Chaotic Box News

I know it's been quiet around here lately, and apart from a huge PHP/Javascript/Ajax job that sucked up most of my time over the summer I've been secretly hacking away at an iPhone/iPod touch game called Pinch 'n Pop! I (almost reluctantly) download the iPhone SDK a few months back expecting to build some of the examples then get bored and move on, but it was surprisingly refreshing to code for such a closed system. After a week-long crash course in Objective-C/Cocoa I was pretty much sold - though I quickly ditched Objective-C for straight C once I had a few wrappers around the Cocoa Touch APIs. I like the idea of Objective-C, and it might make sense for UI-heavy stuff, but ugh - not for games...

Pinch 'n Pop is in Apple's hands at the moment but not yet available in the App Store. I'll post an update once that happens.

eDrum MIDI Mapper 1.2 is now available for download. This release fixes a few bugs and adds input and output options to support more hardware and software configs. Please see the online documentation for the complete change log and info on new features.

I've had limited time to work on eDrum MIDI Mapper recently so I've decided to release a final-candidate build now, rather than let it sit idle until I find time to update the documentation and installer (which invariably take more time than updating the actual application).

Download: eDrumMIDIMapper_v12fc1.zip (1.7MB)

The zip archive contains an updated exe and brief change log. This new exe can be used along side the v1.1 release, but you might want to save a backup of your v1.1 settings just in case something goes screwy.

This release contains a few minor bug fixes plus a couple frequently requested features. One new feature is essentially invisible but useful nonetheless; Notes, controller messages, and polytouch events are now echoed to the output as-is if they aren't filtered by a pad. More and more hosts are gaining native edrum support so this change lets you set up filters only for the few triggers that may need special attention, and lets the host handle the rest of the kit.

This build also features more flexible choking options. On the input side, you can now define a "choke note" to support hardware that doesn't send polytouch messages, such as the Alesis Trigger IO. You can also define a "choke note" on the output side for hosts that use mute groups for cymbal chokes, like XLN Audio's Addictive Drums. These input and output options are entirely separate, so no matter what the hardware sends (note or polytouch) and no matter what the host expects (note or polytouch) the filter can deal with it and get things working.

Please report any bugs/problems with this build by commenting to this post or through my contact page. If all goes well this build will be repackaged as the official 1.2 release in a couple weeks time.

Return visitors will have undoubtedly noticed that things look a little different around here. I've merged the main Chaotic Box website with the Developer site, and replaced the old news system with this snazzy new blog. It was a lot of work and things are still being tweaked but maintaining and expanding this new site will be a breeze compared to the old crusty site it's replaced.

Please note that I've tossed quite a bit of old content in order simplify and better organize the site. I've made an effort to forward all the old links best I could, but some stuff is simply gone for good. I'm no longer maintaining the resources and tools link pages for example, and I've scrapped quite a few old/broken/useless REALbasic projects (mostly the Rb3D related stuff).

Quake fans needn't fret however, all the Mac Quake related stuff has been relocated to a separate bare-bones subdomain for posterity: quake.chaoticbox.com

I know the site's been very quiet in the months leading up to this update, but several REALbasic project updates will be arriving soon. I've ported the Display Overlord Plugin over to pure REALbasic code/declares and will have that build available within the next few days. The OxMath classes have a significant update in the works, and I have some massive updates to the FMOD Ex classes sitting here waiting to be documented. In fact, I may have to split the FMOD release into two or three updates - there's a whole lotta of new stuff in there.

That's that for now - click around and let me know if anything's broken!