From: Damian Yerrick Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: Advice needed: displaying many pcx images for emulator front end Organization: Pin Eight Software Message-ID: <5H8XOKU0v26th2G9A1UO6SXLGtzu@4ax.com> References: <381787e8 DOT 11350866 AT news DOT anet DOT com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.6/32.525 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 51 X-Trace: +4MVL4zwbqN8tOxlVfZnJMwldd/N10e7KSzkcZShrKmnYl/1AYjH7W/BVOwW8YDvQ+mvmAOOGzhD!G5tsTCV1VTjxFClZvpWicTReYgI97WFQIcd/6NstiBG5+pe3S5XK/pZkUi06r7j5+Q== X-Complaints-To: abuse AT gte DOT net X-Abuse-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 23:00:27 GMT Distribution: world Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 23:00:27 GMT To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com On Wed, 27 Oct 1999 23:26:18 GMT, quake AT megsinet DOT net (exph) wrote: > I am currently making a simple front end for mame as > as a project to increase my knowledge of allegro and djgpp. I did my front ends with a batch file. ;-) > My question is how should I go about showing .pcx > screen shots for the games when you have one > highlighted? If I read the pcx from the hard drive every > time I need one you won't be able to navigate the > menu smoothly because the disk will be thrashing. Two words: Disk cache. Do it that way, and SMARTDrive will handle caching for you. Or you can implement your own: > Mame runs just under 2000 games now so there is no way > I can load that many screen shots into memory. Should I > cache as many screen shots as memory allows and just > read the hard drive when I need one that isn't cached? That's what web browsers and SMARTDrive do. > One other quick question. Would it be better to shell > to mame or to simply terminate my program and have > it run once mame is done with a simple batch file? I don't know how the "terminate and relaunch in batch" method would be done. Most front-ends are shells. > Does shelling decrease mames performance? Not if you call allegro_exit() then spawn*() then allegro_init(). Shelling from a DJGPP program uses a bit of extended memory, but Windows or Linux will handle swapping out your front-end and swapping in MAME. If MAME was made with DJGPP, it's even better. > For those of you who have gotten down to this point > thank you very much for taking the time to read this ;-). Organize your games into categories (tris, pac, space-shooter, gun-shooter, brick-and-ball, one-on-one fighting, final fighting, etc.). Store each category's 160x120x8 bit snaps in a datafile. The user expects a second or two of swapping when switching categories. -- Damian Yerrick Mail me from the link on my web site: Pinocchio's Brother