MFC template for Freeframe source plugins (try it!)

[victimofleisure]

After I wrote the Whorld source plugin, I got the idea that it would have been handy to have some kind of template project to start from, along the lines of "TODO: add your drawing code here". I looked at the FreeFrame SDK, but it wasn't quite what I had in mind. I wanted something optimized for writing source plugins, rather than effects. Specifically, I wanted the template to mirror the structure of a typical MFC graphics app, with a surrogate main frame and view, so that drawing code could be transplanted from an app to a plugin with minimal modifications. For example, in Whorld, the view uses the exact same source file in both the app and plugin; the differences are simple enough to be managed with #ifdefs.

So I finally got around to making the template project. It's called FFSrcPlug. It has a rudimentary demo view which draws a bouncing ball, and it exposes a single Freeframe parameter (the ball speed). The plugin DLL and the template project sources are in the same zip file, which is here:

http://whorld.org/temp/FFSrcPlug-1.0.0.zip

I've only tested FFSrcPlug.dll under TZT and Resolume. If you can test it in other hosts and post the results here, I would be grateful.

Speculation: could it be that part of the reason why Freeframe source plugins aren't so common is because there wasn't a clear example to start from? If that's so, maybe this template will spark an explosion of cool source plugins! You never know...

Chris Korda
http://whorld.org