Re-Do The Way The Balance Control Works

[Axel Slingerland]

I've looked all over this forum for anything about re-doing the way the Balance Control works, and I can't find anything. So here's what I have in mind...

In the image below you'll see that the top section is a screenshot of the Major Tom Remix Main Amp window, and the Balance is Centered. Below that is another screenshot of the Main Amp window, with the Balance all the way to the Left. If you go all the way to the Right it looks the exact same way.

To the right of those screenshots are copies of the Major Tom Balance.bmp and Volume.bmp images. The top frame of the Balance image is centered, and regardless of which way you move the control, the frames change starting at the top and move down. For the indicator, a standard Balance.bmp image has to small "buttons" at the bottom of the image. I never understood why they had all those identical background frames when the buttons which appear to slide over the frames, could have used a single frame. As it is, if you use a standard Balance.bmp image, the indicator appears to work like a normal slider. However, with the type of images in the Major Tom skin's Balance.bmp image, which has no buttons at the bottom, it just looks weird when you move the control left or right. I've never seen a balance control that works like that anywhere.

In contrast, the Volume.bmp has the indicator as part of the image for each frame, and as you move the control from 0% to 100%, the frames change as you go, changing from the top of the image (0%) to the bottom (100%), giving the volume control a normal appearance.



My Feature Request is to fix the balance control so that it works the same way as the volume control, but with a default setting of 50%, which would be Centered. And of course, it would stay where ever it might be moved to by the user.

That's all Folks!

[dro]

The fun of classic skins & how to try to change things without breaking the long standing behaviour of them vs how the action is implemented & the design style that a skin has decided to go with. The balance handling does make sense with how it's actually implemented (it's a -127 - 0 - 127 range) & also what the base skin does with it implying an intensity of change when going away from center.

Also I'm not sure what you mean by "it would stay where ever it might be moved to by the user" as the position should already be being remembered.


The only way I can think of allowing you to have what you want that doesn't break existing classic skin compatibility would require WACUP to be able to use another image or set of images so that left-center & center-right are handled separately (i.e. a making a balance_ex.bmp that's used otherwise it reverts to the existing behaviour if not found).

The other thing is how to deal with pressed state as looking at the skin, you could almost have it so it's got 2 different meters to represent the left & right but it's how to then have things make sense vs that. In all honesty, I thought the bit above might work but now I'm thinking about it more for this bit of the reply & I really don't know what would actually make sense to potentially do that doesn't make it too complicated to either implement or for it to be too skin specific. As whatever is seen still needs to map to the internal range & now I'm confused nor do I see how having the volume mode for it making sense from an interaction view point 😕

-dro

[dro]

Maybe I should first have had a look at the skin mentioned as I see it's balance.bmp (as well as it's volume.bmp) is intentionally clipped so there isn't an overlay slider part for the skin engine to use which miraculously means my implementation is behaving, heh. So based on that a balance_ex.bmp for what I think you're wanting with this skin would need left-center & center-right blocks (i.e. doubling what balance.bmp already does & then it just drawing the side as needed) though it still leaves me with the slider handling to determine what to do for those that would need it. Something for the todo list later on.

-dro

[Axel Slingerland]

Your implementation is behaving fine. Winamp's balance control has always worked this way...

The only solutions I have been able to come up with is to edit the images, and replace the current "unlighted meters" that have dark areas on the left and right extremes, and red lines in those areas, with "lighted meters" that have no shading or red lines. Then I can add the button images back into the image and it wouldn't look odd when you put the button over the areas that are now shaded and have red lines. I tried that and it worked ok, I would just want to redo all of my quick and dirty edits and do it right.

My current solution is to "break the needle" by copying the first frame of the Balance.bmp file and copy it to all frames, so that when you move the slider, the needle doesn't "move". It's rather cheesy, but it works.

Thanks for the explanation as to why this wouldn't work.

[dro]

Can you provide me a copy of the modified skin please (can PM if you'd prefer it not to out there) as I'm not quite getting what you're describing for the changes to the balance image that you've made - that should give me a better idea of what's going on & might better sort out what I've got floating around in my grey cell with the potential changes that could be done towards this.

-dro