Dev Log #48 - Playback controls, and computer issues (Patreon)

I have been fixing various small bugs that I found since releasing the v0.13.0 build. It is all very small things so far. I was expecting to have a lot more bug reports come in since so much of the code changed internally since the previous build but I haven't had very many yet.

There is still a lot to do to finish the new effects block system so hopefully I will get around to focusing on that soon. There was some discussion on Discord regarding how bad the playback controls currently are and while I still haven't decided exactly how playback and transport will ultimately work, I started redesigning the current "start block" concept a little bit.

My original thought was that I should remove the start block entirely since it's so weird but for now I've decided to stick with it. I think there is currently some cognitive disconnect between what people are used to from timeline-based software and what Blockhead is doing, and that is combined with the fact that the playback system is still not fleshed out properly.

I don't like the idea of the timeline having a cursor/marker that you can move around which does anything other than show you where the playback currently is. However there are several operations which people are missing such as the ability to prime the playback to begin playing from a certain point, and the ability to block out sections of the timeline and navigate between them more effectively.

One thing I'm thinking at the moment is it should be possible to create multiple start blocks to define different regions of the timeline that you are working on, but there should still be the special "song start block" which defines the start of the song.  The terms "start block" and "song start block" are a bit stupid so I might have to think of some better names.  

Unfortunately this morning my computer stopped turning on. To me it seems like the motherboard has died. I can continue working on macOS until I get this sorted out but I'll probably be a bit slower because I usually do all my main development on Windows. I'm still not very familiar with macOS and constantly get really annoyed trying to do simple things.

I also won't be able to release Windows builds until my computer is fixed so I will try my best to get it working again ASAP.