Monday, January 7, 2013

New version of LCARS Interface has been released!

It's only been a couple days, but the immediate positive response I received made me work all weekend on a decently sized update which hit the store today!

This version brings the following:
  • Selected settings are now saved so you don't have to change them for each run!
  • Added additional functionality to the text editor to make it slightly more useful on touch screens. You can now Copy/Paste/Cut with buttons on the screen. You can also create new files and you will get the appropriate dialogs about saving your work.
  • Cleaned up some visuals on panels and text to be more consistent for each system type. Tweaked many visuals to look better across more resolutions. Text should be more consistent across screens. This includes things like all the text properly changing colors for the Red Alert system type, all the headings are now in CAPS as they should be, etc.
  • Fixed a few animation glitches. Transitions between screens should be more smooth now.
  • Performance enhancements under the hood. System resources required should be significantly reduced on lower power devices. This change you may not see a difference, but quite a bit was changed on the backend to allow the app to use significantly less memory up front, and to allow nearly limitless modules to be added later that won't increase the memory use since everything will not always be running anymore.
  • By request: (or rather, a negative review): Added M4V to the supported file extensions. Keep in mind this player may NOT play some DRM protected files, and may require additional codecs to be installed on your system. It's capabilities are limited to what Windows Media Player or the Videos app are able to open.
  • Added controls when playing media full screen. This was an oversight that I shouldn't have made. You can now use basic controls when viewing full screen. You can exit full screen with the button, or double tap, or by pressing ESC.
  • You can now customize with LCARS terminal for your own ship! Enter ship name and registry information. This is a fun change that makes the app more customizable. All of you don't serve on the same starship and so your computers shouldn't all say the same thing!
  • Various other bug fixes that mostly relate to the media player.

I've also had some reports of the app freezing on initial launch which were not due to the app itself, but to antivirus software that blocks a lot of Windows 8 apps from running correctly. Please check this first if you are having any problems, especially if you just upgraded from Windows 7 and had antivirus software installed! Please keep me advised of any technical issues you are experiencing, because I will respond quickly and do my best to get it resolved for you quickly.

I've got several more pieces of functionality in the works for this, but I need your feedback on what you want to see added! The collective creativeness of my users is a lot better than my own, and I like working toward specific goals that I know people want to see.

1 comment:

  1. I'm going to break down and give Microsoft my credit card number so I can buy this app. Anyway you could add a clock and weather on the same screen?

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