OpenEuphoria

Re: Llama

• Posted by David Cuny <dcuny at LANSET.COM> Apr 13, 1999
• 397 views

Nuno Barros wrote:

>> The SelectObject/DeleteObject makes the GDI part the most complex. As
with
>> Win32Lib, I'll try to hide the resource allocation/deallocation so it
>> happens automatically.
>
>:) great! and about the other functions? do you think is hard to add?
> these bitmap gdi functions would be a great addition to all WinEuphoria
users
>that want  to do real cool windows games! I included!

The functions are all easy to add. You could stick them into Win32Lib, if
you wanted. In fact, Win32Lib already uses BitBlt (in drawBitmap),
SelectObject, DeleteObject, and quite a few other GDI routines. But there
are a lot of bitmap functions that are still not implemented.

After the beta release, I expect other people to be adding a lot of features
to Llama. Unlike Win32Lib/Dos32Lib, Llama is relatively simple to extend.
The graphics class can either be extended by extending the existing Canvas
class, or by extending it with other classes.

And, unlike Win32Lib, you can even extend an existing class by patching it
from an include file, so you can add features to a class *without* altering
that class, or just replace a class library with another one. This should be
especially helpful for Dos32Lib, where people like Patrick Quist can offer
better replacement classes for the grotty set that will come with it.

I'm a bit leery about games at this point, though. Llama uses a lot
late-binding, which is not optimized. Specifically, most method calls are
not resolved until they are run. And the routine_id mechanism adds a bit of
overhead. So I fear the *initial* version of Llama might be a bit sluggish
when it comes to graphics, although there are a number of optimizations I
have in mind to help.
On the other hand, I might be pleasantly suprised.


> BTW: Llama is growing fast in only 5 days! :)

Yeah, but I'm in a few days I'm going on vacation until May to make up for
that. 

-- David Cuny