[Golist] Suggestions

[Moses Gunesch]

Hey Jonathan, thank you for this great email!

You know, it's something that wasn't at the forefront when I designed  
Go, but has actually come up a good number of times since its release,  
and I'm seeing more and more how important it really is. Go should be  
easier to extend into more complex sequencers that can retain state  
like a timeline, run forwards and backwards, and do random-access  
jumps to any point along the way based on overall time.

I think you're right that providing the ability to run backward would  
be a good add for the core feature set. The Repeater class still feels  
a little clunky to me and there's been some hints lately that it might  
be causing memory issues. Let's all discuss how it could be improved.

Your branch will also require comprehensive management of start-states  
and retention of start-values, something that best done in tween  
subclasses. (Don't forget that you can extend other open-source  
packages like the Zaaz tween set, and/or design a custom manager  
system for random-access timelining.)

BTW: another guy on this list who's already attacked this challenge is  
Robert Boyd. You can find his emails in the archives and might want to  
rally forces with him on this project. I've also found some need for  
this kind of thing and will be happy to jump in and help you guys  
create a solid extension for "scrubbable" sequences.

In general, I really appreciate this level of thought toward making Go  
more univeral! Remember that over all Go is more of a proposal than a  
product, so let's keep shaping it.

:-)

Moses



On Feb 23, 2009, at 4:12 PM, Jonathan Culp wrote:

> Hi everybody,
>
> I'm sorry if this has already been written about or discussed  
> before. I just joined the list, so I don't have anyway of telling.
>
> I've been following GO off and on for while. When I downloaded the  
> source and was really impressed with the modularity and clarity of  
> thought that it was created with. However, I kept waiting for  
> someone to write the perfect tweening class before I took used it on  
> a commercial project.
>
> Mostly what I was waiting for was for someone to write a tween and  
> tween sequence that could be easily reversed at any point. Long  
> story short, I got some free time at work today and wanted to take a  
> look at what would be involved in "rolling my own" tween class.
>
> Reversing an sequence was something I used to do in Fuse all the  
> time, but havn't seen implemented (well) in a Tweening package since  
> then. I don't mean to trivialize the difficulty involved with doing  
> that. But in recent years I've had to resort to timeline based  
> animations, in order to match the motion studies I get from  
> designers at work, which often contain long or many stepped  
> animation sequences. (I really hate the timeline)
>
> Having taken a look at the source code I was expecting to find some  
> kind of support for this but it doesnt appear to be there. I know  
> that repeater instances can be used to play an animation backwards,  
> but it seems, only once its finished. In order for me to add  
> immediate reverseable animation support, it looks like I would have  
> to subclass LinearGo, Playable Base, and SequenceBase in order to  
> make some heavy modifications to the behavior. Doing so would, I  
> feel break the spirit of modularity and extenseability thats at the  
> core of the GOEngine.
>
> Worse comes to worse, I will just subclass the core classes, but I  
> wanted to know if anyone considered making this part of the basic  
> functionality of the engine; is there an architectural reason that  
> I'm not understanding? that makes it a bad idea to do so? If this  
> one thing were addressed I really feel like GO would take off.
>
> Let me know what I can do to help
> -Jonathan Culp
>
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