From: "Ben Davis" <ben AT vjpoole DOT freeserve DOT co DOT uk>
Newsgroups: comp.games.development.programming.misc,comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: A choking start for DPMI
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 14:05:30 +0100
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Damian Yerrick wrote in message <7tlqls$79h$1 AT solomon DOT cs DOT rose-hulman DOT edu>...
>
>> I've written a rather hyperactive game using DJGPP
>> and Allegro, in DOS.
>
>Is it as insane as my Insane Game, part of DOSArena?
>http://come.to/yerrick


I've tried your game. Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm afraid mine is MUCH
more insane. And there are more to come when this one's finished. If you
want to match mine, you'll have to make it so that nothing on the screen
ever stays the same.

>I assume that by "digitised music" you mean a wave file
>that has been tightly compressed by a lossy algorithm.


No. I'm using high quality PCM samples, but not a whole piece of music; just
a sample of each instrument. Then I'm sequencing them. It's a very
memory-efficient and good quality method.

>You're also using Allegro. Look up LOCK_FUNCTION()
>and LOCK_VARIABLE(). Those are portable shortcuts
>to whatever those functions are called on your platform.
I'm using these anyway, for variables used in interrupts. I might try
locking everything, and I am told there is a way of doing this
automatically. I'll see what happens when I do.


>Put an init_foo() function in each of your source files. Have
>main() call them; this will load each portion of your program
>into memory.  Only play your MP3s after all the init_*()
>functions have been called.
Don't worry, I'm not that adventurous; I only have one source module that I
wrote, and I don't want to modify the Allegro ones. Thanks for the
suggestions though.


Ben Davis