Corona by Phthalo (22 Sep 02) Introduction... A blurry swirly particle effect thingy. With reflection. You should run this at a fairly low resolution - make sure you're getting 30 frames per second at an *absolute minimum* (the smoothness makes a huge difference). Don't watch it for too long (this isn't a big danger - it's not that interesting) or you'll end up seeing weird swirls behind you're eyelids before you go to sleep. Installation... If the download didn't come with a proper installer, just copy the corona.svp file to your Sonique "vis" directory, and restart Sonique (if you're using Synesthesia, move the corona.svp to the vis directory in the Winamp directory). A Bit of History... I've always felt that particle systems have been neglected in vises. Ever since Ryan Geiss released his Winamp vis (called Geiss), blur effects have been the de facto standard, and while they've been brilliantly reproduced and applied in countless plugins, the original idea hasn't changed. Such was my thinking around March this year, when I started writing a little Sonique plugin to package with Synesthesia (my Winamp-Sonique port plugin). After a couple of days, though, it didn't seem like it was going anywhere, and I was too busy to care at the time, so the fledgling plugin was put to bed. Half a year later, I was looking back nostalgically at the Synesthesia code, trying to make a few changes for a final release, when I saw my little half-complete Sonique plugin. After a bit of playing with it, I decided to rewrite it and finish the job. Corona is the result :O) I'm reasonably pleased with it... I didn't intend to take more than a few days working on it, but only now am I beginning to really believe in the 2.5 rule: The time you expect a project to take will be enough to *just* get it working. You'll need that amount of time again to make it good (satisfy other people's requests), and another half to put a few finishing touches on it :O) I've basically missed out the last .5 - I think it could be better but I just don't have the time to do it. I might release the source code sometime for other people to tinker with, but there's nothing very clever in it - I expect most people would be able to replicate what I've done in less time than it'd take them to comprehend my C++! Thanks... to the many people that helped test Corona and had the patience to encourage me even when it wasn't worth the 17kb download :O) Contact... E-mail me if you have anything to say (really, anything - I love some feedback even if it's completely useless!) at richard.asbury@btinternet.com My main webpage is at http://users.ox.ac.uk/~linc1040/ Richard Asbury
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