Welcome to PowerPulsar's place !

Where is the source?

Powerpulsar is freeware, but freeware does not mean open-source and there isn't any reason for this to change.
Let's be obvious: the source code is not available. Non. Niet. Nada.

I've been requested the source many times. I fell for it once but that won't happen again:

There was once a fellow BeOS lover who managed to convince me to give him a source archive so he could recompile it. I warned him it would be terribly difficult to use, being one of my first "big" project with a design (or lack thereof) which doesn't make it easy to understand the source. The build process is not documented and far from trivial too. And the BeOS R5 support is just so-so, especially the lack of add-ons. It ain't pretty and sure ain't easy. But the BeOS lover still wanted it -- he was tech-savvy enough to make something out of it, and sure he would love to toy with that. So I finally agreed on making a nice archive and giving it to him.

Never heard anything back since.

So now the answer is an even more firmly no.

PowerPulsar for BeOS Stopped - June 2000

PowerPulsar for BeOS has been officially stopped in June 2000.
That means the PowerPulsar 0.x and the PowerPulsar 2.x that I started working on.

The reason is simple: BeOS as a desktop OS is history. The adventure was fun but it ended. Be Inc. switched to BeIA, a good move I believe since it was at least an appealing business plan (understand: one that may generate revenue a some points). Unfortunately, history has we know it decided this would never happen and eventually Be should be acquired by Palm (which didn't officially happen at the time I write this, 10/31/2001).

This is life.

I think there are two main reasons I stopped PowerPulsar: first I got a life, you know... dating, being outdoors, stuff like that. And second the whole experience was discouraging. PowerPulsar was supposed to be an add-on engine, but I received very little support for add-ons writing (yet I am very thankful for the few who tried at the beginning).

Oh yeah I forgot: if you really want to see cool graphic animations on your screen whilst listenning to music, run WinAmp and use the two most incredibly add-ons I ever found: WhiteCap and G-Force, by 55ware. Your mileage may vary.

After thinking about it, the project is not dead, only frozen for an eternity. I believe I'll probably keep the name for one of my other toy ideas: having WhiteCap and G-Force plug'ins run under a console machine, beit the Dreamcast, PS2, X-Box or GameCube (although I don't have any development system for the 3 latests... too bad.)

Documentation

There are some obsolete pages here:

• The old web site entry point
• The old guided tour
• The old tutorial

More to come soon... Sorry for the lack of a real documentation.
Useful keys include:

• ALT-1...9/0 : load file "configN.pp" (in main window)
• F1-F12: load file "configN.pp" (during fullscreen or preview)
• I: invert video mode (during fullscreen)
• ESC, Z, Q : exit fullscreen
• N: Next CD track
• V: preVious CD track
• -/+ keypad: volume -/+ (not pluged with new media kit)
• 0-9 keypad: CD output amplification from 0 to 100%

"config0.pp" is a special config mode. It's the one loaded at startup. See the File->Preferences, "Misc" tab to prevent from loading the default config.

PowerPulsar 0.8.1 - 11 May 2000

More add-ons and a couple of interesting fixes.
This archive is for BeOS 5 Personal Edition, but it should work also on BeOS R4.5+.
Please read the text file in the archive for more information.

Here is the archive:

• PowerPulsar binary for BeOS 5 PE Intel: PowerPulsar_081_11052000.zip (1.7 MB)

Comments

• Compiled all addons.
• Made all add-ons sources available for sample code, even if the quality of the source for addons is not always optimal.
• Fixed a bug in the CFilter (was storing a BEntry and 3 BDirectories, thus exhausting the file descriptors). Now using BPath or entry_ref.
• Fixed a bug in the CFilter::loadBitmap in conjunction with MapPlayer, now look for image in local and then only in the img directory
• Fixed the image loader for MapPlayer.
• Fixed a bug in loadConfig, addons were not terminated.

There are a few minor bugs to fix later:

• MapPlayer may crash if the app is quited too quickly (cf unload)
• 4-pixels inversion in the bi-landscape pixel doubler (Big Endian problem)
• missing facet in the scope3d.
• landscape addons and others should not erase background. Use flag instead.

PowerPulsar 0.8.0 - 03 May 2000

No kidding, I started working again on this project !
This archive is for BeOS 5 Personal Edition, but it should work also on BeOS R4.5+.
Please read the text file in the archive for more information.

Here is the archive:

• PowerPulsar binary for BeOS 5 PE Intel: PowerPulsar_080_04052000.zip (1.3 MB)

Comments

• Uses the BeOS 5 PE Media Kit (instead of the old R3-compatible one)
• Implements 32 bpp display correctly
• Lacks a lot of features and need some UI polishing.
• The archive comes with the (kind of obsolete) guided tour. That should do the work to start with.
• There is no French material whatsoever. Si vous estimez que je devrais faire un effort pour traduire l'interface et la documentation (ou son absence), veuillez me le faire savoir :-)

PowerPulsar Snapshot 22 March 1999

This is the first crude recompilation on R4 Intel.
Please read all the stuff below before downloading the archive.

Here are the archives :

• PowerPulsar binary for R4 Intel: PowerPulsar_snapshot_03221999.zip (1.01 MB)
• Sample Add-ons source archive: 1999-03-22.sample_addons_source.zip (192 kB)

Usage

• Download the archive and unzip it somewhere.
• Put an audio cd in your computer. You'll get the best idea of the software by choosing some kinf of techno music (sorry, no offense for those who do not consider this as being music :)). I like to use Trance or Goa for testing. YMMV.
• Under R4.0, you MUST open the Audio Preference panel and select "CD" as the input source (in the Input tab of the panel).
• Press the "Full Screen" button on the bottom and watch. The CD should start playing when the full screen mode enters.
• Press either "F" or ESCape or "Q" to exit the full screen mode.
• The configuration screen shows an array of applied effects. You can remove one by dragging it to the trash (in the bottom of the window). You can add or change one by dragging it from the left list and placing it in the array.
• I let you figure out the rest of the features.

Known Limitations

• This is really really a preliminary. It may crash at any moment !
• No input selection supported. You MUST open the Audio Preference panel and select your input source in the Input tab of the panel. Typically you'll want to use the CD player so you need to select "CD" as the source.
• Chaning tracks while playing will crash, so do not use the keys 'N' and 'V' while playing full screen !
• The CD display in the main window, on top, always prints track #00. Anyway the buttons can change the track or eject. I don't understand this but, I'm on it.
• There are few add-ons. I didn't recompiled them all already.
• The rendering mode currently only supports 8-bpp. 32-bpp will come later and the 16-bpp mode is obsolete, I'll remove it.

I really appreciate to get feedback. I know there are bugs but you can anyway send me bug reports. I'd like to hear from you. You can mail me or find me on IRC :

• e-mail: R'alf (please write "PowerPulsar" in the subject so that my Mail-It filters work !)
• IRC: nick "ralf" (aka ralf_home, ralf_work), channel #amigafr on IRCnet or #bedev on EFnet.

If you want to create add-ons, please download the addon source archive and have a look at the FFT addon. It's a good point to start with. The thing you want to check is the CFilter.h file that really really is fully commented. I hope you'll find it no too much obscure or obfuscated. Note that you must not try to use anything else that the 8-bpp API. I'll add the support for 32-bpp soon.