Message-ID: <37CF7CC4.8BC81E8F@cimo.it>
Date: Fri, 03 Sep 1999 09:46:12 +0200
From: nightwalker <nightwalker AT cimo DOT it>
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To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: ALLEGRO RLE_SPRITE direct initialization
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

Subject: 1 ALLEGRO RLE_SPRITE direct initialization
Subject: 2 Triple buffering vs. double buffering

I'm working on a real-time strategy wargame.
I want to make it working at 800x600x32bit color, double or triple
paging
(they seems the most reliable methods).
I use lots of images (units' frames) with the same size (48x48) and
color
depth (32bit), so I would store them in a different file format than a
DAT
containing PCX or BMP.
I found the draw_rle_sprite function almost perfect to draw them (each
unit's
frame has a SubFrame for each angle, so i don't need any rotation
effect).
How can I initialize the RLE_SPRITE.dat pointers on my own?
Wich is the .dat format draw_rle_sprite requests?
Is possible a run-time conversion from 32 bit color to 24, 16 and 8 bit
depth?
(ie: what can I do in order to make these sprites working on a 256 color

device?)

About video buffering: I cannot see the advantages of triple buffering
vs. double buffering. I tryed the Allegro ex20 on triple buffering with
retrace sync, and I modifyed it to make it use 2 pages instead of 3, and
I
encountered no differencies.
While a page is being drew up, and the other is displayed, what is the
use of
the third?
Which is the difference between double buffering and page flipping?

Thanx for the help and sorry for the bad english!
     Francesco Orsenigo <nightwalker AT cimo DOT it>