Fractal Forge History

In the words of Uberto Barbini

Fractal Forge was born the day I had to print several fractal images and some simple posters with an Epson Stylus color printer. Back then, I realized there was no true color fractal generator for MS-Windows in the shareware market, so I decided to program one myself. I called it UbiMandel (after my name), and I wrote it in Visual Basic 3. I did not optimize the first version's algorithm because I didn't need to. Once I bought Delphi, I wondered what * simple program I could do, so I began to code True Mandel, another fractal program. I started it in May 1995 and finished it next October. I released it on the Internet as True Mandel 1.0 (trmand10.zip), which stands for True Color Mandelbrot Set Generator. Later, I decided to migrate to the win32-bit world (NT and 95-98) using Delphi 2. Soon, there were two shareware versions: 1.5 and 1.6. In 1999, I completely rewrote TrueMandel in Delphi 4, and changed its name to Fractal Forge because there are several programs with similar names already available. Your feedback was most appreciated... I received dozens of letters, both email and on paper. Keep writing to me, and I will keep developing this program.

Since version 2.4 I decided to make Fractal Forge open source, so I published it to: http://sourceforge.net/projects/fractalforge. I have less and less time to improve Fractal Forge so I hope someone else can continue its growing. I need better documentation and porting it to Linux with Kylix.

Revision history

Things to do

• zSynchronous orbits
• Bounds tracing
• Guessing DirectX animation
• OpenGL
• 3d fractals
• Plug Ins Skins (like WinAmp)

Improvemets in Fractal Forge 2.6:

• More responsiveness during long fractals (iter > 1M).
• Pressing Enter in Comments field doesn't start another fractal.
• Show percent in application caption.
• Orbits in shades (black to white) with mandel in background.
• Orbits window shows up to 10000 values.
• Press Esc to stop drawing the current fractals.
• Finished translating source.
• Added two filters.
• Filters are applied after calculating.
• Lots of bugfixes.
• Opening of old files.
• Recompiled under Delphi 6.
• Removed forge background for flickering.
• Added File|New choice, same as Fractal|Start.

Improvements in Fractal Forge 2.6 prerelease:

• Added a tools menu.
• Moved the Poster Composition option to the TOOLS menu.
• Added an animation tool to confert BMP files to animations.
• Added a feature to transform BMPs in a single AVI file.
• Added a feature to copy coordinates to the clipboard.
• Fixed a bug that prevented it to save *.ini file.
• Fixed a bug with elapsed time.

Improvements in Fractal Forge 2.4:

• Added jpg saving capability.
  Changed "iteractions" with "iterations".
  Changed "Iter" with "Value" on bottom right corner. It shows current value (f.e. potential if you choosen it) of image point not the Iteration always.
  Upgraded to Delphi5.
  Added Julia Floating Window.
  Fixed a bug in Poster Options when the images are not square.
  Fixed a bug in Orbits Algo.

Improvements in Fractal Forge 2.3:

• Added new Full Screen mode (Option menu)
• Added a new colors (Nature)
• Added a new image (Elephant)
• Fixed a bug in replacing a file color
• Caption bar displays current fractal name
• Added Author and Image informations in PNGs
• It's now possible to drag a file onto Fractal Forge to render it immediately
• Added a image format ( 500 x 500 )
• Fixed some bugs in History List
• Added State and Version in History List.
• Crono and Time are now separated
• Fixed a major bug in Load/Save Lists
• Allow to quit when drawing a fractal
• Correct progress bar position during Bounds drawing
• It's possible to reset Starting Values (pressing cancel button)
• A few a minor bugs fixed

Improvements in Fractal Forge 2.2:

• Color Editing
• Improved and faster algorithms
• Better user interface
• Simpler and more powerful zooms
• Improved printing
• Poster images
• Filters
• Png Support
• Exe packed
• Improved Starting fractal dialog
• A lot of minor bugs fixed

Improvements in True Mandel 1.6
since True Mandel 1.5

• 32 bit optimized code
• 80 bit precision (21 digits)
• Max iterations over 2*10^9
• Win95 components support
• Win95 long file name support
• Percent of drawing showed on title (also when minimized)
• Info on toolbox about the point you are on
• Preview color spectrum and current image
• New faster image display
• New draft mode (no second pass)
• Faster 'None' optimization (but still exact)
• New moveable rectangular zoom
• More bugs fixes