Mail Archives: djgpp/1998/07/21/07:26:12
>>Is it possible to do 640x480x16? Yes, so long as you have a graphics card
>>with enough memory (about 1MB should do it) which most cards have.
>
>I imagine that most pentiums nowadays come with gfx cards with at least
>this? But how about VESA support? I know I had to get Scitech Display
Doctor
>for mine (Diamond FireGL with Permidia2). Is there any other way of getting
>640x480x16 in Allegro?
My ATI card has 4MB of onbord SDRAM. Any card (including your Diamond Fire)
which has some 3D capability will have at least 2MB (if it's very old) but
more usually 4, 6 or 8MB.
I'm not sure why you had to get Display Doctor. I though most modern cards
came with VESA 2 as standard? Or at least VESA 1.2?
As for 640x480x16, there is another way other than VESA: use the other SVGA
drivers. The problem with this is that you need a compatible card. I can use
the ATI Mach 64 driver, but there is no driver for the Permedia 2. That's
why VESA was introduced - to make a standard system. :^)
>>Is it possible to have 12 objects on screen at once? Should be no problem
>>for a P133. Those of us in the G'98RGT team are currently in the process
of
>>programming a game in 640x480x16. We plan to have quite a few more objects
>>than 12 on screen at once. Our minimum spec is any Pentium (although since
>>there is no Pentium specific code, it should run on any system with enough
>>video RAM to handle the resolution). What you are suggesting could be done
>>on a 386 with a good graphics card. A Pentium would hardly feel the
>>pressure.
>
>This is good news, I wrote a quick demo of my game, and it runs at 60fps,
>but I have programmed it really badly, just so I could see what it looked
at
>(it redraws the whole screen each time... hey it was quick and easy!). For
>640x480x16, which of the animation methods is best?
Remember that when using page flipping, most graphics cards wait for a vsync
before swapping. This means that your frame rate is limited by the refresh
rate of your monitor. But that's usually not a problem. Optimisation is
still a good idea because some cards *don't* wait for a vsync, and you can
also fit more stuff into one refresh.
The best method to use depends on your game. If it is a 2D game, then you
could give yourself a speed boost and use the Dirty Rectangle method.
Possibly. You should experiment, but I would prioritise Dirty Rectangles and
Page Flipping.
>>BTW, palette allocation is not all that hard. If you have a good art
>>package, it will tell you how many colours it used for each image. You
>>should also be able to create a user palette which you can use for each
>>graphic you make. PSP does all this, but so do several other packages. The
>>hard bit is keeping each image in sync with the palette...
>>
>
>Hmm.. I don't like palette stuff, I think I'll try and stick with 16+bit
>from now on.
OK.
James Arthur
jaa AT arfa DOT clara DOT net
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