Scene Screen
---------------------
Version 1.0
Copyright 2009 T C Brogden Limited
www.tcbrogden.co.uk

Description
-----------------
A free demonstration program for creating and visualising graphical scenes.

License
------------
Scene Screen is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program (filename "COPYING.txt" in the same directory as this file). If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. 

Dependencies and limitations
-------------------------------------------
This software currently only runs on Windows platforms. It has been successfully run under Windows XP (on a laptop) and Windows Vista (on an HP TouchSmart PC). The software requires Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5 to be installed - this is not provided with the software.

Installation
----------------
0. Extract the Scene Screen software's zip file that you downloaded into a folder on your computer.
1. The software does not require an install itself (unless you want to run on an HP TouchSmart computer - see 3), however you need to check that Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5 is installed on your computer. This is available from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en
2. Two executable versions of the program are provided:
(i) One built using Windows Forms (<ThisFolder>\SceneScreenWinForms\bin\Release\SceneScreenWinForms.exe), and;
(ii) One built using Windows Presentation Foundation (<ThisFolder>\SceneScreenWpf\bin\Release\SceneScreenWpf.exe).
Both will run on Windows XP or Windows Vista. Just double click the executable you want to run!
3. To install on an HP TouchSmart computer:
(i) Ensure that the HP TouchSmart program is not running.
(ii) Copy <ThisFolder> onto the computer.
(iii) Change the file location between <AppPath> and </AppPath> in the <ThisFolder>\SceneScreenWpf\Register.xml file to the actual file location of the executable <ThisFolder>\SceneScreenWpf\bin\Release\SceneScreenWpf.exe on the computer.
(iv) Run the script <ThisFolder>\SceneScreenWpf\RegisterTouchScreenApp.bat.
(v) You should see a Scene Screen "tile" when you run the HP TouchSmart program.

Notes:
<ThisFolder> refers to the folder that this README file is in after you extracted the Scene Screen software's zip file.

Creating your own Scene Screen scenes and textures
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scene Screen scenes are just XML files with a structure defined by the schema file <ThisFolder>\Schemas\Scene Schema v1.0.xsd. The program creates a button for each XML scene file it finds in the folder <ThisFolder>\User Content\Scenes so this is where you need to put any scenes that you create. At the moment, there is no user interface for creating scenes so you have to create the files manually; however, the program will try to tell you if there are any errors in your scene when you click the button for it in the user interface. A few example scenes have been included in the folder <ThisFolder>\User Content\Scenes which hopefully help. Good luck!

Scene Screen texture files are just square bitmaps with a size which is a power of two (i.e. 1,2,4,...,128). You can create your own texture files and put them in the folder <ThisFolder>\User Content\Textures. To use a texture in a scene, you need to add a <texture> tag for it in the <textures> section of your scene file and include a <settexture> tag for it within a <script> tag - see the example scenes for how to do this! If you don't want to use textures in your scene, just omit the <textures> section.

Notes:
<ThisFolder> refers to the folder that this README file is in after you extracted the Scene Screen software's zip file.

Credits
-----------
Free icons from pinvoke's Diagona icon pack are used in this software: visit http://www.pinvoke.com. These icons are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license: visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.
The application icon was created using the tool IcoFX: visit http://icofx.ro.
Thanks to Edmund Harriss and Uwe Grimm (Open University), Jeroen Lamb (Imperial College) and Vinay Kathotia (Royal Institution) for conceiving the idea for this project and allowing the software to be used at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition 2009.
Thanks to Scott Vorthmann for providing data for some mathematical shapes.

This software uses two assemblies from the Tao Framework V2.1.0 which is distributed under an MIT license. These assemblies and a copy of the license (filename "COPYING") can be found under the "SceneScreenWpf\taoframework-2.1.0" subdirectory of this software. For information about the Tao Framework, visit http://www.taoframework.com.

The following sites were a great help in writing the Open GL and TouchSmart aspects of the program:
NeHe Productions: http://nehe.gamedev.net
The Tao Framework: http://www.taoframework.com
The Official Guide to Learning Open GL: http://glprogramming.com/red/
HP TouchSmart Application Developer Guidelines Primer: http://www.touchsmartcommunity.com/article/95/An-HP-TouchSmart-Application-Development-Guidelines-Primer/