1. OidZone and Crash Course update
- Posted by Michael Packard <lgp at EXO.COM> Dec 27, 1996
- 1887 views
Hi. Sorry you haven't heard much from me in the last couple of months. I've been helping out at my sisters company full time (50-60 hrs a week) and consequently, haven't had enough oomph left in me to keep up the rigorous writing schedule. My time with them is over, and I'm gearing up for the new year. I'm knee deep building my new production facility, which should be completed by Jan 1. Starting then, I will be back in the OidZone and will be producing the next series of Crash Course lessons. I hope to get back to one per week on those before too long. The new Studio will be cool. We'll be able to do Digital Video AND Audio (cd-quality, 3D sound), as well as the CGI stuff I normally do, along with the game production. I will also be able to keep my web site updated weekly or better. I will be doing more Euphoria trailblazing too, I intend to put up at least one interesting thing for you to play with per week. Up till now my office space was so crowded, I had to put my keyboard up on my monitor to have enough room to write a check! Now I can spread out a little and can do my work without having to jury-rig all the hardware EVERY time I need to do something. I'm planning to have 5 games released in the first quarter of 1997, mostly arcade games using the OidZone Sprite Engine, then later we'll move into cd-rom game production in house. We'll have special Programmer's lessons for each game for a nominal fee. ($40 for the first game pack (design spec, theory, line by line explaination of every routine), then $20 for each additional programmer game pack you get) Things are looking bright. At least I have a busy production schedule starting Jan 1. BTW if anyone can give me a more accurate way of determining elapsed time in Euphoria (I need at least .01 second accuracy) I can make OZ run faster on slower machines. (by dynamically changing the object speeds as the frame rate changes) No brainer solutions are preferable. (like make an include file that does all it needs to and one Euphoria statement for me to call to make it work. =) Michael Packard Lord Generic Productions lgp at exo.com http://exo.com/~lgp A Crash Course in Game Design and Production http://exo.com/~lgp/euphoria
2. Re: OidZone and Crash Course update
- Posted by Robert Craig <72614.1667 at COMPUSERVE.COM> Dec 28, 1996
- 1903 views
Michael Packard writes: > BTW if anyone can give me a more accurate way of determining elapsed time > in Euphoria (I need at least .01 second accuracy) I can make OZ run faster > on slower machines. (by dynamically changing the object speeds as the The tick_rate(x) library routine has already been implemented for Euphoria v1.5 for DOS. It lets you increase the DOS clock tick rate from 18.2/sec to whatever you like, within reason. On a 486, tick_rate(100), i.e. 100 ticks per second is no problem. On a fast Pentium, 1000 ticks per second is ok. The Euphoria time() routine will then advance in smaller, more precise units. I found that Peter Blue's Space Invaders game can be made to run much faster when tick_rate is set higher and the main loop is timed at something less than 1/18 second. Actually, on a Pentium-150 Space Invaders spends over 90% of it's time in a while-loop, waiting for the 1/18 sec clock to advance. Of course none of this does you any good until I release it. So I'm going to put a kind of "experimental" alpha release of v1.5 on the Euphoria WEB page early next week. I might only ZIP the necessary files, ex.exe, machine.e and maybe a couple more. In addition to tick_rate() you'll also get the new "with profile_time" feature that lets you do time profiling of your code. Some more features are in the works but you won't see them yet. Since it's now obvious that a new release is coming fairly soon (a few months away), effective today, any new person who registers for the current shipping release (v1.4b) will be allowed a free download from the WEB of the Euphoria Complete Edition v1.5 for DOS when it's finalized. Some people have asked about the upcoming Windows (WIN32) version. It's not meant to supercede the DOS version. It will run using the the WIN32 API (Application Programmers Interface) that is supported by Windows 95 and Windows NT. It will not require DOS or any DOS extender. It will initially be rather primitive. It will let you call 32-bit C routines in .DLL files, in particular you will be able to call WIN32 API routines (which exist in .DLL files on every Windows 95 or NT machine). For example, in the WIN32 API, one of the over 1000 C subroutines is called PlaySound(). PlaySound() will play a .WAV sound file with various useful options. You'll be able to call this routine from your Euphoria program. (.WAV can be done now in the DOS version too, thanks to Jacques efforts). There are lots of other useful routines like that. The details of all this will be worked out over time as the product evolves. The DOS version will remain the "main" version of Euphoria for the forseeable future and will continue to be enhanced. Currently the 2 versions share most of their code. The core language and most of the library routines are the same. The Windows version can currently execute any plain text-mode Euphoria program (such as ed.ex, search.ex, lw.ex) in a "console" text window, exactly emulating the DOS version. You can run these programs from the command-line just as with the DOS version. This was a useful first step to prove that all the DOS-dependencies in Euphoria could be isolated and emulated where-possible using WIN32 calls. Pixel graphics, Windows GUI support, and more will be added in the future. -- Rob Craig Rapid Deployment Software
3. Re: OidZone and Crash Course update
- Posted by Robert Craig <72614.1667 at COMPUSERVE.COM> Dec 28, 1996
- 1904 views
- Last edited Dec 29, 1996
Michael Packard writes: > great, will I be able to bind the alpha 1.5 stuff with OidZone, since it > is scheduled for release jan 15? What will be the tick resolution on a > 486-33? I need to speed oz up on those systems at least. I think 1/100 > would be optimal, but anything is better than 1/20. Sure, you can bind with alpha 1.5. It should be pretty stable. I just tried Peter Blue's Space Invaders at 5000 ticks/sec on a 486 DX-50, and things ran fine under DOS 6.2 or Win 3.1. Then I changed it to 50000/sec and the program ran correctly, but at an *extremely* slow speed. On a Pentium-150 running in a Windows 95 MS-DOS window a warning popped up from the operating system when I tried 1200/sec. The warning box suggested that this program would run better from the "pure MS-DOS" mode and offered to make a special desktop icon for me, although I hadn't noticed any performance problems. When I clicked "No", it let the program go ahead at 1200/sec, and didn't bother me anymore while I was using that MS-DOS window -- even when I cranked it up to 5000/sec. At 5000 the performance was kind of sluggish. At 1000/sec I've never seen this warning and the performance is fine. So the short answer is: 100/sec on a 486, and presumably even a 386, should be just fine. Regards, Rob Craig Rapid Deployment Software
4. Re: OidZone and Crash Course update
- Posted by Bob Paddock <bpaddock at EXECPC.COM> Dec 29, 1996
- 1884 views
>I just tried Peter Blue's Space Invaders at 5000 ticks/sec on a 486 DX-50, >and things ran fine under DOS 6.2 or Win 3.1. >Then I changed it to 50000/sec and the program ran correctly, but at an >*extremely* slow speed. Some thing to do with sign extension after 32767? -- For information on any of the following check out my WEB site at: //www.execpc.com/~bpaddock/ or http://www.usachoice.net/bpaddock Chemical Free Air Conditioning/No CFC's, Chronic Pain Relief, Electromedicine, Electronics, Explore!, Free Energy, Full Disclosure, KeelyNet, Matric Limited, Neurophone, Oil City PA, Philadelphia Experiment. :
5. Re: OidZone and Crash Course update
- Posted by Robert Craig <72614.1667 at COMPUSERVE.COM> Dec 29, 1996
- 1871 views
- Last edited Dec 30, 1996
Michael Packard writes: > cool. When will it be available? I expect to upload v1.5 alpha-1 Public Domain Edition to the Official Euphoria page sometime on Tuesday. It will have the tick_rate() and "with profile_time" features, plus a couple of minor performance improvements. More features are planned for later alpha/beta releases. Regards, Rob Craig Rapid Deployment Software
6. Re: OidZone and Crash Course update
- Posted by Vojtech Jakes <slayer at BBS.INFIMA.CZ> Dec 30, 1996
- 1903 views
- Last edited Dec 31, 1996
BP>---------------------- Information from the mail header -------------------- BP>Sender: Euphoria Programming for MS-DOS <EUPHORIA at MIAMIU.ACS.MUOHIO.ED BP>Poster: Bob Paddock <bpaddock at EXECPC.COM> BP>Subject: Re: OidZone and Crash Course update BP>---------------------------------------------------------------------------- BP>>I just tried Peter Blue's Space Invaders at 5000 ticks/sec on a 486 DX-50, BP>>and things ran fine under DOS 6.2 or Win 3.1. BP>>Then I changed it to 50000/sec and the program ran correctly, but at an BP>>*extremely* slow speed. BP>Some thing to do with sign extension after 32767? if the timer routine takes in signed argument values, then yes, it could be. If you cast from unsigned int (0-65535) to a signed int (-32768 --32767) the values higher than 32767 will not correspond (the first bit of the number either means a sign or 32768) That is why 50000 turns into -17232.