Dev Log #62 - The Long February (Patreon)

I have spent pretty much the entire month working on manipulator blocks, which a few other things here and there. I originally hoped to have it all done before the end of February but that doesn't look like it will happen. I am pretty close though and I still have not run into any really big problems, it's just taking time.

One of the main ideas in my head for manipulator blocks from the start was the ability to reverse regions of a sample. I finally achieved this milestone a few hours ago. Here's a quick video:

https://t.co/5hM8w1Ph6S

This is partially hacked in because I just wanted to see it working and I finally have the UI for expressing on/off regions for toggles. I haven't done anything to make it work with the other existing sample manipulation operations so everything would get messed up if you tried to also modulate pitch/speed, or add warp markers.

Now that reversal is this dynamic thing which can be turned on and off, it has to interact with all the other parameters which can affect the sample traversal at the same time (pitch, speed, and warp markers). The interaction is very complex and confusing, but I think I understand what I need to do to make it work.

Another thing which I had to do to get this working is come up with an interface for dynamically turning toggles on and off. The solution I came up with also works for what I refer to internally as "option" parameters, such as the "Noise Mode" parameter which can be switched between "Mix" or "Multiply" mode. Option parameters can have any number of options whereas toggle parameters can only be "on" or "off".

The editor for options and toggles can either be set to "Dynamic" or "Static" mode, which can be switched using the button in the bottom-right of the block footer. In Static mode you can set one value for the entire range of the block whereas in Dynamic mode it can vary.

This interface works similarly to the existing chord editor which is used by the Fudge sampler and Resonator effect. 

I updated the chord editor to also have the new static mode so that you can just set up one scale for the entire block.

Aside from these new UI elements, the majority of what I've done has been stuff under the hood to make it all actually work. It takes a lot of code to have parameters automatically connect to intersecting manipulators, respond to changes and correctly generate new modulation data.

Making sample reversal work correctly might take me a few days, and then there are only a few things left to do before I start testing. I also have a few important bugs from v0.20.0 to look at which I want to make sure are fixed in the next build (some of these I already fixed during development). So hopefully the new build will be ready around early March.