I told you it would be soon...

I've just released Oxidizer 0.4 with a few changes to stabilize the Gene Pool. The changes are

Oxidizer 0.4.1 change log...

Oxidizer now generate genomes compatible with flam3 2.7.5

Applies a few fixes in flam3 CVS to fix issues with really stupid numbers of xforms. This should make the Gene Pool more stable.

Only keep the last three 'edits' information when breeding. 

The Gene Pool would chose union method of breeding far to often leading to huge number of xforms in a genome. Its now even chances for each method.

These last two change significantly reduce the amount of memory Oxidizer needs to breed.

There is a preference option to change if the preview kindow is kept on top or not.

Oxidizer no longer attempts to breed 'empty' genomes if selected.

Bugs in Oxidizer 0.4

Indirectly, as in I came across a forum where someone was whinging,  I heard off an issue with 0.4 where it would 'crash' if you over breed.
 
Basically if you keep breeding the same Genomes over and over again after 6 to 7 generations you end up with a genome with over 128 xforms, which flam3 2.7.4 does not like. 

The good news is that flam3 2.7.5 released barely hours after Oxidizer 0.4 fixes the issue, well moves it along until 65535 xforms.

The bad news is that it still crashes after 6 or 7 goes. I seem to been having a problem with file descriptors. I've got a feeling that using autoreleased NSPipes is leading to file descriptors not being freed in a timely manner.

Looks like there's going to be a 0.4.1 release soon.

Oxidizer 0.4

Time for a long overdue release of Oxidizer 0.4.

A lot has changed under the hood so don't just moan that I've broken everything, tell me instead :-)

Here's a quick run down of the changes....

Oxidizer now generates genomes compatible with flam3 2.7.4

Lua scripting: Oxidizer can run Lua scripts to modify, create and render Genomes.

GUI changes to the Gene Pool to make it a little more obvious which genes are active.

GUI changes to progress window. The bar progress indicator was using stupid amounts of CPU.

The default value of many of the Environment options can now be set in the preferences window.

Oxidizer no longer compiles in flam3 source but runs executables included in the application bundle.

Greater stability as bad flam3 parameters should no longer crash Oxidizer.

More efficient use of multiple cores and processors.

A new prettier icon.

Credits in the about window.