Unofficial Tex Murphy

Hi Guys,
I *think* I've gotten Knexus to the point where I can finally try it out on real human beings. As of this posting, The Unofficial Tex Murphy Message Board is officially the site of the 1st public announcement and, by a happy coincidence, my 400th post.

Anyway, you guys are the first people to be offered a complementary copy of Knexus, which I've spent the last two years developing. I'll take a moment to remind you what Knexus is.

It's a real-time, 3D virtual library which you can roam about just like in a Tex Murphy or first-person shooter game. The books in the library are links that you create to anything that your computer can access. Files, folders, programs, web pages, mp3s, videos, docs,...just about anything on your computer, your LAN or the Internet. The linking book will launch the target file in whatever the appropriate associated application. (It will open web pages in a web browser, doc files in your Word processor, mp3s in your player, etc.)

Here are a couple of low-res screen shots of the Knexus Library:
Wide shot-

One of my game shelves

Link to Unofficial Tex Murphy Message Board


A while back there was some discussion about how you link to the TM message board. This is how I do it. I go to my game shelf, open the Tex Murphy book and click on the page. Then Knexus opens my browser directly on the TM message board. I have books linking me to my other favorite game sites nearby.

Now here's the thing: A guy's got to make a living. I spent two years living off of savings to build this program. My intention is to sell it. But I'm offering free copies (and lifetime free updates) to any of you established members. The only thing I ask of you is not to make bootleg copies. If your friends like it and want a copy, send them to me and they can buy one. It is cheap (only $29.95 - seems to be the price of most independent software.)

I don't have a website or download site built yet. But I'm anxious to get it out to you guys. The only way I can send it out is if you send an email to me at:
[email protected].
I need a real name and an email address and I can send you a copy. Please include your Message Board persona too, so I know who I'm sending it to.

Thanks

Awesome! What a privilege - I can't wait to check it out! Well, I guess I was able to wait long enough to add this post before actually requesting a copy...anyway...well, now I can't wait to check it out!

Those screenshots look really, really cool! Can't wait to check it out myself. I feel honored; thanks Dr. Paul!

wow honered im sure DrPaul to be the first to even have a copy and try it out wow.

keep up the great work, we will except u to be mr bill gates the second in 10 years time. In other words i wish u all the luck of the world.

This is totally awesome! I can't wait to have a peek It looks really fantastic! I really hope it's everything you've made it out to be If so I can see how it can be extremely useful for many people! You'll be hearing from me shortly...

Bests, Rockefeller

I am glad to report i can try your program probebly later on today.

sadly Dell was not able to restore my PC without loss of data as usual they jsut reinstaled winsows xp crapo i been spending the rest of the day reinstaling the damm software.

One word - Awesomesauce!

-Fred

Thanks for the words of encouragement guys.

I've been spending all morning trying to get your requests out.
Ran into some problems because some of the mail servers block the attachment, probably because of size. So I had to figure out a way to make it downloadable.

The reason I need individual requests and email addresses is because each copy has a unique "key" code. I have to keep track of which key goes with which person, so that I can send you the key information, and also remind you if you happen to lose your key.

Even though I don't have a web site set up yet, I think I have a pretty good temporary solution for providing download access. But I'll still need your email to send you a key.

DrPaul

I want in too!

Those screen shots look great. Just how I imagined it when you explained it before.

It looks like something I will use. A lot.

I forgot to mention anything about system requirements.

I have tested Knexus on Win2000, XP and Vista. There is a little installer bug with Vista, so if you're using that, I'll have to tell you the work-around.

It helps to have a good graphics card, lots of RAM and at least 800MHz CPU.

Knexus uses about 50MB when running, which isn't too much. But since it's designed to run in background all the time, you should have at least 200MB of RAM so that it doesn't slow your other processes down. Also, it doesn't hurt to have 128MB RAM on your graphics card.

Most computers nowadays have enough RAM and CPU. But older computers might complain.

Doc I love you when you are giving us stuff. I have to admit when you first told us about what this was I was a bit skeptical, but now that I see the screens it looks really cool to me. Can't wait to try it out. And Jerry, I wrote this message after I sent my info.

I just started playing with it and so far it looks and works great! So far I'm just wondering if there's any way to increase the field-of-view, since right now it seems a bit narrow, almost as if I'm wearing blinders when I navigate around

Bests, Rockefeller

I'm just wondering if there's any way to increase the field-of-view

Yes. There are two things you can do.

You can resize the window to make it wider or even full-screen. You can also increase the viewing angle by changing a setting in one of the config files. Open Knexus\Config\application.properties.ini and set the widescreen variable (on the last line) to 1 or 2. The default value is zero.

The program reads the config files only at startup, so you'll have to quite the program and restart it to take effect.

To all of you guys who downloaded Knexus:

There are some customization features that I forgot to document in the Help files. They're not much, but you may find these two features quite valuable.

You can adjust the field of view and the smoothness and speed of your mouse motion. Just go to C:\Knexus\Config and open the file application.properties.ini. You can adjust the values for rotationStepAngle and wideScreen. There is more specific information in the ini file.

If your panning is too fast and choppy, set rotationStep angle to a smaller integer (like 10 or 5). The default value is 20. smaller values will make the panning slower and smoother.

If some of your books are getting chopped off at the top or bottom when opened, set the wideScreen value to 1 or 2. Depending on your display's aspect ratio, resolution setings and aspect ratio of your Library window, you will need to adjust the wideScreen variable.

Please note however, that the changes will only take effect when you restart the program.[/b]