Full Instrument Expansions - how, what where....

[David Healey]

@Lindon The player's app data folder

[Lindon]

@David-Healey great!

[Lindon]

@Lindon Ok here I am back again ... so I've built my player(well enough for the purpose of demoing to myself that I can in theory load and unload instruments using it..)

..and I've built an Full expansions, well again caveats: its trivially simple a background image and a single Sampler loaded with one sample map....

..so I've read as much of the documentation as I can find, so this (unsurprisingly) has generated a bunch of questions, but lets start with a simple question:

Is there a "how to" anywhere that walks thru the steps to build a full instrument expansion and get it to load in a "player"?

How far have I got? Well as I say I built the player and in the settings I set Expansion Type = Full and added a (trivial text) Encryption key... I did the same in the expansion project...

Then in the expansion project I ran Export>Export Project as Full Expansion

This gave me a info.hxi file in the root of my expansion project

So of course this gave me at least a couple of questions:

What the *** do I do with this info.hxi file?
-- I assume I put it somewhere in the player project but that then leads to another question

I want to have tone of Full expansions, surely these dont all get called info.hxi - unless they are placed in some sub-folder structure in the player project (like say the Expansions folder)???

Al help appreciated.

[David Healey]

@Lindon said in Full Instrument Expansions - how, what where....:

Is there a "how to" anywhere that walks thru the steps to build a full instrument expansion and get it to load in a "player"?

I think I covered this in the Expansion Installer video I posted on Patreon in February.

@Lindon said in Full Instrument Expansions - how, what where....:

I want to have tone of Full expansions, surely these dont all get called info.hxi - unless they are placed in some sub-folder structure in the player project (like say the Expansions folder)???

Yes all are info.hxi in there own subfolders.

[Lindon]

@David-Healey said in Full Instrument Expansions - how, what where....:

@Lindon said in Full Instrument Expansions - how, what where....:

Is there a "how to" anywhere that walks thru the steps to build a full instrument expansion and get it to load in a "player"?

I think I covered this in the Expansion Installer video I posted on Patreon in February.

Thanks yes you did, but it makes some assumptions, mostly that I want to use this expansion handler way of installing the expansions, and I dont - I have a fair bit of meta data to install as well so I want to use the powerful installer I've already written..so basically Im asking : what needs to go where in a finished completely installed Full Instrument Expansion?

part of this is clearly the (non standard) way I work with file based expansions, in Im installing them in the finished plugin myself...

So to be clear:

I have an installer system that will put (I think) any file anywhere I want it....
so what does an installed Full Instrument Expansion look like? ..and if I copy all this stuff in myself where does this Full Instrument expansion look for the samples?

@Lindon said in Full Instrument Expansions - how, what where....:

I want to have tone of Full expansions, surely these dont all get called info.hxi - unless they are placed in some sub-folder structure in the player project (like say the Expansions folder)???

Yes all are info.hxi in there own subfolders.

-- so I think this leads me back to the question above....

[David Healey]

@Lindon In the project's app data folder there should be an Expansions folder. Inside there create a sub folder for your expansion.

In that sub folder drop your hxi. Add a subfolder called UserPresets and another called Samples. Put your Link file in the Samples folder.

[Lindon]

@David-Healey golden, as it happens I dont have any expansion presets, so do I need the UserPresets Folder?

[David Healey]

@Lindon Only if you're using the preset browser and the user might make presets.

[Lindon]

@David-Healey OK well there no way in the instruments to open the preset browser (yeah strange I know) so crossing that off the list.

[Lindon]

Ok some progress...

My player now loads a very simple test full instrument expansion....but the expansion cannot seem to find its sample maps....so Im doing something wrong...

So how I have this set up:

In my HISE project for the Player I have an Expansions folder, in there is an expansion folder (named for the expansion)

inside the individual expansion folder I have the classic folder structure...

..as well as the info.hxi file

In the Samples folder here I have a LinkWindows file (only)

and in the SampleMaps folder I have all the xml sample maps for my expansion, but when I load my expansion using the player I get this in the sampler:

So no sample maps found...

How I set up my info.hxi file:

I loaded my expansion as its own project, with sample and sample maps set up.. and generated the hxi using the export menu...

What is it Im doing wrong?

[David Healey]

@Lindon said in Full Instrument Expansions - how, what where....:

In my HISE project for the Player I have an Expansions folder, in there is an expansion folder (named for the expansion)

The expansions should be completely separate HISE projects

[Lindon]

@David-Healey it is... I have a seperare expansion project...which is where the hxi is being generated - then Im copying over to the player (in the Players exapnsions sub folder structure)..

[David Healey]

@Lindon Nothing goes in the player project's Expansions folder. Put your hxi, UserPresets, and Samples folder (with Link file) in the player's AppData Expansions folder.

[Lindon]

@David-Healey Okay.... now nothing works from within the Players HISE project -- does this ONLY work in a compiled plugin?

[David Healey]

@Lindon No it will work in HISE if you've set the player project to use Full Expansions and the encryption key matches the one used for the expansion project.

[Lindon]

@David-Healey well I have and it doesnt....now nothing happens at all...so Im still doing something wrong..

[David Healey]

@Lindon This is how my app data folder looks for Rhapsody, is your structure similar?

[Lindon]

@David-Healey yes:

Samples has only LinkWindows in it

[David Healey]

@Lindon No need for the sample maps folder, the sample maps are embedded in the hxi. How are you expecting the expansions to show up in your player HISE project?

[Lindon]

@David-Healey it shows up as taking over the entire screen with a LOUD ui.....

heres what Im doing to call the expansion

reg eh = Engine.createExpansionHandler();

function instrumentMouseCallBack(event,panel)
{
	if(event.doubleClick)
	{
		pos = InstrumentPanels.indexOf(panel);
		tempMouseJSON = getJSONforInstPanel(pos);
		//Content.getComponent("Label1").set("text", "here we load an expansion called:" + tempMouseJSON.ExpName);
		
		
		Console.clear();
		Console.print("loading an instrument........." + tempMouseJSON.ExpName);
		for(e in eh.getExpansionList())
		{
			Console.print("the name of the expansion is:" + e.getProperties().Name);
		}
		
		eh.setCurrentExpansion("KeyEngineTest");
	}
};

..and now its not printing "the name of the expansion is..."

So its not finding any expansions....