Halo v3.1.5 - the pulse swells instead of stepping
The pulse on the pill was stepping, not swelling
When something is playing or downloading, the pill's own background bar breathes — that is how it answers "is this actually moving?" for a two-hour film whose bar advances about a pixel a minute.
The breath is supposed to be a slow swell. It was arriving as a handful of visible steps, and the reason turned out to be a single word in a helper signature: the glow behind the bar declared its opacity as a whole number, even though that value only ever reaches the graphics layer as a float. Rounding it meant that across an entire breath the glow had four brightness levels to work with, and the second glow had three.
Nothing about the drawing needed the rounding. Removing it takes the same pulse from four levels to a continuous one — measured at frame rate, a pixel in the middle of the bar now moves through 24–26 distinct values per breath instead of jumping with the glow.
Downloads breathe too
The same rule the media pill uses. A download sitting at 40% and a download stalled at 40% are the same still picture, and the pill's bar is the thing you glance at to tell them apart — so it now breathes while bytes are moving and holds still when the download is paused.
Also in this build
- A new README animation, recorded on the current pill. The old one predated the background progress bar, the pulse and the eased accent colour, so it was showing a media widget that no longer exists.
DynamicWinSetup.exe is the signed installer. DynamicWinPortable.zip needs no install — unzip and run Halo\Halo.App.exe. If you are already on 3.1.x, Halo picks this up on its own within a day.