All,
I wanted to follow-up on a comment I made in the Suggestions thread; you can find it via the following link (it would probably be helpful to read it before continuing so you know what I am referring to):
http://www.saberforum.com/index.php?topic=831.msg559664#msg559664Before I start, I'd like to apologize to
UltraSabers &
RSX Engineering if anything in the comment did come off as "negative"; that wasn't the intention . . . and I know I have the tendency to make comments sometimes in the moment and read them back a few hours later when I look at the other new Replies and think "Ooohhhh . . . that's not what
THAT sounded like in my head as I was typing it."
So again, sorry if it was taken as diminishing the release of the Diamond Controller as that was not the intent.
Since I know it can be frustrating when people complain, but they don't have a solution or anything constructive to add, I wanted to be specific about what I was thinking at the time and the rationale behind it.
First & foremost - let me make this clear right off the top: objectively speaking, the Diamond Controller is the best & most powerful lightsaber controller in existence. I don't know how anyone could logically & factually argue any other product on the market can do MORE than Diamond. There just isn't one.
Second, I don't actually think there is anything "wrong" with the Diamond Controller tab of the UltraSabers Launcher as it is currently designed.
What I do think, however, is the product as a whole (and in turn, the Customers) would benefit greatly from an additional tab on the Launcher for Diamond , which I will refer to as 'Diamond - Express', with the existing tab being called 'Diamond - Complete'.
When I got my Diamond Dark Prophecy, this is what I was hoping to do quickly out of the box to set up the 10 Channels how I wanted it for now:
1 - Guardian Blue w/ Arctic Blue FoC, Obsidian Font
2 - Guardian Blue w/ Arctic Blue FoC, Mute
3 - Blazing Red w/ Fire Orange FoC, Episode II Font
4 - Blazing Red w/ Fire Orange FoC, Mute
5 - Emerald Green w/ Sunrider's Destiny FoC, Obsidian Font
6 - Emerald Green w/ Sunrider's Destiny FoC, Mute
7 - Dark Violet Amethyst w/ Bane's Heart FoC, Episode II Font
8 - Dark Violet Amethyst w/ Bane's Heart FoC, Mute
9 - Arctic Blue w/ Adegan Silver FoC, Obsidian Font
10 - Arctic Blue w/ Adegan Silver FoC, Mute
(Note: The Mute versions of all those will become important in a minute.)
What I quickly discovered though was, as far as I can tell, you need to edit each aspect / effect of each Memory Bank to achieve your desired result.
This requires a bit more learning curve compared to the Emerald Driver and quite a bit more time.
Now in fairness to US/RSX - I do need to point out that in theory because you can save all your files and load them on a new Diamond Saber or change things and then re-load them on the one you are working on - a lot of that effort is of the NRE (non-recurring effort) variety.
That said, I do strongly believe the Product would be greatly enhanced with a much faster & simpler interface for setting up your saber (Diamond - Express) that compliments the existing one (Diamond - Complete).
The reason having all the "Muted" versions of my setup is important to me is because, usually, most of my "play time" with my Sabers doesn't happen until after my 2 year old Daughter is in bed. One great thing about Diamond is it is LOUD. But in this specific case - the bad thing about Diamond is it is LOUD. There's no way I can configure my saber how I want it without making a lot of noise as I go, and I simply haven't been able to find the time to do it before my Daughter is in bed. (More to the point, when my Daughter is asleep, the Lady Canterbury gives me the options of 1 - Muted / Stunt Sabers or 2 - Summary Execution.)
I believe that what I am going to suggest below would have allowed me, everyone really, to configure the Diamond saber in the basic manner I wanted above in only a matter of a few minutes.
I think an 'Express' tab could consist of just the following settings via a drop down menu:
- Blade Color
- FoC Color
- Pulse Color
- Sound Font
. . . with a "Write" button that when pushed, makes a call to convert those selections into the defined variables required by the functions that would load all the Effects based on those basic parameters to the Memory Bank.
Here are a couple pics of a quick mock-up I did so everyone can "see" exactly what I was thinking:
And there you have it . . . boom . . . really fast, my hands never left my arms, and the Memory Bank is totally reconfigured.
I think it would benefit both Customers & UltraSabers to have this for 2 reasons:
1 - It would be really great to be able to set up the saber right out of the box, with all the color & font combos you want, with minimal effort and no learning curve for new software.
It would all be self-explanatory and take mere moments to do.
Then from there - the User could eventually use the 'Diamond - Complete' tab to start REALLY tailoring each & every Effect to make it their ultimate vision of a Lightsaber. I know in the future, I anticipate having a lot of fun with that, but for the time being, I just would have liked to change everything to some different Basics.
2 - I think there's a large number of potential Diamond Customers out there who are primarily/only interested in the ability to change the Blade Colors on the fly without hooking back up to a computer, and those specific people would be more likely to buy one or more Diamond sabers with a simple, streamlined interface to change it.
So - that's my 2 cents on that.
I sincerely hope this was received in a good-intentioned, constructive way as that's what it was intended to be.
Diamond is a very powerful advancement in saber technology; I think adding an 'Express' tab to the Launcher would open up that power to even more people.
