Gfxlib news

[Z!re]

Yup, the progress lately has got me thinking of moving back to the standard commands from SDL...

I'm wating for the speedtests



Btw, does gfxlib use any hardware acceleration?, other than MMX

[lillo]

Z!re: no, apart from MMX gfxlib uses no hw acceleration, it's a software renderer. Basically it's perfectly suited for old-style 2d games; if you want tons of translucent effects or you need 3d, you'd better stick to OpenGL.

Ok, I've done some benchmarks testing gfxlib currently in CVS against Allegro, SDL and TinyPTC. To be fair, I used 32bpp mode in all cases, as TinyPTC supports that mode only. Also, all tests are run in windowed mode.
As benchmark I've used a modified version of the TinyPTC test program, which counts the pixels per second; yes I know that is a rough way to test raw speed power, but it works. I'm not an expert in TinyPTC or SDL, so maybe my inner loops for their specific test sources could be optimized further, please let me know if you know how.

Here is the zip holding the benchmark, both source and EXE for each test:
http://www.ecplusplus.com/benchmark.zip

You obviously need complete latest FB CVS tree snapshots in order to compile.

And now, here are the average results on my computer (Athlon-64 3000, WinXP, Radeon 9800 Pro, DirectX 9.0c):

Code:

Allegro: 78009141 pixels per second
TinyPTC: 54623044 pixels per second
SDL:     56491357 pixels per second
Gfxlib:  76228287 pixels per second

As you can see, gfxlib comes second only to Allegro, and by not much 8)

[Antoni Gual]

Antoni Gual: I'm not a Win32 expert, but maybe if I add a way to pass an user-defined wndproc to be called for messages not already handled by the built-in message loop, this could be done. Or am I missing something?

Sorry, I'm no Win32 expert either..

[KiZ]

Great work, Lillo, I love the library. It has really made FB for me.

[steven_basic]

** wipes drool from chin **

Speed, pointer/buffer enhancement, and BMP handling?

...makes me want to delve into the CVS...

...if I have time between now and whenever 0.12 is "officially" released...

[lillo]

VonGodric: ok, I've written this small snippet that defines a new GfxPrint function that allows to print transparent text at any location on the screen, supports clipping (since it uses LINE) and can also write text to any GET/PUT buffer. It uses internal gfxlib fonts data, so no external fonts are required.
This snippet has also been just added to the new Appendix F (Hints) of the gfxlib docs, in CVS...

Code:

DECLARE SUB GfxPrint( BYREF text AS STRING, BYVAL x AS INTEGER, BYVAL y AS INTEGER, BYVAL col AS INTEGER, BYVAL buffer AS ANY PTR = 0 )

TYPE fb_FontType
    h AS INTEGER
    data AS UBYTE PTR
END TYPE

' Uncomment the font you want to use
EXTERN fb_FontData ALIAS "fb_font_8x8" AS fb_FontType
'EXTERN fb_FontData ALIAS "fb_font_8x14" AS fb_FontType
'EXTERN fb_FontData ALIAS "fb_font_8x16" AS fb_FontType

SUB GfxPrint( BYREF text AS STRING, BYVAL x AS INTEGER, BYVAL y AS INTEGER, BYVAL col AS INTEGER, BYVAL buffer AS ANY PTR = 0 )
    DIM row AS INTEGER, i AS INTEGER
    DIM bits AS UBYTE PTR
    
    FOR i = 1 TO LEN(text)
        bits = fb_FontData.data + (ASC(MID$(text, i, 1)) * fb_FontData.h)
        FOR row = 0 TO fb_FontData.h-1
            IF (buffer) THEN
                LINE buffer, (x + 7, y + row)-(x, y + row), col,, *bits
            ELSE
                LINE (x + 7, y + row)-(x, y + row), col,, *bits
            END IF
            bits += 1
        NEXT row
        x += 8
    NEXT i
END SUB


SCREEN 13
GfxPrint "Hello world!", 112, 96, 15
SLEEP

[dumbledore]

how come gfxlib looks blurry on my computer? i though maybe it was just my lcd monitor, but i took a screenshot and the pixels are being smoothed (in windowed mode only). i checked the size of the window and it's 2 pixels too high and wide. has this been fixed?

here's a pic showing the screenshot:
http://www.geocities.com/dumbledore3/yo.bmp

[BastetFurry]

So, your benchmark convinced me, the last thing that still holds me back, what licence do you use?
Can i programm closed source commercial with you libary?
I want to make my Breakout Clone into a full fledged small shareware game, i need to somehow finance the inspection of my motorcycle (Suzuki Burgmann 125, if someone asks)

[Sterling Christensen]

how come gfxlib looks blurry on my computer? [...] has this been fixed?

Yep, here's where lillo posted a CVS build that fixes it:
http://forum.qbasicnews.com/viewtopic.php?t=8198

[BastetFurry]

here's a pic showing the screenshot:
http://www.geocities.com/dumbledore3/yo.bmp

Next time please use http://qh2.qbtk.com/ , ok?
I hate it when i klick on a geocities link and get a "bandwith exeded" message.