1. New User Needs Guidance

I recently downloaded Euphoria 1.4 and have been looking over it. Kudos
to the developers. It really is very fast and the language itself looks
both elegant and easy to learn. I have some questions that aren't answered
in the docs that were in the file and was wondering if someone can point
me to a location where I can find these (or send the answers).

First, I'm primarily interested in Euphoria to help do some quick
prototyping for some game code I originally planned to write in C++
but I think I can get up and running in Euphoria faster and if it
turns out to be too slow for production level I can at least proto
the software in Euphoria then convert it to Visual C when I get all
the bugs worked out of my processes.

Questions...

1. Is there a way to do a transparent color in sprites/bitmaps so that
   they don't overwrite the background video they're being placed on
   top of? In basic and c sub's I've seen XON pasting with transparent
   color codes as a way around this problem.

2. Is there any internal coding for sprite collission detection or does
   this all have to be hand coded?

3. I see some code for adding sound blaster support but haven't seen
   any demos that allow for background music or simultaneous sound
   generation while the program does other things (screen updates, move
   sprites etc.) Is there anything out there to show this? The same goes
   for MIDI files or MODs in the background.

4. Since it uses calls in a similar way, wouldn't it be a simple
   translation to port binary machine language strings from QB or
   QBasic to Euphoria by simply porting the data strings without
   modifying any of the values?

5. I need some good sample code to help me decide if Euphoria is going
   to have the speed/capabilities to do what I want. The samples in
   the package are good and show off a lot of the language's capabilities
   but I'd like to see something a bit more complicated like games, larger
   menuing programs etc. Where can I find code like this? I've checked the
   suggested Lord Generic page but everytime I try to retreive code the
   web site gives me an "page unfound" error. Are these files archived
   somewhere else?

6. I got the available assignments for the game project that was being
   worked on but they only go up to week 3 on the above site. Have these
   been picked up anywhere else or does anybody know when the project
   will start up again?

Sorry about all the questions. I'm very new to Euphoria and hope this
is an active list. I'd like to learn more about the languge and see what
I can do with it.

Thanks,
Chuck

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2. Re: New User Needs Guidance

> 1. Is there a way to do a transparent color in sprites/bitmaps so that
>    they don't overwrite the background video they're being placed on
>    top of? In basic and c sub's I've seen XON pasting with transparent
>    color codes as a way around this problem.
>
> 2. Is there any internal coding for sprite collission detection or does
>    this all have to be hand coded?

i'd do all my sprites by hand...  paste them on pixel by pixel which
would allow you to do transparency (check to see if pixel is
transparent)...  if you're doing your game in graphics mode 19 (13h),
i suggest setting up your own library for faster pixel and get_pixel
routines:

global procedure pixel(sequence p,object c)
-- p[1] is the x co-ord, [2] is the y
-- c is the colour (or string of colours if you're drawing a
-- horizontal line)
  poke(#A0000 + 320 * p[2] + p[1],c)
end procedure

global function get_pixel(sequence p,integer l)
-- p is the co-ordinates
-- l is the number of pixels to read in (in a horizontal line)
  return peek({#A0000 + 320 * p[2] + p[1],l})
end function

> 3. I see some code for adding sound blaster support but haven't seen
>    any demos that allow for background music or simultaneous sound
>    generation while the program does other things (screen updates, move
>    sprites etc.) Is there anything out there to show this? The same goes
>    for MIDI files or MODs in the background.

that's cos jacques' libraries don't have support for isr (interrupt
service routine) which would allow for a lot better background
playing...  i'm trying to work on a library right now for sb16 use...
just need to try to figure out how to work all this dma stuff :\

> 5. I need some good sample code to help me decide if Euphoria is going
>    to have the speed/capabilities to do what I want. The samples in
>    the package are good and show off a lot of the language's capabilities
>    but I'd like to see something a bit more complicated like games, larger
>    menuing programs etc. Where can I find code like this? I've checked the
>    suggested Lord Generic page but everytime I try to retreive code the
>    web site gives me an "page unfound" error. Are these files archived
>    somewhere else?

well i'm afraid i can't offer you anything right now...  i'm working
on a tracker right now (to write MODs and similar formats) which is
why i'm working on the sb16 library...  i'll tell you when i'm done
:D

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3. Re: New User Needs Guidance

Wouldn't ya know it, the DAY I remove all those old demos et al, someone
needs them.  D'oh!  I was planning on putting up some new demos (which I
haven't written yet) and I needed the space for the latest OidZone beta...

I'll put them back up I guess...

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

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4. Re: New User Needs Guidance

On Sun, 5 Jan 1997, mike burrell wrote:

> i'd do all my sprites by hand...  paste them on pixel by pixel which
> would allow you to do transparency (check to see if pixel is
> transparent)...  if you're doing your game in graphics mode 19 (13h),
> i suggest setting up your own library for faster pixel and get_pixel
> routines:

I do something similar, but I write all my sprites to a virtual screen
then do display_image on the rectangular regions that have been changed,
It's MUCH quicker, and you don't have sprite flashes when sprites overlap.

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

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