1. Wrapper for Windows
I am makign a game for Windows, and do not want to distribute my graphics
in separate files, could anybody help me in creating a wrapper that put all
my files in a single win32 exe ?
2. Re: Wrapper for Windows
- Posted by Ray & Debbie Smith <smithr at IX.NET.AU>
Nov 20, 2000
-
Last edited Nov 21, 2000
Hi,
... everyone must be getting sick of hearing from me about the Allegro
library I'm wrapping since it isn't even finsiehd!!! .... but here we go
...
It allows files (wav's, midi's, bmps etc) to be combined into one ".dat"
file that can
distributed with your application.
There is of course a cost of 2 DLL's that need to be in the current
directory
(or the path) that are about 250K in size (combined).
This is all a bit of an overkill if you only used the datafile routines so
here
is another suggestion:
You could combine all your bmp images into one big image and just distribute
the one bmp file (if you wanted to you could rename it to something else
eg .dat ... that won't stop anyone clever figuring out that it was a bmp of
course!
Then you could just blit out of the large image into the screen or your
buffer.
Ray Smith
P.S. I also recall David Cuny writing a library for doing something similar
but don't know if it was for dos only or not ... or even if it was David.
----- Original Message -----
From: White Eagle Software <whiteeagle at WHITEEAGLESOFTWARE.ORG>
To: <EUPHORIA at LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU>
Sent: Monday, November 20, 2000 4:51 PM
Subject: Wrapper for Windows
> I am makign a game for Windows, and do not want to distribute my graphics
> in separate files, could anybody help me in creating a wrapper that put
all
> my files in a single win32 exe ?
3. Re: Wrapper for Windows
>
> ... everyone must be getting sick of hearing from me about the Allegro
> library I'm wrapping since it isn't even finsiehd!!! .... but here we go
I am new to the list, so I haven't heard before
> It allows files (wav's, midi's, bmps etc) to be combined into one ".dat"
> file that can
> distributed with your application.
basically this sounds like a PAK file. I already can implement those, but
was looking for an EXE wrapper where everything is put in a single EXE.
Actually was up most of the night writing one in RapidQ
4. Re: Wrapper for Windows
> I am makign a game for Windows, and do not want to distribute my graphics
> in separate files, could anybody help me in creating a wrapper that put
all
> my files in a single win32 exe ?
>
I always do this with my games and it's easy to combine all graphics and
sounds used by the game into one executable. If you look in Win32lib there
is (or was in v. 0.45 - I haven't upgraded since) a local procedure called
loadBitmapFromFile2() which can be copied into your program and adapted for
your needs. You will need to write down the lengths of all your graphics
files. Then you need to concatenate them all e.g. (at the DOS prompt)::
copy /b pic1.bmp+pic2.bmp+pic3.bmp myprog.dat
It is then fairly easy to adapt loadBitmapFromFile2() to use offsets (the
lengths you have written down) within the myprog.dat file. If you need help
on this let me know.
You can then concatenate the bound executable and the datafile in the same
way.
e.g. copy /b myprog.exe+myprog.dat myprog.exe
To find where the data starts you need to do something like
integer fn, a, err
fn=open("myprog.exe","rb")
err=seek(fn,-1)
a=where(fn) -- tells you how long your exe file is
err=seek(fn,a-12345) -- e.g. if myprog.dat was 12345 bytes long
You should now be at the beginning of your data.
This won't work with Exotica but if anyone has any suggestions I'd like to
hear them.
chris.
5. Re: Wrapper for Windows
--- White Eagle Software <whiteeagle at WHITEEAGLESOFTWARE.ORG> wrote:
> >
> > ... everyone must be getting sick of hearing from me about the
> Allegro
> > library I'm wrapping since it isn't even finsiehd!!! .... but here
> we go
>
> I am new to the list, so I haven't heard before
>
> > It allows files (wav's, midi's, bmps etc) to be combined into one
> ".dat"
> > file that can
> > distributed with your application.
>
> basically this sounds like a PAK file. I already can implement
> those, but
> was looking for an EXE wrapper where everything is put in a single
> EXE.
>
> Actually was up most of the night writing one in RapidQ
Look for David Cuny's RES library in the Archive, it allows to pack the
files into a .res file and the add it to your .exe file.
Sound that's what you're looking for.
Best Regards,
Red Knight
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