A little faq about BETATRON: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I tried to read the documentation and i cannot understand a word. Is it so hard to use BETATRON ? A: No, not at all. Maybe the documentation is not written well. Try starting from example program 1 in the directory examples. You can always drop me an email message at liouros@hotmail.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I have written a simple program that uses BETATRON and it crashes. What can be wrong ? A: If your program crashes the first thing you have to do is to check what every function ,you call, returns. If you find a function that returns an error code then you may be able to correct this error. The most of the times you will propably have forgotten to call some other function. For example: You tried to call TOworld::makelayer() without first calling TOworld::setdimensions(); For fast and easy debugging use the macro CHECK(). See example program 1 to see a correct order for calling the various methods of BETATRON and how to use CHECK(). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I tried to use BETATRON with a VESA 2.00 mode, and it hanged my computer although it worked nice in mode-X 320x200. Is this a bug? A: This is not a problem of BETATRON. This is a problem of your VESA2 driver. BETATRON needs a linear frame buffer to work, but the address of the buffer is not always accecible by your VESA2 driver or your hardware. Consult the documentation of your VESA2 driver for details. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: In some high resolution VESA 2.00 modes the horizontal scrolling is not smooth. Why that happens? A: You are trying to scroll in steps which are not multiples of 4. Unfortunately in some VESA 2.00 video modes, especially high resolution ones like 640x480, the horizontal pel panning register does not work so there is no way to scroll in steps of 1,2 or 3 pixels at a time. Prefer using horizontal scrolling steps that are multiples of 4; if you want to have smooth scrolling. The vertical scrolling steps are not a problem since the HPEL register is not used for this kind of scrolling. This note applies to my S3 card with UNIVBE as VBE2.00 driver. I have not checked this problem in other systems. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I want to display a nice picture at the start of my game and then a menu. Or i want to display a menu in the middle of the game. How do i do that? A: It is possible to write directly to the screen by using the functions TOworld::M2Vsolid() and TOworld::M2Vthru(). Store your picture as a bitmap in TOworld::bitmaps array (use TOworld::setbitmap() ) and then use the functions above to blit your picture to the screen. I admit that BETATRON lacks in many areas but it is still in version 1.00 beta. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What about parallax scrolling and transparency effects? A: BETATRON does not support either parallax scrolling or transparency effects in its current version. Parallax scrolling will propably never be implemented because it would decrease the efficiency of the game engine. (The scrolling algorithm would have to be changed) Transparency effects can be easily embedded in BETATRON and they will propably be in a future version. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I want to create a World Data Description file (.WDD). What tools are available? A: Unfortunately none. A level editor for WDD files would be a really useful tool. Does anybody care to write one ? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: The view window is too big for my game. How can i reduce its size ? A: You can't. The view window always covers the whole screen.