New Gravity Demo currently being put together.

[Clyde]

Yep, you heard right.

As I've been inspired by many members over the past few years that I've been trying to code, from the early days till present time. I'm in the process of putting together a new Gravity production ( if your reading this in a years time then it wont be a new release ) which is inspired by lots of people. And Im truely greatfull for their inspiration and also teachings. It's also going to be aptly named, due to the hard struggles I've been through at this point in my life. A few surprises in store for people who download it, as well to myself. A lot of these routines I made eons ago in BB, and have managed to convert them to Freebasic pretty easily. It will also feature some stuff from my partner in code, Rbraz. But please dont tell him as he doesnt know yet. Hehehe.

And If we manage to get ourselves a musician in time for the release then that would be cool, otherwize Im going to have to opt for choosing an old tracker tune. Also I wont set a release date as such, as life's a bit of a bugger at the moment. But it'll be pretty soonish.

Anyhows Happy Coding and take care,
Clyde.

[Shockwave]

Glad to hear of a new Gravity production in the works And a multi-parter too by the sound of things. That's good news.
I'm wondering what sort of effects you will be including and I'll be looking forward to seeing it when you've got it together!

[Tetra]

Great

Will be looking forward indeed
 

[Shockwave]

Any news on the new demo Clyde?

[Clyde]

I've been put off by this weather of late to do any more to it. Just sitting for a few mins is a bugger and especially with this flaming back of mine.

All I really need to concentrate and come up with is some transitions for in between parts. And as it's been such a while since I did any pixel pushing in Paint Shop, it's taking a little longer than anticipated.

[Clyde]

Well I wanted to release the new prod roughly 2 weeks ago.

I've pigged about converting everything over into png form with gfxlib / Ploader, but the way that the images are being resourced is producing much greater final executbales and prevents UPX from working. I think the Pload set of functions are very good, just a shame that compressing the final exe wont work with resources.

So, it's looking like Back to the drawing board. I will have to convert everything back into TinyPTC and use bitmaps, as with that method I got a considerably smaller overall exe size with. And thats before adding the music.

[Shockwave]

That's a shame Clyde. There are other things to consider apart from the exe size though, not least of which is the refresh rate.
As far as I am concerned however I will be sticking to tinyptc and 256 colour bmps for the near future.

[TinDragon]

I think the Pload set of functions are very good, just a shame that compressing the final exe wont work with resources.

Could you not add the resources to the exe after compression ? I am not sure if i would work with this Pload thing but I have done that before with blitz exe's in the past.

[Clyde]

Yeah with Blitz I'd create a Pak file with TerraEd and attach the resources after compilation, and then UPX them. But I've a feeling it was possible with multi formats, as Blitz used FreeImage. Not sure, as im not a code wizard.

I've decided, rather then faffing about going down streets I don't know. Im going to stick to MR Tiny And MR Bitmap for a while longer. Also with the gfxlib version I got really bad stuttering with the effects.

[thrawn89]

What about 100010's resourcing fork? Did that not work making a separate resource file?

You should think of Pload like a Buffer converter...it takes in a buffer [in png form, not caring where its from], and it spits out a buffer [In FB Image form]

So this should work, if 100010's resourcing fork works with your compressor and you can get the buffer of the PNG, then pload will work

Anyways, use it or not, whatever works for you, I cant wait to see it,
Thrawn

[Shockwave]

There's bound to be a work around.
I have a question to ask you actually Thrawn, what about grabbing a png and spitting it out into an array for us people who like to use tinyptc?

[thrawn89]

It wouldnt be too hard to make a wrapper for the pload function...the Any Ptr is just a pointer to a buffer that has the FB image data in it...the FB Image array has the exact same data as the buffer, they just are expressed to the coder differently...so Im sure you can write a buffer to array converter wrapper easily ;-), Id be happy to do it, but as of right now I have to leave, bye

Thrawn

[thrawn89]

There's bound to be a work around.
I have a question to ask you actually Thrawn, what about grabbing a png and spitting it out into an array for us people who like to use tinyptc?

Nice little wrapper here, took me 5 mins to code,...if you want a wrapper for the MPload function, Im pretty sure you can modify this function pretty easily ;-) [just change the first parameter to two parameters [buffer, length], and replace the call to pload to a call to mpload with the buffer and length parameters respectively...and it should be all set...remember any more questions, PLEASE use the email provided in the help docs for I dont get on forums much and it'll be very easy for a question like this to slip by me...thanks :-)

Code: [Select]

Screen 19, 32

DefInt A-Z
Option Explicit

#include "ploadlib.bi"

Declare Function ploadArray(Byval Filename As String, ReturnArray() As UByte) As Integer

ReDim As UByte ImageArray(0)

ploadArray("alphatest.png", ImageArray())

Put(0,0), @ImageArray(0), Alpha

Do: Loop While Inkey$ = ""
System

Function ploadArray(Byval Filename As String, ReturnArray() As UByte) As Integer
    Dim As Any Ptr Image
    Dim As Integer w, h, i
   
    Image = Pload(Filename)
   
    w = cptr(short ptr, Image)[0] SHR 3
    h = cptr(short ptr, Image)[1]
   
    ReDim ReturnArray((w * h * 4) + 4) As UByte
   
    For i = 0 To Ubound(ReturnArray)
        ReturnArray(i) = cptr(UByte ptr, Image)[i]
    Next i
   
    ImageDestroy(Image)
   
    Return (-1)
End Function
Thrawn

[Shockwave]

Cool, thanks for the help It will be used!

[thrawn89]

One thing, please note that that is not the most efficent code to do that, further, it will increase loading time...  ;-)

Thrawn