24 January 2000
Version 2.3

Fractal Forge was born the day I had to print several fractal images and some simple posters with an Epson Stylus color printer. Back then, I realized there was no true color fractal generator for MS-Windows in the shareware market, so I decided to program one myself. I called it UbiMandel (after my name), and I wrote it in Visual Basic 3. I did not optimize the first version's algorithm because I didn't need to. Once I bought Delphi, I wondered what * simple program I could do, so I began to code True Mandel, another fractal program. I started it in May 1995 and finished it next October. I released it on the Internet as True Mandel 1.0 (trmand10.zip), which stands for True Color Mandelbrot Set Generator.
Later, I decided to migrate to the win32-bit world (NT and 95-98) using Delphi 2. Soon, there were two shareware versions: 1.5 and 1.6. In 1999, I completely rewrote TrueMandel in Delphi 4, and changed its name to Fractal Forge because there are several programs with similar names already available.

Things to do:
Synchronous orbits
Bounds tracing
Guessing
DirectX animation
OpenGL 3d fractals
Plug Ins
Skins (like WinAmp)

Improvements since Fractal Forge 2.2:
Added new Full Screen mode  (Option menu)
Added a new colors (Nature)
Added a new image (Elephant)
Fixed a bug in replacing a file color
Caption bar displays current fractal name
Added Author and Image informations in PNGs
It's now possible to drag a file onto Fractal Forge to render it immediately
Added a image format ( 500 x 500 )
Fixed some bugs in History List
Added State and Version in History List. Crono and Time are now separated
Fixed a major bug in Load/Save Lists
Allow to quit when drawing a fractal
Correct progress bar position during Bounds drawing
It's possible to reset Starting Values (pressing cancel button)
A few a minor bugs fixed

Improvements since True Mandel 1.6:
Color Editing
Improved and faster algorithms
Better user interface
Simpler and more powerful zooms
Improved printing
Poster images
Filters
Png Support
Exe packed
Improved Starting fractal dialog
A lot of minor bugs fixed

Improvements since True Mandel 1.5
32 bit optimized code
80 bit precision (21 digits)
Max iterations over 2*10^9
Win95 components support
Win95 long file name support
Percent of drawing showed on title (also when minimized)
Info on toolbox about the point you are on
Preview color spectrum and current image
New faster image display
New draft mode (no second pass)
Faster 'None' optimization (but still exact)
New moveable rectangular zoom
More bugs fixes
