Hi. I am starting to mess around with the grid abstraction and it looks really amazing. It can be found at this link:

https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/11012/grid-multi-pattern-step-sequencer-abstraction

I'm curious if anyone has a suggestion to make it visually easier to enter patterns in the grid object. If you have a really large Grid it can be difficult to find a certain vertical or horizontal point without counting boxes. I included an image to visualize what I'm talking about.

In Max I would create colored panels that have a transparent opacity so I could see the sequencer underneath. I added an image of this as well.

In Pd I have made sequencers with colored toggle boxes so I can easily find a specific row or column. This isn't ideal, because you can't easily change colors. I made mine adhere to divisions of 4 (like 16th notes) which I might not want sometimes if I'm dividing notes into 5, 6 or whatever. As you can see I like big sequencers.

I tried using a canvas, but it doesn't seem to have a feature to change the opacity that I can see. Are there any other objects or things I can place on a grid to add some color or definition of rows and columns?

thank you.

@nicnut I have not delved deep...... just a first look......
You can probably modify [pd $0-make.grid] using a counter to change the backgroung grid colour as [vuzi] traverses.
The counter would need to know the x and y sizes of the grid of course.
I had changed it to 700 (red... for the whole grid.... just to check)

Looking deep enough to see if the colour would revert to your new colour or the original one chosen by @weightless when you deselect a grid square I see that you would need at least need to modify [pd $0-cell] to recognise your new colours and toggle correctly.
The grid will no longer function otherwise.

It could well be that the trigger functions of the patch also depend on the reading of the original colours........?

I am sure it would be a welcome addition to a great patch, especially if linked to the pattern presets.
David.

@nicnut here you have a horizontal grid: grid1.0 pd0.48wpatternswitch_marker.zip i had to change something in cell, make.grid, sequencer, make.new.seed, and get.pattern.state. the downside with very large data structure grids is that they slow down the pure data interface. something like this build with ofelia could be nice and more efficient for very large grids.

Hi,

Ive been traveling and haven't had much time to look at this, but thank you everyone for the responses. So @jona, I think I see what you changed. Is it where there are [700( message boxes? I think I can figure that out.

So when you say these big sequencers slow down the pure data interface do you mean that other things in a patch will get glitchy? Like if you have a synth or effects or something?

That is sort of why I got excited about this grid abstraction because the sequencer I have been using, the one with toggle boxes in the screen shot I posted, sort of stutters and clicks when i change patterns. I have a smaller version of it and that one works fine.

So far the grid abstraction is working fine for me. Changing the colors won't make it slower will it? I figure it will work just about the same.

Thank you for your help, I'll try to incorporate that into my huge 64 step version of grid.

@nicnut yes, you need to change the number that goes into the color inlet of the cell struct. and yes, it can start to get glitchy or it takes some time until the interface reacts (with more than 2000 fields on my computer) . i think visual data structures in pure data are a little bit more efficient than a big amount of toggles, but not very much. changing the colors should not make a big difference. and it works nice when you dont need a large grid.

Hey @Jona I have a question about your version of the sequencer in: grid1.0 pd0.48wpatternswitch_marker.zip.

When I try and do certain commands like right, left, or copy the patterns get totally messed up. I don't know if it's because of some of the changes you made to the patch or not.

One thing that I was wondering about is the {declare -path abs] and [declare -path textfiles] just because I have a few projects now with grid and I'm wondering if it is going into a different "textfiles" folder from a different grid project, and a different "abs" folder.

But I did delete your patch, download it again and test it out again and got the same results. If you have time can you test it out?

EDIT: I think it's something that was changed in the make.new.seed subpatch in the grid abstraction. When I replace that with the old version the functions such as "right" "left" and "swap" work again. I am trying to figure out how to keep those red vertical lines in the sequencer while having all those other functions work again. I can't seem to figure that out.

Thanks

@nicnut hi. It has nothing to do with declare. And i get the same error. Forgot at least to change something in "pd r.l.shift". Wondering if it would make sense to save the toggle states independently from the colors, that could make things easier (especially with more than one "marker" color) but means also a lot of changes. Edit: This change in [pd left.right] should work:

@jona thank you so much for fixing the left.right options. I can't really figure out how all this is working, but I can see what you changed and that it works. I made the same change to the copy.paste button, because I use that a lot. And I made it to the other cool functions like swap, invert and flip, and I added buttons for that to the main patch. here is the version with changes I added

grid1.0 pd0.48wpatternswitch_marker2.zip