1. Allegro for Euphoria
- Posted by Ray Smith <smithr at IX.NET.AU>
Oct 31, 2000
-
Last edited Nov 01, 2000
Hi There,
Just a quick note to tell everyone what I'm up to, and more importantly
if anyone is interested!!!
A have started creating a wrapper for the game programming library called
Allegro (http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/).
It has too many features to list ... Sound, Input, Graphics etc etc ...
everything required to make games.
It is a cross platform library for DOS, Windows and Linux (maybe others I'm
not really sure.)
I am only concerned with the windows version for now which uses DirectX.
At this stage the cross platform library is still in beta but is close to
being released as version 4.0
I really only got going last night and have only wrapped about a dozen
functions so far but have a couple of the demo programs working.
Actually the Euphoria wrapper calls a C DLL program I am writing that
is a wrapper for the Allegro DLL.
I beleive this is the same technique that Swig uses and which David Cuny
was attempting to do automatically with wxWindows.
At this point it seems to be looking good, and I'm hoping within the next
few weeks I'll have some kind of demo available.
Just a quick summary:
1. Has anyone used Allegro before or would be interested in using a
Euphoria version??
2. If anyone wants to create a C dll that is a wrapper for another DLL
library ... I might be able to help.
Regards,
Ray Smith
2. Re: Allegro for Euphoria
Ray Smith wrote:
> A have started creating a wrapper for the game programming library called
> Allegro (http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/).
> It has too many features to list ... Sound, Input, Graphics etc etc ...
> everything required to make games.
> It is a cross platform library for DOS, Windows and Linux (maybe others I'm
> not really sure.)
> I am only concerned with the windows version for now which uses DirectX.
> At this stage the cross platform library is still in beta but is close to
> being released as version 4.0
>
> 1. Has anyone used Allegro before or would be interested in using a
> Euphoria version??
Hi Ray,
After losing myself in usenet for months, I have finally snapped out of it, and
am starting to be more productive with my time again, deciding to do something
useful with exoticaX that I looked at ages ago.
Am I correct in assuming that because Allegro is a wrapper for DirectX (in
Windows at least), your wrapper is adding another level of "wrapperness" to
this? Will this in turn not make the whole thing a tad slower?
Obviously, ease of use might override this somewhat, so is it a lot easier to
use than exoticaX?
If it is then you may certainly count me in.
Sid
(Really looking for something that will write games for me 
)
3. Re: Allegro for Euphoria
- Posted by Ray & Debbie Smith <smithr at IX.NET.AU>
Nov 01, 2000
-
Last edited Nov 02, 2000
Hi Sid
> Am I correct in assuming that because Allegro is a wrapper for DirectX (in
> Windows at least), your wrapper is adding another level of "wrapperness"
to
> this? Will this in turn not make the whole thing a tad slower?
Yes, it is another wrapper on top of DirectX and I have no idea how much
slower it will be because of that. I'm hoping just a small amount. Allegro
is a very mature library with hundres/thousands of users mainly still in DOS
using DJGPP.
> Obviously, ease of use might override this somewhat, so is it a lot easier
to
> use than exoticaX?
I have never used exoticaX so I can't comment on it either way.
I have used Allegro a little in C before and found it very easy to use.
(C was the thing that a hated!!!!)
My initial aim is to wrap as many of the functions required to convert the
example
programs that come with the Allegro distribution.
This should give me a good indication of how good the Euphoria wrapper
can be.
> If it is then you may certainly count me in.
Thats great, I'm hoping to have a demo with a few dozen functions available
this weekend.
So far the wrapping of the functions seems to be easy.
I tested a couple of the timer routines and they seem to work ok, I was
expecting the worst in this area because of the call_back routines but so
far everything is coming along great ... and I'm only 1 and half days into
the wrapper!
The tricky past was installing Mingw, followed by Allegro, compiling
Allegro,
then making a DLL with Mingw that links to the Allegro DLL.
But now that all of that is done, I'm hoping to actually produce something
of interest.
Ray Smith
PS. Below is an extract from the Allegro readme file:
------------------------------
==================================
============ Features ============
==================================
Cross-platform support for DOS, Windows, Unix, and BeOS systems.
Drawing functions including putpixel, getpixel, lines, rectangles, flat
shaded, gouraud shaded, and texture mapped polygons, circles, floodfill,
bezier splines, patterned fills, masked, run length encoded, and compiled
sprites, blitting, bitmap scaling and rotation, translucency/lighting,
and text output with proportional fonts. Supports clipping, and can draw
directly to the screen or to memory bitmaps of any size.
DOS graphics drivers for VGA mode 13h, mode-X (twenty three tweaked VGA
resolutions plus unchained 640x400 Xtended mode), and SVGA modes with 8,
15, 16, 24, and 32 bit color depths, taking full advantage of VBE 2.0
linear framebuffers and the VBE/AF hardware accelerator API if they are
available. Additional video hardware support is available from the
FreeBE/AF project (http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/freebe/).
Windows graphics drivers using DirectX in fullscreen and windowed modes,
plus routines for drawing onto GDI device contexts.
Unix graphics drivers for X, DGA, fbcon, GGI, SVGAlib, VBE/AF, mode-X,
and standard VGA.
Hardware scrolling and triple buffering (where available), mode-X split
screens, and palette manipulation.
FLI/FLC animation player.
Plays background MIDI music and up to 64 simultaneous sound effects, and
can record sample waveforms and MIDI input. Samples can be looped
(forwards, backwards, or bidirectionally), and the volume, pan, pitch,
etc, can be adjusted while they are playing. The MIDI player responds to
note on, note off, main volume, pan, pitch bend, and program change
messages, using the General MIDI patch set and drum mappings. DOS version
currently supports Adlib, SB, SB Pro, SB16, AWE32, MPU-401, ESS
AudioDrive, Ensoniq Soundscape, and Windows Sound System. Windows version
uses DirectSound and the system MIDI drivers. Unix version supports OSS,
ESD, and ALSA sound drivers. All versions provide software wavetable MIDI
playback.
Easy access to the mouse, keyboard, joystick, and high resolution timer
interrupts, including a vertical retrace interrupt simulator in the DOS
version.
Routines for reading and writing LZSS compressed files.
Multi-object data files and a grabber utility.
Math functions including fixed point arithmetic, lookup table trig, and
3d vector/matrix/quaternion manipulation.
GUI dialog manager and file selector.
-----------------
4. Re: Allegro for Euphoria
Ray Smith wrote:
> I have started creating a wrapper for the
> game programming library called Allegro
You might take a look at Pete's Allegrophoria, at:
http://www.harborside.com/~xseal/euphoria/
Look in the "downloads" section, and scroll the main pane down until you
find "alexe.zip". It combines Peuphoria (his version of Euphoria) with
Allegro for DOS.
> 1. Has anyone used Allegro before or would
> be interested in using a Euphoria version?
Allegro is cool; I'm suprised there isn't more interest. I thought that
people would be clamoring for a DOS version, but that shows what I know...
I thought that SWIG would be capable of wrapping the portable version of
Euphoria, but in the new version, everything is done with macros, which
makes SWIG just about worthless...
> 2. If anyone wants to create a C dll that is a
> wrapper for another DLL library ... I might be
> able to help.
I might take you up on that.
Good luck!
-- David Cuny
5. Re: Allegro for Euphoria
Oh, I know I'd be very interested in seeing a Euphoria version of Allegro!
I'm very happy with Exotica right now, in terms of direct x with Euphoria,
but diversity is allways a good thing :) Besides that, I learned a lot of
what little I know of C from playing around with Allegro and it could just
be...well...fun to be able to see it usable from euphoria.
Out of curiosity, is this going to be for both windows and linux, or windows
alone?
>1. Has anyone used Allegro before or would be interested in using a
Euphoria version??
6. Re: Allegro for Euphoria
Sorry, havent used Allergo before.
7. Re: Allegro for Euphoria
Here is my first code that i wrote many months back. DOS32 eh? Yeah
right.... basic but far better than WIN32lib.. An advise,.. work on DOS32
before u move on to win32
-regards
Asif Baloch
MBA (Information Technology)
BBA HONORS (CBIS)
8. Re: Allegro for Euphoria
- Posted by Derek Parnell <dparnell at BIGPOND.NET.AU>
Nov 05, 2000
-
Last edited Nov 06, 2000
Hi Asif,
> Here is my first code that i wrote many months back.
Where? Did you mean to attach a file?
>DOS32 eh? Yeah right.... basic but far better than WIN32lib..
Better in what ways, Asif? How does one measure "better" in this context?
>An advise,.. work on DOS32 before u move on to win32
Good advice. DOS32 is much simpler, a definite beginners environment. Win32
is a superset of the functionality availble in DOS. Of course, technically
you can do everything that Windows can do in DOS, seeing that Windows is
only a DOS shell, but it sure is hard to do.
------
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
(Vote [1] The Cheshire Cat for Internet Mascot)
9. Re: Allegro for Euphoria
- Posted by Ray & Debbie Smith <smithr at IX.NET.AU>
Nov 05, 2000
-
Last edited Nov 06, 2000
>
> Out of curiosity, is this going to be for both windows and linux, or
windows
> alone?
>
At this stage it will be Windows only.
In principle it should it should be possible to convert it to work with
Linux.
(I said the same thing with the euTcp4u sockets library but my lack of Linux
skills stopped me!)
Ray Smith
10. Re: Allegro for Euphoria
I think it is cool seeing Allegro making it's way to Euphoria like this! :)
I started out using Allegro back when the Allegro Mailing List first
started. It's definetly a surperb game library for DOS C/C++ programmers
IMHO. When Allegro first introduced DirectX into it, I wasn't very
impressed. But that was just me. It most likely made strides with better
stability and performance using DirectX by now. Is it still using DirectX
Version 3?
Todd Riggins
------
Oh, I know I'd be very interested in seeing a Euphoria version of Allegro!
I'm very happy with Exotica right now, in terms of direct x with Euphoria,
but diversity is allways a good thing :) Besides that, I learned a lot of
what little I know of C from playing around with Allegro and it could just
be...well...fun to be able to see it usable from euphoria.
Out of curiosity, is this going to be for both windows and linux, or
windows
alone?
>1. Has anyone used Allegro before or would be interested in using a
Euphoria version??
11. Re: Allegro for Euphoria
> I think it is cool seeing Allegro making it's way to Euphoria like this!
:)
...
>When Allegro first introduced DirectX into it, I wasn't very
> impressed. But that was just me. It most likely made strides with better
> stability and performance using DirectX by now. Is it still using DirectX
> Version 3?
I "think" I remember reading it uses DirectX 6, I can't remember though.
The current release of Allegro I'm using is 3.9.33 and is still a Work In
Progress.
The current release is "supposed" to be the last before the first full
release to be
known as 4.0 and apparently there will be no or very few changes between
this
release and the final one.
Ray Smith
12. Allegro for Euphoria
Hello.
Has anyone attempted to port the Allegro game kit to Euphoria? I use DJGPP,
and I'm having fun rockin' and rollin' with it. See the demo proggies, then
you'll be amazed!
- Nate
13. Re: Allegro for Euphoria
Nate wrote:
>Has anyone attempted to port the Allegro game kit to Euphoria? I use DJGPP,
>and I'm having fun rockin' and rollin' with it. See the demo proggies, then
>you'll be amazed!
The Allegro library is *very* cool, and implements a lot of stuff that
people have been hand-coding in assembly for Euphoria.
Hopefully, one of the benefits of Gnuphoria will be linking to libraries
such as Allegro. Progress is being made on Gnuphoria, but I won't promise
any release date, other than to say I'm working on it as much as I can.
-- David Cuny
14. Re: Allegro for Euphoria
David Cuny wrote:
> Nate wrote:
>
> >Has anyone attempted to port the Allegro game kit to Euphoria? I use DJGPP,
> >and I'm having fun rockin' and rollin' with it. See the demo proggies, then
> >you'll be amazed!
>
> The Allegro library is *very* cool, and implements a lot of stuff that
> people have been hand-coding in assembly for Euphoria.
>
> Hopefully, one of the benefits of Gnuphoria will be linking to libraries
> such as Allegro. Progress is being made on Gnuphoria, but I won't promise
> any release date, other than to say I'm working on it as much as I can.
If anyone is interested, you can find Allegro deep in the depthsof the FTP site
at this address :
ftp://ftp.direct.ca/pub/simtelnet/gnu/djgpp/v2tk/
Very cool indeed! I was especially impressed with the full
MIDI support, which (if I'm not mistaken) has not yet been
done in Euphoria. Good reading! (And good luck, David,
on the Gnuphoria project! All the best!)
Chris Cox
cox.family at sk.sympatico.ca
