Work in Progress History for Digital Universe version 1.5

March 2005

The beginning - in more ways than one !

This is the first part of DU I managed to compile.
The intro needs no MUI headers so I could try and get something to work even before trying to learn MUI.

The old intro sound does not work, in fact I know of no OS4 utility that can even play the planetmix.med file which the 68k version of DU uses.

March 2005

OK. This is not a screenshot of Digital Universe itself, but a very basic test programme.
Yet without this step I would not have got very far in porting DU at all.
One small step for me, one huge leap for getting DU to run on OS4.

July 2005

It was quite some time between getting a simple intro to run and this is the first screenshot of DU doing something useful.
MUI had to be integrated, and problems with structure sizes for PPC processors sorted out. But at last a basic DU is running.
Like the 68k version the colours in the GUI are still a bit strange and not quite as expected.
At least the constellations are now recognisable, and stars and deep sky objects are plotted. As yet there are no planets calculated or plotted.

July 2005

A view of the full sky showing quite a lot of stars. With older hardware constraints no longer applicable the number of maximum objects shown has been increased considerably from 10,000 to 150,000.

August 2005

Planets and moons are now integrated into the package. This image shows the planet Jupiter which now uses a higher resolution image map than version 1.03 for 68k Amigas.
The plotting and dithering use the original method which is still used on 8 bit screenmodes. It is a bit crude and as can be seen from the next screenshot, plotting can be much better on 16 and 32 bit modes.
Support for 8 bit screenmodes has since been dropped from DU.

September 2005

Though the thumbnail image looks much the same as above, the full sized image shows how much better plotting is now on higher depth screenmodes. Plotting is now true colour greyscale (yes it does seem odd terminology). This image and the above were taken at the same time, one on an 8 bit screen, this on a 32 bit screen.

September 2005

An image showing Moon using the new plotting method. It is so much nicer than the dithered plots of DU 1.03.
What cannot be seen from the screenshots is that the plotting with a PPC native DU is so much quicker too.

October 2005

I had enough of seeing the black and white intro running on a low resolution fake native screenmode. The intro now clones the current WB screenmode (as does the main DU screen by default). A bit of colour has been added and the number of 'stars' increased.
Later on I added better fonts than shown here and also sound has been reintroduced using datatypes to play an mp3 file. The intro tune is now the same as that used in the Mac version of DU.

November 2005

By now most of DU has been integrated. Also a lot of work has gone on under the bonnet to fix the colours problem which appears to be caused by a bug in the OS4 version of MUI. A lot of array shifting now allows the OS4 workbench colours and DU's own colour requirements to coincide. This grab shows the clean looking GUI with all colours as you would expect them to be. Beforehand the Amiga Guide did look really odd as it used the WB pen scheme and not the one used by DU, now as DU uses a like-WB pen scheme the Amiga Guide looks perfect.

December 2005

Added the ability for coloured planetary rendering. There is now the option to show either a coloured planet or a higher resolution greyscale image. Even the coloured maps are a higher resolution than those used in DU1.03. The option to use coloured maps is only available on 16 or 32 bit screens, on 8 bit rendering falls back to greyscale.

December 2005

Digital Universe has always had the ability to use oversized screens. However unless the screen aspect ratio was the same as the default size the display was stretched or squashed accordingly. Now the screen can be any size and the display aspect remains correct. This grab shows a screen much wider than it is high.

February 2006

The menu structure has changed slightly. Instead of having everything in the Project Menu, the Settings have been given their own menu. This shot shows the new Project Menu. Note the new Zoom Out and Zoom In functions and the new Redo View.

February 2006

The menu structure has changed slightly. The new Settings menu is shown here. It is now possible to alter your MUI settings from the menu, beforehand you could not make changes to MUI without opening a window and using a border icon.
Another addition is the option to use a "Sticky" window which can also be set as a tooltype or CLI parameter at startup. When enabled a Settings window will remain open after clicking the Use button allowing programme changes to be tested more easily.

March 2006

Digital Universe will not have an official Arexx port until version 2 but there is an undocumented experimental Arexx port to see if things work. This grab shows some Arexx commands controlling DU. A screen grab cannot show much but using Arexx to Zoom in and out of the view works quite well. A simple demonstration Arexx script will be included with DU1.5. A fully featured Arexx command set will be left until version 2.

August 2006

One thing missing from all the Amiga versions of DU was the ability to display the ecliptic. I am glad to say that this is now included for DU 1.5.
Adding this extra option means that the old du.config file is not compatible anymore but a shell utility "convertconfig" will allow users to update their existing settings to the new format.

September 2006

An annoying bug has finally been fixed. DU worked fine for dates between -3028 and +7028 but outside that range the planets disappeared and anything depending on the earth/sun relative positions was also affected. It seems the cos() and sin() in OS4 only allows a limited range of input values, once found it was fairly simple to fix.
This image shows Saturn and its moons for a more advanced date of 22006. Amiga OS4 users may find the moon towards the bottom of the image has a name that may seem familiar.

October 2006

Added a Busy Bar to the Abort window. Though common on the old classic Amigas, this window is rarely seen, in the the PPC native, DU if ever. I had to make DU really do a lot of work just in order to get this grab and then had to be very quick. Everything is calculated in detail to a far future date, including proper motion, precession, refraction, aberration, nutation and stars down to magnitude 12.

November 2006

Enhanced the Miscellaneous Objects Window to allow multiple items to be selected or removed in one go. Previous versions of DU could only deal with one item at a time. This image shows the new Misc Objects Window plus a "few" asteroids and other Misc Objects in the backdrop.
Miscellaneous Objects can now be selected by drag and drop.

February 2007

When first starting the Digital Universe previous versions used a default location and relied on the user to later open the Environment Preferences window and enter their own data. It was possible to continue using DU without a user ever entering any location settings at all.
Now the user is prompted for settings the first time they run DU, the application will not proceed until a local environment has been saved. Even if using the nearest city or the default configuration, the user is now aware that they may have to enter more accurate details later.

August 2007

The final version is coming close. This screen grab shows the new Registration Window wher the user will enter their serial number and user details.