                   FunkyFX Plugin for WinAmp
                             v2.00b
                   --------------------------

                          18 Nov 1998

Inroduction
-----------

This archive contains the FunkyFX plugin for Winamp. This is version 2.00b -
(the 'b' stands for 'still a few tiny changes to make to the skin format
that might cause it to Break' rather than 'Buggy' or 'Beta' :-)

This version of the plugin has been substantially improved upon since the
last public release, v1.00 (this was going to be FunkyFX v1.01, until I
realised that the amount of work I'd put into it warranted a slightly
more impressive version number.)

FunkyFX now comes with three modules: 

FyrewurX: Nice music synched fireworks in time to the music.
FrequencywurX: A gorgeous spectrum analyser.
FlamewurX (new to v2.00b): A difficult to describe fire effect.


Important Note
--------------

The preset files (*.ffx) have been slightly modified since v1.00,
and they may work slightly differently with this new version of
the plugin. 

Also, the new Preset files are by default located in 
<WinampDir>\Plugins\FFXPresets (although you can place them anywhere).

Disclaimer and Legal Info
-------------------------

This software comes with no warranty - use it at your own risk (or as Sun
Microsystems would say):

"THIS SOFTWARE IS NOT DESIGNED OR INTENDED FOR USE OR RESALE AS ON-LINE
CONTROL EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE
PERFORMANCE, SUCH AS IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT
NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, DIRECT LIFE
SUPPORT MACHINES, OR WEAPONS SYSTEMS, IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF THE SOFTWARE 
COULD LEAD DIRECTLY TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR 
ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE ("HIGH RISK ACTIVITIES")."

So don't try and use it to control atomic toasters or anything.

The plugin is Copyright (C) 1998 Paul Holden, although it is freely
distributable provided that it is supplied in an unmodified form
and includes this documentation. This software is free for private use,
but commercial users should contact me for licensing details (are there
any commercial users? Who knows.)

Requirements
------------

This plugin should work with most hardware / software. Obviously it won't 
look particularly exciting on a 486, but a mid to high end Pentium should 
be fine. This plugin should work with any video card (but a bit depth of
24 or 32 bits per pixel will give the best results).
 During its development, I've tested this plugin on the following
machines:

AMD K-6/2 333, 64Mb RAM, Win98.
AMD K-6/2 300, 64Mb RAM, Win98.
Intel Pentium II 266, 64Mb RAM, Win98.
AMD K-6   200, 32Mb RAM, Win98.
Intel Pentium 133, 32Mb RAM, Win95.

Beta testers have also tried the plugin on a much wider range of systems,
including WinNT4 (sp 3 and sp 4).

Performance has been slightly increased in this version, but new features
(such as complex skins etc) may make the plugin run more slowly on older
machines.

This plugin does require DirectX, which comes as standard with just about
any new PC (see http://www.microsoft.com/directx/)

Obviously, you'll also need Winamp. This plugin should work with any recent
version of Winamp (i.e. 2.00+). For some of the new features to work, you'll
need Winamp 2.04 or greater (2.05 is the latest release at the time of writing:
http://www.winamp.com/).

Installation
------------

It should be fairly easy to install this plugin, but a few people have
reported problems, so here's a quick "dummy's guide to installing FunkyFX":

The easiest was to install this plugin is to use Winzip (http://www.winzip.com/)
to extract all the files to the Winamp directory. Load the zipfile into Winzip
and hit the "Extract" button. A dialog box should appear. Make sure the 
"Use Folder Names" text has a tick next to it. In the "Extract To:" combo box,
type the directory that Winamp was installed to (on most machines this will be
"C:\Program Files\Winamp\") Finally, make sure that "All Files" is selected, and
hit the "Extract" button.

Hopefully, Winzip will extract the "vis_funkyfx.dll" file to "<WinampDir>\Plugins",
and copy some example skins to "<WinampDir>\Plugins\FFXSkins" and some example
preset files to "<WinampDir>\Plugins\FFXPresets".

To see the plugin in action, you'll need to start Winamp. Now, right click on the
titlebar of the window, and choose "Visualization->Select Plugin" (or hit Ctrl-K).
A dialog box should appear with several options. From the main list box in the Winamp
display, click on the line saying "FunkyFX Plugin (vis_funkyfx.dll)" and select the
"Start" button near the bottom of the window. Hopefully, the FunkyFX plugin window
should open at this point (it'll be near the top left of the screen. An "FFX" icon
should also appear in the system tray, which you can click on to bring the plugin
window to the foreground).

That's all there is to it. Hit play on Winamp and the plugin window should light
up and you should find yourself instantly be awe-struck by FunkyFX's stunning
graphics. If you're not, check the following:

1) Is the plugin window actually open? If you've got a black background, the window
   may not be visible until music starts playing.
2) Are you actually playing any music? (D'oh!)
3) You may need to increase of decrease the sensitivity. Right click on the plugin's
   window and choose "Properties". Click on the "Amp" tab of the Proprty Sheet and 
   play with the "LinAmp" slider until the sensitivity is adjusted correctly for your
   machine.

Configuration
-------------

There are various options that you can fiddle with to get the plugin 
working more to your taste or just to speed it up by right clicking on
its display  - take a look at the website for more detailed information:

http://www.javigate.com/FunkyFX/

(There probably won't be much more help there either, but at least you'll increase
the traffic to my site :-)

FAQs
----

See faq.txt in this archive.

Skins
-----

See skins.txt in this archive.

Presets
-------

Some useful info:

Preset files (*.ffx) can be saved anywhere, but preferably in
<WinampDir>\Plugins\FFXPresets

You can drag and drop preset files onto the plugin window 
 (as well as music files and skin files).

If you come up with any good presets, send them to me and I'll 
 put them on the site (I am really, really slow at doing this 
 though :-)


Known Bugs
----------

This is the first version of FunkyFX that's been beta-tested outside of
my house, so I'm hoping it'll be the most stable release to date. However,
since the last version the plugin has been extensively revised so there may
be one or two new bugs.

Certainly, a lot of older bugs have now been fixed. My beta testers tell me that
it now works a lot better on Windows NT (no more Dr. Waston errors, I hope!) Thanks
to Paul Smith and Philip Ulberg for help with that.)

A few people have said that the fullscreen mode doesn't work on their machines.
I'm no DirectX programmer - the code I've used in this plugin has been written
with no prior knowledge of DirectX, so it's not up to much (it can certainly be
optimised...) Hopefully in the future I'll get the chance to learn a bit more
about this black art and fix it. My only suggestion for the time being is to
try a more recent version of DirectX (v6 is out now, and it really does help
with performance).

Please report any obvious bugs (or not so obvious bugs) to paulh@javigate.com
I can be really slow to reply to messages (if at all..), but I do read everything
I'm sent (except messages marked "EARN $$$$$ TODAY")


Source Code
-----------

I've made claims in the past that I'll release the source for this plugin. I'm
not sure about what my plans are at the moment. I suspect I may be writing a 
FunkyFX DLL to allow other programmers to share FunkyFX's graphics, skinning and
windowing engines (this depends on how much free time I have - I'm currently working
on about 3 other projects at the moment...)
 
If anyone has any questions on Winamp plugin programming however, I'll do my
best to help (see below for contact address.)

Credits Etc
-----------

The first versions of this plugin were based on original source code by Alex Black
(adblack@novice.uwaterloo.ca). I've since rewritten most of the code in FunkyFX,
but I appreciate his genorosity in releasing his source code publically.

Everything else written and Copyright by Paul Holden (paulh@javigate.com).

WinAmp (http://www.winamp.com/) is produced by Nullsoft 
(http://www.nullsoft.com/). It's probably copyrighted, trademarked and so 
on by them too. Have you registered your copy yet?

Hellos to Stevey-Boy, Chris and Fiwl.

Absolutely no thanks whatsoever go to a certain computer company that shall
remain nameless (a quick digression here. I bought a computer this July from
an independent computer company based here in the UK. It broke after 3 weeks
and after seeing their "customer support" in action I decided to get a refund.
It's Novemeber now, and I still don't have my money back. (I've got a hearing
next week, but that's a different matter). 
 During this time, I've not had a computer of my own to work on, so I've been
building FunkyFX on other people's machines while they've not been using them.
Of course, this has been severely limiting, and explains the fairly extensive
list of development machines that I've shown above.)

Thanks to the following people (in no particular order. Ok, it's vaguley
alphabetical) for beta testing, ideas, suggestions and other help (email
userids used when name not known :-)

Rob Diehl (hope gen_trki keeps working), Justin Frankel (thanks for wa-db),
Glenn, Pete Gosselin, Graham Panton, Karlos Pinto, Paul Smith,
Philip Ulberg (I hope you never have to see Dr. Watson again :-), silicon,
rburdick, chaotic, Skewer, nirvn.

And thanks to the hundreds of people who've emailed me with suggestions
abut skins specs, improvements and other stuff (whos original emails
I've now lost...)

Contact
-------

The homepage for this plugin is at http://www.javigate.com/FunkyFX/
There's not all that much there at the moment, but then again I'm more interested
in writing this plugin that writing HTML :-)

I can be contacted at paulh@javigate.com, or if that fails,
paulh@irsoft.demon.co.uk. My rather mediocre and out of date home page is at
http://www.javigate.com/paulh/


--
Paul Holden
York, UK
18 September 1998