UI suggestion: add faded 7th column to show there's more channels

[exelotl]

Here's a mockup I made a while ago:

This would make it easier to orient yourself in a song with more than 6 channels, as it's immediately clear whether you've scrolled as far as you can or if there's more material offscreen.

[deadpahn]

Very cool!

[prayerie]

very nice..trying to think how the blend would be accomplished, unless we just draw it first then do a second pass on the main vram pixels to gradient blend them to the background colour?

[deadpahn]

Would that mean that there would be a fade on the left for any tracks greater than 1?

[prayerie]

Would that mean that there would be a fade on the left for any tracks greater than 1?

I presume not since they wouldn't be cut off whereas on the right side there's a little bit of room but not the full amount

[exelotl]

Yeah I'd suggest no fade on the left hand side, because in that case the numbers already give away the fact that you can scroll left.

Implementation-wise, I guess changing colour per-character or group of characters, rather than per-pixel would be easier / more performant than doing a second pass, and would probably look just as good.

Doing it in hardware could also be possible but: with sprites you only get one alpha value, can't fade it horizontally. Maybe some stuff could be done with the 3D engine but that seems like overkill 😅