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Ramblings #7: try not to tilt

May 20th, 2013 3 comments

As someone who spends almost all day every day in house, video games are important to me. I have a ton of games, along with an ever growing backlog, for pretty much every platform. Portable games are especially nice since they don’t tie me down to a TV. I’m currently playing Soul Sacrifice on Vita and Monster Hunter 3 on 3DS. A surprising new portable contender has emerged: video pinball. I’ve never given pinball a second thought, but Zen Pinball for iOS is unexpectedly awesome. Before I thought you just randomly tap the flippers and hope for points; now I know to aim my shots and complete various objectives. Epic Quest and Moon Knight are my favorite tables. Come June though, all other gaming will be put on hold when Animal Crossing 3DS devours my free time <3 I've been researching a new feature for MangAI. It's crazy difficult and I'm not sure if it's even possible, but it is something a lot of users would enjoy. It will be a while before I know anything concrete. For now I have some minor improvements already coded and am currently working on AI tweaks. Expect an update within the next week. I’m big on user feedback so you should contact me if you have any problems or suggestions for MangAI. And if you enjoy MangAI, please be my advertiser and spread the word :3

Categories: General, MangAI, Projects

MangAI v1.11 released

April 11th, 2013 3 comments

New to version 1.11:
-New settings: @upscale and @downscale
If @upscale is disabled, then images smaller than the specified output size will not be resized.
If @downscale is disabled, then images larger than the specified output size will not be resized.
The default behavior of MangAI will continue to be to upscale small images to better fill the screen and to downscale large images to save device memory.
-Added more ereader .properties settings profiles
Settings profiles now available for:

  • kobovox (Kobo Vox)
  • obooxm92 (Onyx Boox M92)

-Various fixes and improvements
Removed setting @max_dpi since dpi is not relevant to digital reading.

Download the latest version from the MangAI project page.

Categories: MangAI, Projects

MangAI v1.10 released

March 7th, 2013 5 comments

New to version 1.10:
-Mobi output support
MangAI now offers creation of .mobi files.
This output format was added as per the request of a MangAI user who discovered that mobi is the best comic format for Kindle Paperwhite.
As Amazon owns Mobipocket, there’s a good chance that other Kindle devices will like mobi best as well. For now, mobi output is only enabled by default for the Kindle Paperwhite, but you can enable it for any device in .properties settings.
Mobi output requires Amazon’s free KindleGen tool. See -Setting up KindleGen- in Help->Contents or readme.txt for details.
-Various fixes and improvements
Automatically update the .properties settings file when new helper programs are discovered.

Thanks to user feedback for helping improve this program. Please contact me if you have any suggestions for MangAI.

Download the latest version from the MangAI project page.

Categories: MangAI, Projects

MangAI v1.09 released

January 11th, 2013 No comments

New to version 1.09:
-Bug fix: Missing code during final MangAI packaging
One of the final steps of packaging MangAI is code shrinking to remove unused and unnecessary code. Unfortunately, the shrinker I was using was removing code that appeared to be useless but was important.
I’m not sure which algorithms were affected by this. At the very least, string chapter detection (e.g. v1cb1) was not working as well as it could.
This has been fixed.
-AI improvements to MPM
Better automatic conflict resolution, especially for conflicts between lettered chapters.
-Added more ereader .properties settings profiles
Settings profiles now available for:

  • phone (mobile phone)

Some of the latest mobile phones can make for decent manga readers. The experience is nothing like reading on a larger tablet, but still nice if you can’t always carry your tablet with you.
The phone settings profile leaves scans at their original resolution for improved pinch zooming. White space is chopped to fit more content on screen.
If on a phone, I recommend reading in landscape (i.e. hold phone sideways, the full width of the scan fills the height of the phone, scroll up/down to read).

Download the latest version from the MangAI project page.

Categories: MangAI, Projects

Ramblings #5: 21st century pocket

January 7th, 2013 1 comment

Murray 2013 everyone!

So I finally got to upgrade from my 5+ year old Samsung flip-style unsmart phone to an iPhone 5 (quite the step up ^^). Of course one of the first things I tried out was manga on a phone screen. The experience is better than expected. I’ve only tested a few series so far, but vertical scrolling in landscape mode (i.e. hold phone in landscape, width of page fills full height of screen and you scroll down to read) seems to be the way to go. The extra height on the new iPhone 5 screen is a big help for manga.

Please leave a comment if you are interested in reading manga on your phone. I can look into adding default profile settings in the next MangAI update.

Speaking of MangAI, I’m working on an update right now to fix a very weird bug. Apparently, when I pass my code through an obfuscator for final packaging, something is getting messed up. I noticed while processing some test manga for my new iPhone that some string chapters (e.g. chapter b1) were not being properly recognized. The unobfuscated code, on the other hand, works perfectly. This probably won’t be the easiest problem to track down, but I’ll release a fix as soon as its ready.

Categories: General, MangAI, Projects