New simulator ;)

[hen7713]

I think it's Perl.

[tin]

None of the guesses so far I'll do a tiny bit of work on it next week and release the code to whoever wants. Then you'll know

Haha my tiny bit of work turned into major programme info handling routines! The great thing is that it means I have programme info routines that will work for feeding live data to real or emulated PG. I will finish them so that the simulator looks like the real thing and stick it on the web for ya!

@hen: some of the backend stuff is perl but I'd have no idea how to create the graphics, scrolling etc in perl! I know you can use perl/TK but I dunno what it's capabilities are....

[tin]

OK. I should have stopped working on this about 4 hours ago, so I made some changes to at least work a bit and froze the code.It's available for you to do as you wish at http://no.bonus4u.co.uk/pgweb/ Please bear with it as when you look through it I am sure you will see a lot of bugs, problems, programmer brain failure, and stupid comments. I am fully aware I have zero skills when it comes to programming. This will also of course reveal to you what it's written in.

You need to have the prevuec and h26f fonts installed on your local computer or it will render wrongly.

I've realised there is a problem with my perl script that pulls the programme information from my myth box - a random 50%-ish of the programme details go missing. I am not sure why yet and run out of time, so I'll investigate later. At the moment programme information is stored in a text file called curday.txt in the root of http://no.bonus4u.co.uk/pgweb/. This file is not dynamically updated at the moment so PG will always show the same programmes, and some of it is a bit weird like a single programme lasting for several hours.

In terms of how it looks, I never managed to get the << and >> markers implemented in time, although the support code is there, so at the moment they are just part of the programme text. Proper ones will come after I fix the perl. I also know the clock doesn't scroll properly until the programme information starts coming up. This is because another clock starts at the bottom of the scroll before the top one scrolls out of view. I will correct that much later cos it works OK when there is programme info. I know the date bar and "please stand by" are missing too, they'll come later. I also see the text should only wrap on word boundaries and will do that later too.

Finally please go very easy on this webserver - it's a dev box hosted on my office ADSL. The apache install is very old, as is the hardware itself (it's a pentium 166 ) so bear with it. It also hosts a couple of things a couple of my customers actually use so if this causes problems I will have to remove it and sort some space on a proper server later.

<edit> Aha just remembered one more thing. This has been developed and tested in Firefox 4. It definitely doesn't work in IE8, and I think it won't work in Safari as that doesn't support measureText and I also think it won't support the audio and video codecs used. Also I have no idea how powerful your computer needs to be for it to render well.

[AriX]

Looks like you wrote it in HTML5/JavaScript... Nice! I haven't looked in Firefox, but it appears to work fine in Safari other than one issue: h264f is not available on the Mac (the .fon of it only works on Windows, you need a TTF on the Mac). Could you fall back to PrevueC if h26f isn't available?

Can't use audio right now (in school) but it appears to render great in Safari: http://cl.ly/3r2J0c3v3w3y3G0D3S0W
EDIT: As you predicted, the audio/video doesn't seem to be working too well in Safari: http://cl.ly/0r2K3s1e2y1Q3B00311M

EDIT 2: It looks really good, tin, I'm very impressed. If I had one suggestion, it'd be to change the colors a bit to match the real software: real vs. simulator. Also, you're missing the date bar.

[tin]

Looks like you wrote it in HTML5/JavaScript... Nice! I haven't looked in Firefox, but it appears to work fine in Safari other than one issue: h264f is not available on the Mac (the .fon of it only works on Windows, you need a TTF on the Mac). Could you fall back to PrevueC if h26f isn't available?

Can't use audio right now (in school) but it appears to render great in Safari: http://cl.ly/3r2J0c3v3w3y3G0D3S0W
EDIT: As you predicted, the audio/video doesn't seem to be working too well in Safari: http://cl.ly/0r2K3s1e2y1Q3B00311M

EDIT 2: It looks really good, tin, I'm very impressed. If I had one suggestion, it'd be to change the colors a bit to match the real software: real vs. simulator. Also, you're missing the date bar.

Hi AriX

I dunno, you are a proper slavedriver!

I hopefully made it so it will use prevuec for the advert if h24f is not available (with a bodge, so maybe not).
I have updated the colours to your suggestion, but I am not sure the emulator is providing the right colours, not least because the Amiga is not capable of generating the colours in that image (A2000 is only 4-bit colour), but it's done anyway and I changed the code to use a variable set at the top.
I have also made a date and "please stand by" mode - however this shows up more glitches with the time bar. Basically the code can't handle more than one time bar on screen (or just off screen at the bottom ready to scroll upwards) I will sort that eventually.

Regard video, I understand it's because Apple and Mozilla have differing opinions on codecs - Firefox uses Ogg Vorbis for audio and Ogg Theora/Vorbis for video. Safari uses MP3 and H.264. Because I developed it for Firefox, I used the ogg versions. I know I can specify more than one video file per video so if I can get a version in MP3/H264 as appropriate it will work. Does audio not work at all?

It's cool it worked for you, it doesn't work at all on Safari for windows.

<edit> just noticed I created another glitch and the date isn't centred. I really need to stop now so I'll fix those sometime next week ENJOY!!!

[AriX]

I dunno, you are a proper slavedriver!

lol, sorry

I hopefully made it so it will use prevuec for the advert if h24f is not available (with a bodge, so maybe not).

Didn't seem to work for me

I have updated the colours to your suggestion, but I am not sure the emulator is providing the right colours, not least because the Amiga is not capable of generating the colours in that image (A2000 is only 4-bit colour), but it's done anyway and I changed the code to use a variable set at the top.
I have also made a date and "please stand by" mode - however this shows up more glitches with the time bar. Basically the code can't handle more than one time bar on screen (or just off screen at the bottom ready to scroll upwards) I will sort that eventually.

Hmm, maybe you're right. Here's a picture of recorded output from Metalguy66's video of a real Amiga: http://cl.ly/160c040K0Y0U3X2S3t1F
The new colors look great, but it's weird how the time bar changes color (I think this is what you were talking about, but I'm not sure).

Regard video, I understand it's because Apple and Mozilla have differing opinions on codecs - Firefox uses Ogg Vorbis for audio and Ogg Theora/Vorbis for video. Safari uses MP3 and H.264. Because I developed it for Firefox, I used the ogg versions. I know I can specify more than one video file per video so if I can get a version in MP3/H264 as appropriate it will work. Does audio not work at all?

Audio doesn't work at all in Safari, but both audio and video work great in Chrome, which really is the best browser around.

<edit> just noticed I created another glitch and the date isn't centred. I really need to stop now so I'll fix those sometime next week ENJOY!!!

Don't worry about it! Take some time off of this :p

[tin]

Didn't seem to work for me

Shame, I did it by just adding another statement selecting prevuec then selecting h24f straight after. I presumed if it failed to get h24f then it would leave it at prevuec, but I suppose it's equally logical it will fall back to something else. We need .ttf version of h24f - Rudy?

I have updated the colours to your suggestion, but I am not sure the emulator is providing the right colours,

Hmm, maybe you're right. Here's a picture of recorded output from Metalguy66's video of a real Amiga: http://cl.ly/160c040K0Y0U3X2S3t1F
The new colors look great, but it's weird how the time bar changes color (I think this is what you were talking about, but I'm not sure).

I looked into it, the colours are very close, I droppered them direct from local emulator screenshots which are definitely using 4-bit colour, so I'll leave them for now. The timebar changing colour will just be me missing a reference to the colour inside the code somewhere.

Audio doesn't work at all in Safari, but both audio and video work great in Chrome, which really is the best browser around.

Cool, H.264 and MP3 versions of the audio and trailers will definitely fix this though. Of course we want it to work on iPhone/iPad right?! BTW I dropkicked Chrome when I found that it used IE's internet preferences on Windows. I genuinely tried it and Opera too, both have their cool features, but Firefox still rules them all IMHO even if it is a bit fat and slow.

Don't worry about it! Take some time off of this :p

Yeah I'm gonna leave it now

[Bolt96]

Wow very good work! I never would've guessed it was java. Out of curiosity how will the simulator eventually be customized for different areas? Will it use the prevueguide.com web server AriX created?

[tin]

Wow very good work! I never would've guessed it was java. Out of curiosity how will the simulator eventually be customized for different areas? Will it use the prevueguide.com web server AriX created?

Hmmm I dunno, not really thinking about that at this time, it was more to get it working. I guess once how the webserver is up and running and the format is settled, i might have a go at making it work with it.

[AriX]

Wow very good work! I never would've guessed it was java. Out of curiosity how will the simulator eventually be customized for different areas? Will it use the prevueguide.com web server AriX created?

It's not Java... It's JavaScript
Surprisingly, there's actually a big difference (despite the name, the two are not really related at all).