1. RE: Are people interested in 2d games libraries?
Hi Ray,
The first project I started in Euphoria back in June this year (2002)
was yet another clone of the Rick board game. At the time I was looking
for a 2D library. I found a lot of stuff on the 'net, mostly in BASIC
(Visual and otherwise) but nothing in Euphoria.
I managed to translate a few small do-hickies into Euphoria like:
- using hex map coordinates
- managing area (country) colours
- dice rolling
- and card shuffling.
I don't know if these are the types of things you have in mind or if
they would warrant inclusion in your library, but if so let me know. I
can either spruce them up to your specs or hand them over to you as-is.
I never did finish the Risk clone (named c'est la guerre). It turned out
to be far more work than I thought it would be. I was aiming at easy
cross-platform porting (which I more or less worked out) but was brought
up short by the AI stuff. It was pretty daunting.
-Ron T.
Ray Smith wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Since I have been doing a "tiny" amount of work on euAllegro I thought
> I might ask the questions ...
>
> * Are people interested in 2d games libraries?
>
> * If people are interested then what features would they like to see?
>
> * And lastely, does anyone have any wishes for euAllegro?
> (new functions, doco, examples, updated web page! etc)
>
>
> Just interested to see if 2d games are dead yet!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ray Smith
> http://rays-web.com
>
>
2. RE: Are people interested in 2d games libraries?
Hi Ron,
[snip]
>At the time I was looking
> for a 2D library. I found a lot of stuff on the 'net, mostly in BASIC
> (Visual and otherwise) but nothing in Euphoria.
There are a large number of graphics libraries available for Euphoria.
A quick search of the archives lists many, and a quick email to the
list would have returned everyone's favourite.
... my favourite being euAllegro :)
> I managed to translate a few small do-hickies into Euphoria like:
> - using hex map coordinates
> - managing area (country) colours
> - dice rolling
> - and card shuffling.
>
> I don't know if these are the types of things you have in mind
[snip]
I released the first version of euAllegro a couple of years ago and
was just doing an updated to it ... I just asked the question
is anyone interested in 2d libraries to try and drum up some
enthusiasm for myself!
euAllegro is a wrapper for Allegro and a number of associated Allegro
libraries.
Currently euAllegro has support for:
setting screen modes,
loading graphics files,
playing wav, midi, mod and mp3 files,
blitting graphics to the screen (with stretching, rotation etc),
pixel perfect collision detection,
a map editor with playback libraries,
mouse routines,
timer routines,
keyboard routines,
primitive drawing (circles, lines, pixels etc),
text output routines,
mostly LGPL based copyrights (which means commercial use is ok)
So your routines don't really fit in to what I'm trying to achieve
with euAllegro. Thanks for the offer though! :)
> I never did finish the Risk clone (named c'est la guerre). It turned out
>
> to be far more work than I thought it would be. I was aiming at easy
> cross-platform porting (which I more or less worked out) but was brought
>
> up short by the AI stuff. It was pretty daunting.
It is a daunting task to finish even the most simple program to a
point where it can be released to others to use.
As good as all the available Euphoria libraries ... there are still
a reasonably small number of applications being written (or released),
and this is testimoney to the difficulty of writting software in any
langauge ... it just isn't easy ... and it just takes alot of effort
and commitment.
Regards,
Ray Smith
http://rays-web.com
3. RE: Are people interested in 2d games libraries?
Ray Smith wrote:
> There are a large number of graphics libraries available for Euphoria.
> A quick search of the archives lists many, and a quick email to the
> list would have returned everyone's favourite.
> ... my favourite being euAllegro :)
I thought euAllegro was for DOS. I had looked at Allegro a few years
back (in fact, I think I still have the docs around here somewhere). I
wanted to do the Risk clone in win32, so with my assuming and all I
overlooked it. Maybe I'll take another look.
> I released the first version of euAllegro a couple of years ago and
> was just doing an updated to it ... I just asked the question
> is anyone interested in 2d libraries to try and drum up some
> enthusiasm for myself!
Ah! I see. I thought you were starting from scratch.
> So your routines don't really fit in to what I'm trying to achieve
> with euAllegro. Thanks for the offer though! :)
You're very welcome, sir.
> As good as all the available Euphoria libraries ... there are still
> a reasonably small number of applications being written (or released),
> and this is testimoney to the difficulty of writting software in any
> langauge ... it just isn't easy ... and it just takes alot of effort
> and commitment.
Yup, I hear ya. I did finally manage to finish two small apps and sent
them off to Rob over the weekend. I found with Euphoria that it took me
three months of playing around to really understand how the language
worked. Then it took very little time to actually create the apps. Of
course, they're small and there's virtually no error-checking except a
bit in the file I/O routines that was already there when I lifted them
from someone else's code. The biggest hurdle to learning Euphoria for me
was giving up habits I'd cultivated in other languages. Once I stopped
struggling to do things the 'C' way or the Amiga way or the
PHP/Javascript/blah-blah-blah way, it was a lot easier.
-Ron T.
4. RE: Are people interested in 2d games libraries?
Ron Tarrant wrote:
[snip]
> I thought euAllegro was for DOS.
euAllegro is for Win32 only at the moment.
A Linux port should be possible with ease, but:
1. I don't have a Linux box at the moment, and
2. I'm completely incompetent programming Linux anyway :)
All the libraries I use are cross platform so there should
be no reason a re-compile and a little tweak won't get it
to work on Linux.
... famous last words :)
Regards,
Ray Smith
http://rays-web.com
5. RE: Are people interested in 2d games libraries?
Hi Ray,
I tried downloading euAllegro 0.21 and it seems the zip file is either
corrupt or incomplete. It seems to download fine, but the size is wrong.
WinZip pitches a fit and won't open it.
-Ron T.
Ray Smith wrote:
>
> euAllegro is for Win32 only at the moment.
>
> A Linux port should be possible with ease, but:
> 1. I don't have a Linux box at the moment, and
> 2. I'm completely incompetent programming Linux anyway :)
>
> All the libraries I use are cross platform so there should
> be no reason a re-compile and a little tweak won't get it
> to work on Linux.
> ... famous last words :)
>
> Regards,
>
> Ray Smith
> http://rays-web.com
>
>
6. RE: Are people interested in 2d games libraries?
Hi Ray,
I just downloaded euAllegro 0.1x and now I see why I didn't use it. It's
not technically for DOS, but it does use DirectX (which is really just a
way to move the Microsoft window manager out of the way so you can get
to DOS, right?). I have this really funky old video card, an Intense3D
Wildcat with a geometry accelerator, and it doesn't support DirectX. The
Risk clone I was working on did its thing in a win32 window rather than
in a DirectX or DOS display. Since I wanted the larger display anyway
and since 3D and graphics speed wasn't an issue, I was happy.
Anyway, thanks all the same.
-Ron T.
Ray Smith wrote:
>
> Ron Tarrant wrote:
> [snip]
> > I thought euAllegro was for DOS.
>
> euAllegro is for Win32 only at the moment.
>
> A Linux port should be possible with ease, but:
> 1. I don't have a Linux box at the moment, and
> 2. I'm completely incompetent programming Linux anyway :)
>
> All the libraries I use are cross platform so there should
> be no reason a re-compile and a little tweak won't get it
> to work on Linux.
> ... famous last words :)
>
> Regards,
>
> Ray Smith
> http://rays-web.com
>
>
7. RE: Are people interested in 2d games libraries?
Ron Tarrant wrote:
[snip]
It's
> not technically for DOS, but it does use DirectX (which is really just a
>
> way to move the Microsoft window manager out of the way so you can get
> to DOS, right?).
Not really, it does hide all the "Windows" stuff but DirectX supplies
a way for "modern" video hardware to be used using a single set of
API's. (The same way OpenGL does).
If it wasn't for technologies like DirectX and OpenGL it would be
almost impossible for software developers to take advantage of modern
video hardware.
With an older Video Card DirectX and OpenGL just render graphics using
CPU processing so doesn't give you any advantage.
If you intend for other people to play your games, then you should
seriously consider using DirectX (or other modern technologies) as DOS
apps (especially games that access video memory directly) rarely work
on modern operating systems (WindowsNT, Windows2000 and I assume
WindowsXP). If you only want to use it yourself then go ahead,
if you want others to use it, then beware that a very large percentage
won't be able to if you use DOS technologies.
What are you computer specs?
I run invaders (an action euAllegro game) on a P120 with 1MB graphics
card reasonably well. Any sort of board game with minimal animation
should work easily with euAllegro.
Ray Smith
http://rays-web.com
8. RE: Are people interested in 2d games libraries?
Hi Ron,
I just downloaded it now and it works ok for me.
I think my web host has been having troubles over the last 2 days.
I got a few 404's when I thought I shouldn't have.
You might want to try again or if you want I can email you a copy
(it's about 2MB!!).
Let me know if you want it emailed.
Regards,
Ray Smith
Ron Tarrant wrote:
> Hi Ray,
>
> I tried downloading euAllegro 0.21 and it seems the zip file is either
> corrupt or incomplete. It seems to download fine, but the size is wrong.
>
> WinZip pitches a fit and won't open it.
>
> -Ron T.
>
>
> Ray Smith wrote:
> >
> > euAllegro is for Win32 only at the moment.
> >
> > A Linux port should be possible with ease, but:
> > 1. I don't have a Linux box at the moment, and
> > 2. I'm completely incompetent programming Linux anyway :)
> >
> > All the libraries I use are cross platform so there should
> > be no reason a re-compile and a little tweak won't get it
> > to work on Linux.
> > ... famous last words :)
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Ray Smith
> > http://rays-web.com
> >
> >
Ray Smith
http://rays-web.com
9. RE: Are people interested in 2d games libraries?
Ray Smith wrote:
>
> Not really, it does hide all the "Windows" stuff but DirectX supplies
> a way for "modern" video hardware to be used using a single set of
> API's. (The same way OpenGL does).
Yes, that's part of it now, but when DirectX was first introduced, it
was because every game-player who upgraded from Windows 3.1 to Windows
95 was complaining that their DOS games crashed or didn't work or
whatever under Windows 95. So the 'direct' part of DirectX was developed
to get Windows out of the way and give developers a method for accessing
hardware directly without Windows getting all finiky. The unified API
came later.
> If you intend for other people to play your games, then you should
> seriously consider using DirectX (or other modern technologies) as DOS
> apps (especially games that access video memory directly) rarely work
> on modern operating systems (WindowsNT, Windows2000 and I assume
> WindowsXP).
Maybe I didn't say it very clearly in my last message. I'm not
programming in DOS, I'm using Windows. Also, there are no speed issues
involved with the graphics, hence, the standard Win32/Win32Lib API is
more than adequate. There is no need to bang on the hardware unless
you're moving massive amounts of data in and out of the video buffers,
and I'm not. In a Risk game, a country changes colour once in a while,
the mouse pointer moves around and the dice change. That's pretty much
it unless the programmer puts in a bunch of bells and whistles. I
didn't. Even if I decide to sometime down the road, as long as I'm not
animating more than a 160x110 area of the screen, I still won't need a
heavy-duty graphics engine.
Also, an 1152x864, 90-dpi, 24m+ colour display is advantageous for a
highly-detailed map. Which I do have. Both are available using the
standard windows API and are relatively simple to deal with code-wise.
> What are you computer specs?
IBM Intellistation MPro (Dual PII's, 512mb) with an Intense3D Wildcat
(16mb display, 64mb texture) video card with an add-on geometry
accelerator. It's a pair of full-length cards with their own build-in
cooling fan, still considered a high-performance card even today. Here
are the 2D specs:
Vectors, 10-pixel, solid-color (vec/sec) 7.8 M
Anti-aliased vectors, 10-pixel (vec/sec) 3.7 M
Blit, screen-to-screen (pixels/sec) 118 M
Area clears (pixels/sec) 5.2 G
Solid fills (pixels/sec) 310 M
Text, 9x13 (chars/sec) 1,671 K
In it's day, it was a $10,000 card. I was lucky to have it thrown in
with the system when I bought it.
> I run invaders (an action euAllegro game) on a P120 with 1MB graphics
> card reasonably well. Any sort of board game with minimal animation
> should work easily with euAllegro.
Yup, I'm sure they would. All I'm saying is that if I don't need to
access a DOS-type display and don't need fast graphics, there's no need
to complicate my life. I do need a high-resolution map (most Risk clones
use a 640x480 map and I wanted to do something bigger) so there's no
reason to put another API in the middle of things. I'm still trying to
understand the intricacies of Win32 having only coded the Amiga GUI in
my previous incarnation.
As for others playing my game, if I ever do get around to finishing it
and releasing it, anyone with a video card capable of 1152x864 and 16
million colours will be able to play it without any problem as long as
they have one of those modern video cards you were mentioning.
I'm sure your library is great and I'm still going to check it out. I
just don't need it for this particular project. Now that you've got the
download sorted out, I'll be going back to try again.
Thanks, Ray.
-Ron T.
10. RE: Are people interested in 2d games libraries?
Ray Smith wrote:
> I just downloaded it now and it works ok for me.
>
> I think my web host has been having troubles over the last 2 days.
> I got a few 404's when I thought I shouldn't have.
>
> You might want to try again or if you want I can email you a copy
> (it's about 2MB!!).
> Let me know if you want it emailed.
I successfully downloaded the file, but there was a problem reported in
the CRC checksum for one of the files in the zip. You may want to check
it out. It might be a worm/virus attaching itself or just a foobared
include. Here is the WinZip report:
Extracting to "G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\"
Use Path: yes Overlay Files: no
Extracting remove.bat
Extracting alleg40.dll
Extracting almp3.dll
Extracting euAlleg40.dll
Extracting euJGMOD40.dll
Extracting euMappy40.dll
Extracting euPPCol40.dll
creating: G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\docs\BaseLibs\
Extracting PPCOL.txt
Extracting jgmod.txt
Extracting mappy.txt
Extracting allegro.txt
Extracting ALMP3.txt
Extracting COPYING.txt
Extracting euJGMod.txt
Extracting euALMP3.txt
Extracting euAllegro.txt
Extracting euMappy.txt
Extracting euPPCol.txt
creating: G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\examples\allegro\
Extracting eusprite.exw
Extracting eumem.exw
Extracting eubitmap.exw
Extracting eumidi.exw
Extracting euscale.exw
Extracting eupal.exw
Extracting eusample.exw
Extracting eublend.exw
Extracting eu3buf.exw
Extracting eumouse.exw
Extracting eudata.exw
Extracting eupat.exw
Extracting allegro.pcx
Extracting mysha.pcx
Extracting running.dat
Extracting example.dat
Extracting eumisc.e
Extracting eurunning.ew
Extracting euexample.ew
Extracting test.mid
Extracting sound1.wav
Extracting eudbuf.exw
Extracting euhello.exw
Extracting eutimer.exw
Extracting eutruec.exw
Extracting Marty.bmp
Extracting eu24bitpic.exw
creating: G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\examples\almp3\
Extracting example.exw
Extracting example.mp3
Extracting easy_example.exw
creating: G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\examples\jgmod\
Extracting yea.dat
Extracting jgmod_ex7.exw
Extracting jgmod_ex1.exw
Extracting jgmod_ex2.exw
Extracting jgmod_ex3.exw
Extracting jgmod_ex4.exw
Extracting jgmod_ex5.exw
Extracting jgmod_ex6.exw
Extracting jgmod_player.exw
Extracting introgho.mod
Extracting slash.wav
creating: G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\examples\tests\
Extracting test.exw
Extracting test2.exw
Extracting tst_fxd.exw
Extracting tst_key.exw
Extracting test1.exw
Extracting tst_gen.exw
creating: G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\examples\WIP\
Extracting eukeys.exw
Extracting mpy_demo2w.exw
creating: G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\examples\mappy\
Extracting TEST.FMP
bad CRC f42decbc (should be 0cff9510)
Warning: the size of the extracted file (46615) does not match the
uncompressed size (45852) recorded in the zip file
Extracting demo1.exw
Extracting euallegro.ew
Extracting euAlmp3.ew
Extracting euJGMOD.ew
Extracting euMappy.ew
Extracting euPPCol.ew
Extracting wrapper.ew
creating: G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\tools\mapwin\
Extracting MAPWIN.INI
Extracting mapwin.exe
Extracting MAPWIN.HTM
creating: G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\tools\mapwin\MAPS\
Extracting TEST.FMP
Extracting FM2L1.FMP
Extracting FUTURE.FMP
Extracting HEXTST.FMP
Extracting Isotst.fmp
Extracting FATALM.FMP
Extracting PROJA.FMP
Extracting Hextst2.fmp
Extracting newiso.bmp
Extracting ISO_LR.FMP
Extracting dat.exe
Extracting colormap.exe
Extracting dat2s.exe
Extracting grabber.exe
Extracting FIXPAL.EXE
Extracting FIXPAL.TXT
Extracting exedat.exe
Extracting grabber.txt
Extracting pat2dat.exe
Extracting pack.exe
Extracting rgbmap.exe
Extracting test.exe
Extracting textconv.exe
Extracting install.bat
Extracting readme.txt
creating: G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\c\mappy\
Extracting euMappy.c
Extracting dllinit.c
Extracting mappyal.h
Extracting mappyal.c
Extracting make.bat
Extracting dllinit.o
Extracting mappyal.o
Extracting euMappy40.dll
creating: G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\c\ppcol\
Extracting ppcol_test.exw
Extracting asteroid.bmp
Extracting spaceship.bmp
Extracting PPCOL.C
Extracting PPCOL.H
Extracting dllinit.c
Extracting clean.bat
Extracting PPMAMOUN.C
Extracting PPAMOUNT.C
Extracting euPPCol.c
Extracting PPMASKC.C
Extracting make.bat
Extracting dllinit.o
Extracting ppmamoun.o
Extracting ppcol.o
Extracting ppamount.o
Extracting ppmaskc.o
Extracting euPPCol40.dll
creating: G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\c\allegro\
Extracting dllinit.c
Extracting clean.bat
Extracting dllinit.o
Extracting euAlleg40.dll
Extracting euallegro.c
Extracting make.bat
creating: G:\programming\euphoria\add-ons\euallegro21\c\JGMOD\
Extracting euJGMOD.c
Extracting dllinit.c
Extracting euJGMOD40.dll
Extracting make.bat
-Ron T.
11. RE: Are people interested in 2d games libraries?
>If you intend for other people to play your games, then you should
>seriously consider using DirectX (or other modern technologies) as DOS
>apps (especially games that access video memory directly) rarely work
>on modern operating systems (WindowsNT, Windows2000 and I assume
>WindowsXP).
Actually, VGA modes (like 320x200, 256x256 and probably planar 320x240)
works just fine in recent MS OS:s (well, in Win2k anyway, haven't tried XP).
Programs using VESA modes won't run though. But if you can live with low-res
and only 256 colors then by all means... :) Of course, there are other
reasons to go for a Windows-based game. Like if you're going to have
music/sound-fx.
