GuideMe (TeaseMe v2.0) - Current Build 0.4.4

[Trusfrated]

But if I play it with the xml files with GuideMe, even at fullscreen the taskbar at the top is always there, it always displays the name of the XML file on the top right, some of the images show a scroll bar even though they fit, stuff like that.

Some of what you mention can be addressed already. In Application Preferences, I have my Font Size set to 8 and it makes that top row of text pretty small and less intrusive. This also affects the size of the Preferences menu so if you make it super small it can be impossible to navigate. You'll have to restart or toggle full screen to see the effect of this change on the tease screen.

To toggle the Menu bar, use Alt-M.

These two changes can make full screen largely uncluttered. There is an invisible divider between the left (picture) and right (text) frames of the tease that you allow you to drag to resize either one. Sometimes this helps with getting rid of scroll bars. Possibly also playing with the Image Scale Factor in your Preferences.

Hope that helps!

[Xyrexus]

Oh I wasn't aware of the ALT-M thing, I'll have to play around with it.

I still think an option to just hide the title might be a good idea though, it doesn't really need to be there, if I load up a game I know what I'm playing after all. ^^ But thank you for the reply!

[PlayfulGuy]

It looks like I made a typo in the build script on GitHub, and the 64-bit builds were not getting the correct VLC files bundled. If you have VLC installed on your machine you wouldn't notice this, however the 64-bit build would fail to start in some circumstances because of this.

I'm releasing v0.4.1 momentarily which will resolve this issue. If v0.4.0 is working for you, there's no need to update as no new features were added.

Apologies for the trouble, and thank you to those who brought this to my attention

So, are you taking feature requests? If you are how about something like GlobalButton that defines a button that will appear on every page until a matching RemoveButton is encountered. This would provide support for EOS's Notifications feature.
I envision something like

Code: Select all

<GlobalButton id="Cumming" target="SomePage" jscript="some code">Button label</Button>
<RemoveButton id="Cumming">

And of course I'd want equivalent overRide.addGlobalButton() and overRide.removeButton() functions.
These global buttons should be added in the order they are encountered, following any buttons defined within that page.
I don't think hotkeys would be required, but if it's not hard to do why not.

PG

[EroticDevelopment]

But if I play it with the xml files with GuideMe, even at fullscreen the taskbar at the top is always there, it always displays the name of the XML file on the top right, some of the images show a scroll bar even though they fit, stuff like that.

Some of what you mention can be addressed already. In Application Preferences, I have my Font Size set to 8 and it makes that top row of text pretty small and less intrusive. This also affects the size of the Preferences menu so if you make it super small it can be impossible to navigate. You'll have to restart or toggle full screen to see the effect of this change on the tease screen.

To toggle the Menu bar, use Alt-M.

These two changes can make full screen largely uncluttered. There is an invisible divider between the left (picture) and right (text) frames of the tease that you allow you to drag to resize either one. Sometimes this helps with getting rid of scroll bars. Possibly also playing with the Image Scale Factor in your Preferences.

Hope that helps!

These are all good suggestions, and do resolve a lot of it. Unfortunately it will be nearly impossible to rid the occasional scroll bar. This is generally caused by slight variances in how the browser is rendered and the best way I know of to fix that is to slightly decrease the image scale in settings as Trustfrated said.

The invisible divider is also really important. I didn't realize that was there for the longest time, but moving your mouse slowly from the left to right or vice-versa you should see the cursor change. There's a second hidden horizontal divider on the right pane between the text and the buttons also.

I can look at adding an application setting to remove the title. I think that part would be really easy, the harder part is to remove that extra padding at the top if both the clock and the title are disabled.

[EroticDevelopment]

It looks like I made a typo in the build script on GitHub, and the 64-bit builds were not getting the correct VLC files bundled. If you have VLC installed on your machine you wouldn't notice this, however the 64-bit build would fail to start in some circumstances because of this.

I'm releasing v0.4.1 momentarily which will resolve this issue. If v0.4.0 is working for you, there's no need to update as no new features were added.

Apologies for the trouble, and thank you to those who brought this to my attention

So, are you taking feature requests? If you are how about something like GlobalButton that defines a button that will appear on every page until a matching RemoveButton is encountered. This would provide support for EOS's Notifications feature.
I envision something like

Code: Select all

<GlobalButton id="Cumming" target="SomePage" jscript="some code">Button label</Button>
<RemoveButton id="Cumming">

And of course I'd want equivalent overRide.addGlobalButton() and overRide.removeButton() functions.
These global buttons should be added in the order they are encountered, following any buttons defined within that page.
I don't think hotkeys would be required, but if it's not hard to do why not.

PG

I'll take both feature requests and pull requests

This seems reasonable, and would help with implementing the EOS teases. To simplify the parsing of page data, I'd probably prefer to keep the XML tag name the same and add an action attribute like this

Code: Select all

<GlobalButton action="add" id="Cumming">Label</GlobalButton>
<GlobalButton action="remove" id="Cumming" />

That would also keeps things inline with the set and unset attributes as it's fairly similar in behavior. I agree, they would need JS functions to add/remove as well. I can see an argument for global buttons at the beginning and the end so I would probably look at an attribute to specify beginning or end, with a default of the end as that seems most common with shared buttons.

Hotkeys aren't the most straightforward to add, so I'd probably put that as an improvement later on if it seems like something that would be really useful.

Does anyone have any thoughts or feedback on this?

[EroticDevelopment]

I have a couple general questions for the group that I'd appreciate some feedback on if you have a minute. These will help me to prioritize other features and suggestions I've received over the next month or so.

• What program or programs do you typically use when writing or editing teases for GuideMe?
• How often do you use GuideMe for e-stim based teases?

Thanks!

[PlayfulGuy]

I have a couple general questions for the group that I'd appreciate some feedback on if you have a minute. These will help me to prioritize other features and suggestions I've received over the next month or so.

• What program or programs do you typically use when writing or editing teases for GuideMe?
• How often do you use GuideMe for e-stim based teases?

Thanks!

I do all my GuideMe development (actually all my development period) in PSPad. It's a good programmers editor/IDE with syntax highlighting, macros, etc.

I don't use e-stim.

[PlayfulGuy]

I'll take both feature requests and pull requests

This seems reasonable, and would help with implementing the EOS teases. To simplify the parsing of page data, I'd probably prefer to keep the XML tag name the same and add an action attribute like this

Code: Select all

<GlobalButton action="add" id="Cumming">Label</GlobalButton>
<GlobalButton action="remove" id="Cumming" />

That would also keeps things inline with the set and unset attributes as it's fairly similar in behavior. I agree, they would need JS functions to add/remove as well. I can see an argument for global buttons at the beginning and the end so I would probably look at an attribute to specify beginning or end, with a default of the end as that seems most common with shared buttons.

Hotkeys aren't the most straightforward to add, so I'd probably put that as an improvement later on if it seems like something that would be really useful.

Does anyone have any thoughts or feedback on this?

You're right, using the same name and an action attribute makes more sense.

By an option to put global buttons at the beginning or end do you mean like in the <Settings> section of the guide so it affects all global buttons, or as an attribute like <GlobalButton placement="top"> so the placement of each button could be specified.
As an attribute like that would probably give the most flexibility, since you could define one global button that appears before any local buttons, and another that appears after the local buttons.

For me the hotkey question comes down to playability. When you're doing a tease one hand is usually busy and It's much easier to tap a key on the keyboard than it is to move the mouse around and click a button.

I always try to code my teases so the most likely button is the first one and you can just hit the space bar (Guideme's default) and then others have a letter or number assigned. But I'm totally okay with leaving that as a future enhancement too. And you're the one doing the work so...

Cheers!

[tr0gd0r]

I have a (hopefully) small feature request: at present, clicking a button forces a jump to the target page, even if one is not specified (thus resulting in an error). Would it be possible to execute the given javascript function and not jump to a target page. This way I hope I can somewhat decouple the user inputs from the page update.

e.g. something like:

Code: Select all

overRide.addButton("", "Press Me!", "", "", "someFunction()", "");

And when the button is pressed have someFunction() called, but staying on the current page and continuing to play audio etc.

Thanks!

[tr0gd0r]

Oh one other thing! Is the second audio player available to javascript? I tried overRide.setAudio2() but that didn't seem to work.

Thanks again!

[philo]

Oh one other thing! Is the second audio player available to javascript? I tried overRide.setAudio2() but that didn't seem to work.

Thanks again!

Over ride for audio2 hasn't been implemented, but it would be easy to do.

[EroticDevelopment]

Hi everyone, life has kept me busy and I haven't posted an update here in a bit but I've been reading replies and progress has been being made. I'm testing a number of new features, and hope to have a new release out soon!

By an option to put global buttons at the beginning or end do you mean like in the <Settings> section of the guide so it affects all global buttons, or as an attribute like <GlobalButton placement="top"> so the placement of each button could be specified.
As an attribute like that would probably give the most flexibility, since you could define one global button that appears before any local buttons, and another that appears after the local buttons.

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. The GlobalButton XML tag is feature-complete and I'm just testing things out now. It will support a "placement" attribute to put global buttons before or after all of the others. Additionally, the existing sort order attribute will be supported to sort multiple global buttons if they exist. It will have an overRide JS hook as well to add/remove Global Buttons.

For me the hotkey question comes down to playability. When you're doing a tease one hand is usually busy and It's much easier to tap a key on the keyboard than it is to move the mouse around and click a button.

I always try to code my teases so the most likely button is the first one and you can just hit the space bar (Guideme's default) and then others have a letter or number assigned. But I'm totally okay with leaving that as a future enhancement too. And you're the one doing the work so...

Something that I expected to be problematic turned out to be a non-issue, so hotkeys will be fully supported.

I have a (hopefully) small feature request: at present, clicking a button forces a jump to the target page, even if one is not specified (thus resulting in an error). Would it be possible to execute the given javascript function and not jump to a target page. This way I hope I can somewhat decouple the user inputs from the page update.

Seems reasonable, this is a really minor change and will be available in the next release as well. It's also complete, and just needs some testing. The only change is a check to see if the target is set, so buttons without a target will no longer navigate to a non-existent page. Other than that, all other standard button features will continue to work as they do now. This combined with the GlobalButton tag could have some interesting possibilities.

Oh one other thing! Is the second audio player available to javascript? I tried overRide.setAudio2() but that didn't seem to work.

Thanks again!

Over ride for audio2 hasn't been implemented, but it would be easy to do.

It was fairly straightforward, and is also already complete. Like the other items, I'd like to test them a bit more, but this will be available in the next release. It will be identical to the setAudio functions except named setAudio2 as you already tried.

Mixed in with all of this, I've been trying to get proper cross-platform builds working. I believe I have a Linux build functional but MacOS is being difficult. I expect to release a Beta version for Linux in this upcoming release, but Mac still needs some work. There's a weird bug in the UI layer that has proven difficult to track down. The Linux build will require Java (JRE) and VLC to be installed on your system. This will likely be a permanent requirement due to a number of issues trying to package binaries for Linux machines. If you've installed VLC from source manually, you may need to tweak the start.sh script to include your lib path but that should be trivial if you're compiling software yourself.

Finally, this next release will have a new "Audio" menu in the top bar. From there, you'll be able to choose a specific audio output device for Audio, Audio2, and Video elements. This means you can have Video and/or Audio come out of one device while having Audio2 come out of a different device or anything in-between. Currently the Metronome will continue to use the system default device, but if there is demand I can look at changing that as well. This opens the door for a lot of possibilities in the e-stim realm as well as a number of other things. Audio/Video synchronization wasn't ever guaranteed that I know of, but from my testing a Page with both an Audio and Video element are synchronized to within a few milliseconds of each other. I didn't get a lot of responses on the use of e-stim teases here, but in the Webteases they're frequently nominated for TOTM so I know there's a user base here. I've also personally wanted to be able to split audio to multiple devices and it's been annoying to try to work this out in Windows's settings alone.

Last but certainly not least, Documentation! I'm working on a GitHub Pages website that will document all of the XML and JS syntax for the teases building off from an older Wiki of Philo's. Additionally, this will contain indicators of minimum version requirements to use a specific XML tag and/or attribute. As we start to add new features, XML tags, and attributes, it will be important to know what items work with what software versions. As a part of this I've added an optional new "minimumVersion" attribute to the root <Tease> XML tag, so you can specify the minimum version required to run your file if it contains any of these new features. If it is opened in an older version (starting with v0.4.2 because older versions won't check for this attribute), a message will be displayed indicating this tease requires a newer version and you should update. However, to not make this a roadblock, you can still click a button to ignore this warning and continue anyway.

[Electro]

Regarding multiple audio/video output devices, I didn't see this coming!

I think this is huge because the eStim community can use video with audio we can hear, along with the estim track! In general what we usually need to do for eStim is put it all in a surround sound video or have either the estim or audible audio in a separate MP3, which takes away all of the interactivity of a tease since it's a linear video. The common interactive eStim for teases has been to sit in silence while using the tease because the sound is going through estim. Now we have the ability to hear interactive elements with the estim. I like this! Thank you!

[tr0gd0r]

Seems reasonable, this is a really minor change and will be available in the next release as well. It's also complete, and just needs some testing. The only change is a check to see if the target is set, so buttons without a target will no longer navigate to a non-existent page. Other than that, all other standard button features will continue to work as they do now. This combined with the GlobalButton tag could have some interesting possibilities.

It was fairly straightforward, and is also already complete. Like the other items, I'd like to test them a bit more, but this will be available in the next release. It will be identical to the setAudio functions except named setAudio2 as you already tried.

Sounds awesome, cant wait!

[EroticDevelopment]

Documentation is here! (link in my signature) Documentation is hosted by GitHub Pages, and the full source is in the repository in the "gh-pages" directory. It's still very much a work in progress, and I know there's some XML attributes that are being read but aren't documented so I still need to double-check them all against the code. Keeping in mind there may still be some inaccuracies, feedback is always welcome. I've also tweaked the print styles so the documentation will print nicely to paper or a PDF for offline reference. Browsers seem to handle print styles differently so I'd recommend Chrome, but others seem to do ok.

Regarding multiple audio/video output devices, I didn't see this coming!

I told Philo in a PM that I was working on this, but I was avoiding posting here because I was having a ton of issues with it. I didn't want to get people excited and then not be able to release it for a long time. I finally tracked it down to a bug in the VLC plugin, and was able to update it and fix the issue.

I think this is huge because the eStim community can use video with audio we can hear, along with the estim track! In general what we usually need to do for eStim is put it all in a surround sound video or have either the estim or audible audio in a separate MP3, which takes away all of the interactivity of a tease since it's a linear video. The common interactive eStim for teases has been to sit in silence while using the tease because the sound is going through estim. Now we have the ability to hear interactive elements with the estim. I like this! Thank you!

I think it could be too, and I'm excited to see what people make from it. I've seen a ton of videos w/ e-stim tracks but as you said it's difficult to have both "normal" audio and e-stim audio in the same file. This should make it nearly trivial now. As I mentioned initially, audio/video synchronization isn't guaranteed, but seems to be pretty good. If these types of teases become popular and it's an issue I don't mind doing some work to get synchronization more of a guarantee.