I just can’t get the main interface up to par with my expectations.  When it comes right down to it, I’m absolutely worthless at graphic/interface design, which means mGen is severely lacking in the aesthetics department.  I know it doesn’t affect the music making, but it’s very uninspiring to have such a boring, inartistic interface.  In a huge effort involving every smidgen of my artistic capabilities (and lack thereof), I have designed a new concept interface.

The new interface probably won’t replace the current one; it will probably just be a higher-level tool for those that don’t want to get as in-depth.  I’m not going to reveal any screenshots, but it basically takes all the technicality out of the work.  There’s no compositional skeleton, no ugly “modular displays,” and no render settings (well…not yet, at least).  You load modules by clicking on large tile-buttons that transform to indicate the loaded plugin.  Of course this means that generative and post-processing modules will be limited because there aren’t infinite tiles.  Nonetheless, I think this interface will work nicely for quick test runs and for users with little technical skill.

Along with the new interface I think I’ll also re-code the framework from scratch since it’s getting to be the oldest part of mGen.  Granted, everything works right now.  But on days like today when a bug shows up, it’s a nightmare to try to figure out what’s causing it with the current framework, which was designed back in the day when I had no clue how to organize data structures appropriately.  It’s way more complicated than need be, and with a slick new interface I’d like a slick new backend as well.  This time I’ll try to make the framework componentry more independent of the interface as well, so I don’t have to rewrite the framework if I change the interface again.

Hopefully mGen will be looking and functioning a lot smoother in the next week or so.