What’s new in ChaosPro V3.2

From the users point of view ChaosPro 3.2 has not many new features compared with ChaosPro 3.1. From time to time authors need to put much effort in reorganizing the code, cleaning up the code, in short: Doing some kind of “refactoring”.

So you could ask yourself why I released a new version. Well, the main reason is that I fixed several bugs and flaws and as such think that this version is more stable than 3.1.

Let me list the things which I have done since 3.1:

ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Container Bar added
  The container is a window at the right side of the main window. Other windows can be placed in this window and are automatically arranged vertically. The container can be attached to the main window or it can be put into its own window.
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Fractal Types replaced
  Fractal types Julia1, Mandel1, TieraJulia, TieraMandel, Julia24, Mandel24, Formula have been completely removed. If ChaosPro encounters parameter sets from old ChaosPro versions which make use of these fractal types, then the fractal type Escapetime will be used to calculate these fractals.
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Fractal Types replaced
  Fractal types Bifurcation and Lyapunov Space have been completely removed. If ChaosPro encounters parameter sets from old ChaosPro versions which make use of these fractal types, then the fractal type Escapetime will be used to calculate these fractals.
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   3D OpenGL Fog bug
  If you created a 3D transformation and used fog, then the result sometimes was somehow strange. Has been fixed to look more natural…
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Compiler enhancement
  Formulas now can contain the keyword “shared” before a variable declaration in order to indicate that the variable should be shared between the iteration formula and the coloring formula. This makes it possible to write coloring algorithms which can access the variable of a formula.
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Compiler enhancement
  You now can define a function using “function complex ;” or “function color fn2″. Such a statement defines a constant variable __, which can be queried for the current user selection. So you can write: if (fn1==”sin”) { // do something }
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Compiler enhancement
  Formula flag for Escapetime iteration formulas:
this.functionorder=0 ==> Bailout function will be called right after the loop function has been called.
this.functionorder=1 ==> Bailout function will be called at the beginning of an iteration, and after that the loop function will be called.
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   FractInt Palettes
  FractInt parameter sets with huge palette entries were not loaded correctly. Only the first 512 bytes were used by ChaosPro, thus the palette has not been completely loaded into ChaosPro.
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Pressing right mouse button in fractal window while holding down the SHIFT-Key brings up a context menu for fast access to several commands.
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Compiler Bug
  The compiler had difficulties in correctly identifying negative integer numbers: So it often happened that “-3″ was not recognized correctly.
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Windows removed
  Area Window and Colormapping Window have been removed: The parameter settings can now be adjusted in the standard parameter window.
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Rename a Layer
  Layers now can be renamed: Simply press F2 or click onto the label with the left mouse button in order to start layer label name editing
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Quaternion export to POVRay
  Quaternions can now be exported to POVRay. But please note that POVRay only has a base formula. ChaosPro will use that formula, so the resulting POVRay quaternion will be correct only if you use the formula z^2+c.
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Fractal Presets
  Escapetime and Quaternion fractals now let you define presets: You can add the settings of the current tab (or the whole fractal) to a list of presets. And by using the “Select formula” button you can quickly choose one of the presets. The fractal types Julia/Mandel/Julia Tiera, etc. from previous versions of ChaosPro can now be found in the list of presets.
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   ChaosPro and Windows XP schemes
  ChaosPro now correctly renders on Windows XP either with or without schemes. Former versions of ChaosPro used wrong background colors, thus the user interface looked somewhat strange.
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Editing of write-back parameters
  ChaosPro did not allow to adjust a flame parameter during rendering of a flame fractal (which used the parameter write-back feature). You had to wait until the render was finished, because otherwise the fractal thought that the parameter has been changed. This bug has been fixed, you now can adjust a paramete
r at any time…
 
ChaosPro bullet Whats New   Numerous bugs and flaws fixed
  Many small bugs have been fixed, I don’t remember exactly what bugs, but they were quite small, e.g.:
  • Title bar of fractal window flickered heavily during resize
  • The rightmost 3 rows of a Layered Fractal were drawn in scrollbar mode although they did not belong to the fractal (they just were there in order to align the width to a multiple of 4)…
  • When switching to scrollbar mode the window flickered, was brought to front, layeres suddenly showed their window although it should be hidden…
  • Fractals using formulas which tried to allocate huge arrays just threw an exception in case of “OutOfMemory” instead of displaying a meaningful error message
  • On resize the width/height of the workarea was not updated
  • … many more …

What’s New