siwu's blog » DWMaxx

DWMaxx: Back to business

siwu — Wed, 14 May 2008 12:28:27 +0000

It’s been a solid 3 months since I’ve last worked on DWMaxx. I am just posting this quick post to tell everyone that I’m resuming work on it. I’ve had a LOT of computer problems (my 2 computers died), and a lot of real life stuff to take care of.
Moreover, after my computer died and I pretty changed everything in it (cpu, mobo, ram), my second computer died too. Which left me unable to work on DWMaxx at all (2 computers needed, as one is for debug).
So what’s to be expected?

First of all, moving to uDWM.dll from Vista SP1. DWMaxx will be distributed with it’s own uDWM.dll because finding RVAs using a PDB download process of msdl.microsoft.com is a pain in the ass. And let’s not even talk about compiler optimizations.
Second, I’ve been trying to have 3D transformations on windows working, as well as improving stability. 3D transformations is pretty tricky: for instance, CWindow3D::ValidateVisual() forces the 3D version to be displayed ONLY when doing the minimize/maximize animations. If it finds it’s not animating, it will force the original 2D window to show and hide itself. It’s hard in the code. That’s also why Flip3D has it’s own 3D window class. But I can’t use it since the class asks for a CFlip3D object.
So what can I do? Well, do it the hard way in the MIL protocol itself.
At the moment, here’s what I have:

Creating a new 3D object (not CWindow3D)
Tying it to the original 2D CVisual Window
Creating the 3D viewport
Setting the 3D viewport view matrices

What’s missing is the command to tell MIL to display the viewport. And of course everytime I test I have to restart the DWM because it crashes (hence the 2nd computer).
Anyway, I’ll keep you guys informed of how everything falls into place, and release a DWMaxx demo pretty soon.

Computer Outage - Not?

siwu — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:48:16 +0000

There may be a stall in the development of DWMaxx for the next two weeks, because I think my motherboard is dying (Asus P4P800 Deluxe). I spent the whole weekend trying to revive it, it works sometimes, sometimes it doesn’t…. Well, after 3 days and nights and 100€ on a new hard drive, it seems I’ll have to let it go… After all, it’s been on 24h/24 for the last 5 years… And because everything has evolved, I can’t just buy a new mobo, I’ll need a complete upgrade (from the CPU to the GPU). And I’ll do it when I have the money, that is probably at the end of the month!
In the mean time, I’m still trying to make it work again, because I’m not as coffy on the laptop
UPDATE 12/02/2008: It’s alive! True magic involved here. Read on for the whole story.

So yesterday, when I got back from work, I gave a try to boot the computer, and this time it started, but it did the same as it would do with it would boot: boot, but being INCREDIBLY slow on the BIOS screens. Anyway, it booted, sweet. But when I unplugged it to put it back in it’s proper place, and plugged it in, it wouldn’t boot anymore, with the dreaded “System fail CPU test” in a loop on the speakers.
For the story, there is a small LED light on the mobo, and when you turn the computer off, it should turn off too, but it wouldn’t (the PSU was fully unplugged). Also, the reset CMOS procedure wasn’t working (I would try to reset the CMOS, and when it would boot, the settings were the same as before). So what I tried was to left it unplugged without any juice whatsoever, removed the battery, and went to work. When I got back, the LED was still on, after a whole day without juice… Something was weird. I guess in a desperate move (and with some true magic), I unplugged my external hard drive. And bam, the computer booted! Without being slow in the BIOS! So my guess is a ground issue. The USB hard drive perhaps was supplying current to the mobo through the USB port. Anyway, it’s alive now, and I’ll try to keep it that way for a while

DWMaxx going Open Source

siwu — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:32:38 +0000

I’ve decided that for the good of this project, I may be best for it to go open source. So that’s it, DWMaxx is open sourced! It is distributed under GPLv2 (to prevent people from using it for commercial purposes). Of course, it doesn’t mean that I’m letting this project down, not at all! But I don’t want it to finish like SPrintWindow (I still have to commit the sources somewhere…).
I’ll try to comment the code as often as I can, and write documentations too.

Anyway, you can now find everything on the DWMaxx Google Code project page.

On a side note, I’ve been working pretty hard to get 3D window rotations working. I think I’m on something, but it might be trickier than I thought (because theses things are quite hard-wired inside the DWM). I’ll keep you guys posted.

DWMaxx: Z Rotation

siwu — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:53:40 +0000

So yesterday I spent most the evening and night rewriting some of the low level code, to interact more directly with MIL (on which DWM sits). The result is a much faster code, and thus creates smoother animations. This also allowed me to implemented Z Rotation

Once again, pardon my AGP card for the slow capture framerate

Sinapse running DWMaxx

siwu — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:19:40 +0000

Quick video of one of the first shots of Sinapse running in pair with DWMaxx, hope you’ll like it

DWMaxx: Another Quick Tech Demo

siwu — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 02:19:19 +0000

So tonight I tried to make Sinapse run with DWMaxx. The two mains issues were that Sinapse is old, and that I was running into some kind of lags.
Basically, when I would resize the window in the animation loop, the window would not resize. After tweaking everything in my code, something came to light.

DWM uses timing magic to minimize the number of scene rendering is has to do! When idle, for instance, my desktop runs at 2 fps (according to Fraps). And indeed, when I change the size of the my window, the scene doesn’t get redrawn. But thankfully, the DWM has also the less known DWM Frame Timing API. Basically, this API allows you to control the rendering frame-rate of the screen, according mostly to “refreshes” (V-Sync) signals. So, indeed, I requested my frame to get redrawn after I change a window size.

Also, I’ve added the possibility to change the window’s position (regardless of it’s real position, it’s only graphic).

And here’s what it looks like, running inside Sinapse (which is being rewritten):

DWMaxx: Unleashing your DWM ;)

siwu — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 01:56:12 +0000

Hey folks, tonight (actually before going to bed), I want to introduce you to a tech preview of my new library: DWMaxx. It is using my weeks of research into the DWM, and at the moment I’m quite happy with the first results
By the way, I want to thank you all for your kind words about this project, thank you folks. I’m sorry I’m not replying all the emails, but at the moment I’m really hooked into real-life stuff. But fear not, I will reply!
Also, A BIG THANK YOU TO AVE, without him, much of the current design would not the way it is!

Everything you see is running on a P4E 3.0 GHz with a GeForce 7600 GS (it’s an AGP card, hence the 15-20 FPS only).

So, here we go, first demo: True Zooming