LCD Smartie

Can someone make a plugin that makes a single charactor replace another? If so, we can animate stuff on the LCD. To prove the concept, I'm missusing the holdnscroll.dll to make a winking smilie.
Try it. If someone could make something similar that could take a string of charactors, that would be great. My demo works, but when holdnscroll gets to the end of the string, It displays one blank 'frame'. If the $right wasn't in the code above, the bracket would jump left one space when the colons run out, then back again when the string loops back to the start.

Did that all make sense?

Could it also work with custom charactors too? eg, using these would look a bit like a CD was spinning.

I can?t say for sure right now cause I?m on vacation....

I will give it a try in a end of the month
I will post you a PM for more info or when something is ready for use...

I am not quite sure what you mean. You can easily make a program to animate custom characters, but they are defined in the plugin.

Do you want to be able to define whats animated outside of the plugin?

_X7JAY7X_ wrote:I am not quite sure what you mean. You can easily make a program to animate custom characters, but they are defined in the plugin.

Do you want to be able to define whats animated outside of the plugin?

That's the problem, I don't know how to make dlls.

What I'm thinking of is like an animated gif. A string of letters/numbers/customchars, that look like they animate because one replaces another. Just like the string of images that make up an animated gif.
So if I were to pass "12345" into the plugin, I'd want to see a 1, then it replaced a split second later with a 2, then a 3.... etc. Then for it to either loop to 1 when it reaches 5, or stop.

Did my example in the top post work for you? did it look like the smilie was winking?

I have done animation with plugins before, but not with external input. It would have to be something like:

$dll(Animation,1,I#F#R)

Where Animation is the name of the plugin and I#F#R is whats animated. You would need something to break up the string, in my example the # sign.

I can work on this soon. Is there somethin you want right away, something more hardcoded can be done in a few minutes.

_X7JAY7X_ wrote:I have done animation with plugins before, but not with external input. It would have to be something like:

$dll(Animation,1,I#F#R)

Where Animation is the name of the plugin and I#F#R is whats animated. You would need something to break up the string, in my example the # sign.

I can work on this soon. Is there somethin you want right away, something more hardcoded can be done in a few minutes.

That's the ticket.
There's no rush, I just thought it would be a good idea for a plugin.

I just did a test .dll using your cd custom chars from above

here is how to use it:

$dll(ANIMATE,2,1,1)

here is the link

http://www.geocities.com/jjacobs20/Animate.zip

_X7JAY7X_ wrote:here is the link

http://www.geocities.com/jjacobs20/Animate.zip

Could you post the source code somewhere. I've love to see how this is done. Maybe I can use something similar in my plugin.

Cheers,

Allen

I will post it when I get home. That sample code is to animate a fixed set of characters(the spinning cd from above). I havent had the time to make a external input character plugin yet.

_X7JAY7X_ wrote:I just did a test .dll using your cd custom chars from above

here is how to use it:

$dll(ANIMATE,2,1,1)

here is the link

http://www.geocities.com/jjacobs20/Animate.zip

Waah, I can't get it to work.
I've copied the dll into my plugins folder, but I get an error when I hit apply: "This Application has failed to start because MSVCP60.dll was not found..."
Then "Load of Plugin failed: Load Library failed with #126: the specified module could not be found."

Other dlls work on my system, like bignum and holdnscroll... Any ideas?

I didnt think you needed any library .dll but I guess you do. That .dll is used in c++. You should be able to search on google and download the .dll from dll-files.com or something like that and place it in the SYSTEM32 directory.

Other plugins are written in C++ and they dont need any extra library files, I will have to look into this, but for now downloading the .dll should work.

I already have th dll in my system32 folder. I did download another version, but that errors just the same.
I remember having to install .net framework to get holdnscroll working, is there something I can install for this one?

I'm running XPpro btw.

Did you tried to install any C++ runtimes package?

try this link for download
http://www.emailcomponent.com/download/ChilkatLib2.zip

Thanks limbo.

That was what I was looking for but couldnt find it.

limbo wrote:Did you tried to install any C++ runtimes package?

try this link for download
http://www.emailcomponent.com/download/ChilkatLib2.zip

I've d/l the zip file above, but there's no dlls or setup progs in it. What do i do now?

I HATE asking dumb questions like this. Sorry folks.

Fish, are you looking to be able to input 8 characters (amount of custom characters) or more or less?

_X7JAY7X_ wrote:Fish, are you looking to be able to input 8 characters (amount of custom characters) or more or less?

well, I suppose it'd be best if one could use upto 8 custom ones and all the normal characters too. Then we can have all sorts of fun.

I will see what I can do. The first .dll to test will probably only be 8 chars. You should be able to use any characters including custom, but a limited amount of 8.

Did you get the c++ runtimes?

The plugin is done you can use any characters up to 8.

For example, here is how to use 3 custom chars:

$dll(ANIMATE,1,$CustomChar(1, 1, 1, 1, 31, 31, 1, 1, 1)$Chr(176)#$CustomChar(2, 1, 1, 31, 31, 31, 31, 1, 1)$Chr(158)#$CustomChar(3, 31, 31, 31, 31, 31, 31, 31, 31)$Chr(131)#,1)


This plugin has little testing, so any feedback would be good.

You can download it at:

http://www.geocities.com/jjacobs20/Animate.zip