Unfinished Business 0.8 – 0.9 – 1.0

This post is looooonnnnngggg overdue, considering my last post was in March.  I figured I could do this while Minefield was building (but I was wrong considering it only takes like 20 mins for it to build on these machines).

0.8 Release

I really didn’t do all too much for the 0.8 release.  I was busy with other things.  I realize, now, that I should’ve thought more importantly of this project and should’ve made as much time as possible for it.  Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do about the past but learn from it and dedicate my time better.  I did feel badly for not doing as much for the 0.8 release as my colleagues were depending on me and hopefully made up for it somewhat with my work with the 0.9 release.

0.9 Release

For 0.9, I worked on beginShape, vertex and endShape.  I had a barely working product for 3D (untested and unused) before the Processing.js workshop.  It was barely working due to the fact that my changes broke the 2D version.  During the workshop, I was able to run tests and completely revamp the way beginShape/endShape worked.  With the 2D version, the functions were set to draw as the vertices were put in.  I changed it so that it collects that information and then renders at the end.  I, also, spent a whole day on fixing bugs and testing the code.  This was needed due to the fact that it was a large amount of code.  My examples and tests can be found on at the following link:  click here.  (Note: that 3D tests and demos require a pre-release browser that supports WebGL… such as Minefield, Chromium or Webkit).  Here’s a more prominent 3D demo using beginShape/endShape (again you need a 3D capable browser):

After that weekend, I was able to work on converting 2D quad and triangle primitives to work in 3D space.  This wasn’t really too tough as it was merely a wrapper

1.0 and Future Releases

1.0 is a goal for the end of May… however, we will be doing mini-releases along the way to sort out some fixes and release some more needed features.  My first goal is to make that RGB Cube demo working up to speed.  This entails converting a bit of the current endShape code to take in colours for the vertices and render them.  I, also, have to make sure that these objects take normals so they can be lit up in a 3D environment.  After, I plan to work on the PGraphics object and make sure that the fix works with 3D objects being displayed in createGraphics.  My final plan of action before the 1.0 release date is to ensure the PShape datatype is working within the PJS environment.  Of course, I’ll also be fixing any bugs that come along the way.