Whorld V2 is coming!

Whorld V2 renders much faster, allowing higher ring counts and frame rates, and also features anti-aliasing, eliminating jaggies. The UI is completely revamped, with many enhancements such as dockable panes, unlimited undo, and much improved handling of full screen mode, in both single and dual monitor configurations.

It's been a long time since there was news on the Whorld front. That's partly because I've been busy with other projects, but also because I needed to learn new skills. Under the hood, all of the graphics are now done in Direct2D 1.1, and the design is fully multi-threaded so that the UI and the rendering are completely disentangled. Rendering is silky smooth and stable at 60 frames per second, even with high ring counts.

Here's the done list:

• Direct2D 1.1 initialization and rendering structure (mostly borrowed from FauveEdit).
• Multithreaded design - all Direct2D access is by a worker thread (render thread).
• Full screen and windowed modes, in both single and dual monitor configurations.
• Parameter editing - via row dialog, imported from legacy version, with a few tweaks.
• Data architecture - CWhorldBase, with structures to organize all app data.
• Display frame rate in status bar - measure elapsed time via performance counter.
• Routing of document update notifications, adhering to the MFC SDI scheme.
• Undo system - imported from other projects, integrates with MFC.

Still to do:

• Draw the Whorld graphics, replacing the placeholder drawing - first the basics, then:
  • Bézier curves.
  • Fill mode (as opposed to line mode).
  • Quad mirroring.
  • XOR mode (would require custom a Direct2D effect).
• Options dialog, probably based on CMFCPropertyGridCtrl as in the Polymeter app.
• MIDI support, with "learn" mode - much can be imported from the Polymeter app.
• Bitmap export - somewhat complicated by multithreaded design.
• Snapshot read/write/display - a vector-based format that captures the graphics state.