a workaround for a nasty Rb bug involving Ptr on x86 builds. Unfortunately that workaround meant wrapping pointers with memoryblocks and using slow accessor methods, so certain vector-array operations may perform less than stellar on x86 targets. The good news is that bug was quickly fixed (thanks Aaron!) the bad news is it wasn't reported in time to make the soon-to-be released Rb 2008r1. So, I've got the fast path rigged up to automatically kick-in on PPC builds or when building with Rb 2008r2 and up. Intel Mac OS X targets will also avoid the slow path most of the time by hitting the (fastest) SIMD path so this will mostly affect Windows and Linux builds till 2008r2 comes out - them the breaks.

I'll also point out that these classes should make a nice companion to Tinrocket's recently released OpenGLSurface Plugin. OpenGL is very cool but usually requires a bunch of math to back it up.