From: Shawn Hargreaves Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: Allegro question about dat files and memory Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 14:03:27 +0100 Organization: None Distribution: world Message-ID: References: <5oipt6$hb2$1 AT diana DOT ibernet DOT es> NNTP-Posting-Host: talula.demon.co.uk MIME-Version: 1.0 Lines: 18 To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Precedence: bulk Gregorio Hankiewicz writes: >The question is : is it better to load the whole dat file into memory or >create bitmaps and load the data from the dat file into them? >The dat file is compressed, but when you load it, you store it >uncompressed, right? load_datafile() returns all the objects in a ready-to-use format, so there is no need to do any conversions of your own or to make copies of the data. The only reason why you might want to load only some parts of a datafile (by calling load_datafile_object()) is to save memory, for example if you had a game with multiple levels and wanted to store all the graphics in one datafile but only load the images required for the current stage... -- Shawn Hargreaves - shawn AT talula DOT demon DOT co DOT uk - http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/ Beauty is a French phonetic corruption of a short cloth neck ornament.