I spent an hour trying to implement a suggestion from someone on Stack Exchange, and actually got it working. However, while it fixes what I was asking for, it makes the program slower and makes it lock up again while calculating and drawing, which was its main problem. Well, I suppose the coding at least was a worthy experience, and maybe the guy from Stack Exchange will have another idea. I also found out while testing something that apparently if you close the program while it's still drawing, it keeps going even after you closed it!! That is very bad, so when I figure out how to fix it I might make a small update. However, if nobody requests it I'll leave it be until the next big update, as I don't think many people use this program anyway. If you do use it, you can use the task manager to kill the process. If it is still running after you close it, it will likely be at the very top of 'Background Processes', and there you can end it (it will likely be at the top because the processes are sorted alphabetically by default, and for some reason the name of the process is '2' instead of 'Mandelbrot Explorer'. I'll add that to my list of things to look into ). Edit: I took a shower after that and got a couple of new ideas to fix the issues I was having. I'll try them out later though, as I wasn't actually intending on doing any coding this evening, and that hour already pressured my schedule quite a bit.
I have for now given up in improving the drawing speed of my program. I have spent hours (not sure how many) on trying to figure things out, but it's too complicated for me. I invented a reasonably fast way to draw, much faster than what I handed in for university and got a 10.3/10 on, and I'll have to be content with that for now. Because I'd like to work on other stuff in this project again. The reason I was looking into the drawing and such was that I wanted the user to be able to save a picture without having to wait. If you need to wait while the picture is saved, the user might rather take a screenshot instead. But there is one advantage of it being slow now... I implemented a progress bar.
The big update is finally here! Mandelbrot Explorer 1.7's most prominent changes: Fixed critical bug in last version Implemented saving images Implemented loading images Improved full-screen drawing Made program ~1.5 times as fast I am going to host a contest now.
This thing is a great CPU stresstest... I put the "maximum iterations" at 80 000 and just refresh it every second... keeps it nice and clean at 100% at all cores...
Haha, nice. In the previous version, when you closed the program while it had not finished drawing, it would keep going as a background process. Oops...
I released a bugfix update 1.7.1, as I noticed that when you saved an image that was zoomed in very far and tried to load it back, the program would raise an exception. This has been fixed (along with some other related and less related issues). Please redownload if you are having issues. Images saved with 1.7 that can't be loaded back can be loaded back with 1.7.1.
When Lukas sent me some images made with the program a while ago, I realised that saving and loading didn't work for people that had something other than the period set as decimal separator (on German and Dutch systems, the comma is the default decimal separator). For some reason I wasn't motivated to fix this until I released a 'music video' featuring Mandelbrot, and it turned out to be really easy. In fact, I had learnt how to do it in class, over a year ago now. So now saving and loading can be enjoyed by everyone! However, you will have to redo old images (or ask me to manually convert them), as I decided not to include backward compatibility because very few people seemed to have used the program so far anyway. (of course this means you will have to redownload the program; it doesn't have any form of auto-updating. Maybe I could add that to my list of ideas to implement when I feel like working on something ) Edit: Oops, when set to Dutch the manual claims it is version 1.7.2, despite it being 1.7.3. I should probably automate the updating of that somehow, so I don't need to do it myself every time - in both languages.
I've been working on this application becoming DPI-aware! Then you can finally use it on any device without having to worry about blurriness. I already got it to work that when you start the application on a different DPI setting than default, it draws to that size, instead of drawing to the original size and then upscaling, as it did before (thus resulting in a blurry image). So now I can use the program without altering my scaling (I have it set to 125% on my laptop), and it will look great. However, I'd like to go one step further: some applications rescale right when you change your DPI setting, or move them to a different monitor that has a different setting. You don't have to restart those for the changes to take effect. I want that too! But the message of a DPI change is not being sent, for some reason. I created a question about it on Stack Overflow, so hopefully someone will be able to help me out.
Mandelbrotverkenner 1.8 has been released! Download it from the website, linked in the OP. The main new features: Save images in any resolution (by right clicking on the save button) Use the program without issues on high dpi monitors New colouration inspired by a journey to the centre of the earth, using nonlinear colour calculation Recommendation for the new Earth colouration: use this with very high amounts of iterations (10k+), start from the zoomed out location, and see what you'll find by zooming in! If you zoom in very far (on high iterations) you'll find stuff like this!
While writing the results for the Mandelbrot Art Contest, I came across strange behaviour in the application considering DPI scaling. I have not come across this before, but I'll try to find what's causing it later! (and fix it, of course ) If you also get a GUI that doesn't fit right or similar issues, please let me know, including your scaling settings and whether they are different from your usual settings.
I have my scaling set to 100% (as it's simply superior ), but a friend of mine has it at 125%, and he often sees problems with programs not properly displaying stuff. Actually, that made me realise: on the computer connected to our TV I've set it to verymuch% schaling, and even some Windows things appear somewhat broken. Just schaling itself in Windows is quite iffy.
These issues have now been fixed! If you experience issues with the scaling of text (probably it being too large to fit in the buttons), download 1.8.1! It fixes the issue. If you have no issues, you can also update (but it's not necessary), but you won't see a difference. (although I also made some rather minor changes besides this fix)
This has been by far the longest time between updates yet. It must be a big one, then, right? Well... no. I had envisioned a 2.0 update, which I am still intending to make, which would involve a redo of the GUI. However, before that, I wanted to release version 1.8.2, which would make multithreading dynamic (keeping the amount of available threads in account instead of just using 4), and would also do multithreaded saving of pictures. I had a lot of difficulty with the latter part, though, and gave up for a while. I got back to it last week, though, and figured it out! I thought I would stay stuck several times, and resolved to post on Stack Overflow a few times, only to find a new lead before actually doing so. And I was successful. You can now download Mandelbrotverkenner 1.8.2, which will allow you to save pictures a lot quicker, and if you have more than 4 threads available on your pc, draw a lot quicker, too! https://607web.nl/mandelbrot-explorer Let me know if you have any issues!
