A frantic and stressful evening, passing versions of Radioactive on for testing. The results were ultimately useful, but it was all very last-minute.
I lay awake thinking about the CONFIGFILE changes. As well as reading and writing variables in the form "variable=value" it can write text to a file, simple lines, but what if the previous line didn't have a linefeed? Normally it adds one, then then line, but sometimes the class is used to add lists of variables like "Data=125, 167, 266" etc. so there's a separate function for appending text. In the night I thought that the ideal is a function which can either start text on a new line, or not, or add a linefeed, or not. Such things are the spinning thoughts at 4am. I hardly slept, as is usual when working until 9pm, but it's usual at any night. I've not slept for a whole night all year.
So, I programmed this function in the morning, and discovered the cause of yesterday's odd crashes which were down to a failure to initialise, trying to free memory via a junk pointer. All is well and the class is brilliant, though it wasn't, it turned out, anything to do with the Radioactive errors.
So, then to Radioactive, which was launched at 11:30am with a few changes. Based on Andrew's feedback, it seemed to be setting up screens successfully, but, right at the last minute, rejecting them, which points to the final check of all, for texture formats. Textures aren't used in Radioactive, and they were very problematical on Windows 8 with Flatspace, so long ago I replaced them all with DDS textures anyway. In this case, I simply removed the code. Perhaps it works, but, even if not there is a demo for people to try.
Then I thought that I really should shut the display down in case of failure, so, in a panic, created a new build which did this at 12:25, before, ten minutes later, realising that everything shuts down anyway, and doing it twice might make things worse. More panics, and switching back to the former build. All a last minute panic, when the program updates were complete 14 days ago.
This has probably been the most stressful and troublesome launch since the first Flatspace, but it's now done.
I dreamt of a new weapon, a new experimental sound generator which was set up in a deserted railway station. It was huge, with a grey, square face about 5M wide and high, a little like a performance stage. A man in a white coat and goggles sat on top in a command chair, and others were there as part of the 'crew'. It fired off a weak sound into the distance. After a minute or so, there was a distant explosion visible on the horizon. Then the power was turned up and the weapon fired again. The explosion in the distance was small at first but grew to be vast, a huge red/orange mushroom cloud, growing in size in proportion to our alarm as the conflagration approached us. I ran in fear indoors into a warm, well-lit room with tiles and huge windows like a swimming baths, like Rhyl's old Sun Centre. The device was fired again, but at me this time, as a weather controlling device. A thunderstorm hit the building, vast torrents of rain teeming down the windows. I cowered under some stairs, awaiting the terrifying bangs of thunder.
After the Radioactive set up, I got back to my painting, and traced the underdrawing to the canvas. I've lost a day's work due to programming, but programming is generally some sort of progress in terms of tools.
