Subject: Re: Bugs etc, and some display questions
From: Martin Kift <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 1994 13:58:15 GMT0BST

> oh god here we go again, another bloody rom, is that the one in CD32, we 
> have had no problems with cd32 ports of Blitz games so far, perhaps 
> bigger vwaits between closing files and entering Blitz mode is required?

No, I don't think the CD32 has 3.1 (I think it has 3.0 with cd 
extensions). Only the a4000T has 3.1, although kick3.1/wb3.1 has just 
been released, which is why I'm getting these reports. Bloody 
annoying I know, in a way, the amiga is getting almost as bad as the 
pc in terms of compatibilty.

> > 2. I cannot find away to force open a pal screen screen when using 
> > slices, which is important when running on an ntsc system. Eventually 
> > I'd like to open a proper ntsc screen and support it properly, but in 
> > the meantime, I'd like to open a pal screen.
> 
> This is very tricky if you want to support workbench startup ie 1942 
> style monitors and take over the system type startups, the switch lib 
> looks at a location in graphics library to work out NTSC/PAL and hits 
> slices accordingly, can you not start your program by using an 
> openscreentags with some sort of pal config, hmm probably not, tell you 
> what I'll go and fix this problem instead of waffling on...

Currently, I'm only interested in opening pal or ntsc low res (15khz) 
screens for my game. As I said, I would love a way of specifying PAL 
screens in the slice command, although this would only work on all 
machines if a PAL screen is possible (some old NTSC machines don't 
support this, but I'm not too bothered with that).

Actually, I intend to switch over to using the Display library 
(especially since I hear you used it for SkidMarks), since I remember 
reading that it supports aga and ecs. Will it will possible to 
specify PAL screens in the new display library too, that would be 
excellent!

> At present you have to change them in the palette using agapalrgb and 
> then do a DisplayPalette

Okay, although is it true that you can only use agapalrgb in amiga 
mode. I assume palrgb will also work fine. Any chance of a display
rgb command in future?

> No, coplists do not take up very much memory at all. the great thing 
> about having them all allocated at the top of your program is that memory 
> is not fragmented, in skid for example we had all sorts of bitmaps 
> openning and closing, if you go and allocate a small piece of memory 
> anywhere between these calls you suddenly find you have not got enough 
> continuous memory for the big bitmap... hmmm, again sorry about the waffle...

Ah excellent! And you can waffle all you like, I'm finding it very 
interesting 8), since the display docs are somewhat brief at the 
moment.

Just one more question, if switching displays, say moving from a 
display based on coplists 0 and 1, to a display based on 2 and 3 (or 
whatever), do I just call CreateDisplay over and over again when 
switching. i.e. is there no need to close down the previous display 
before creating a new one? (I assume not).

> > P.S. Any release dates available for BUM7? Any chances of fixes for 
> > the debugger (have you considered the possiblity of remote debugging, 
> > that would be beautiful!!), the sound/caches problem. Thanks.
> I'm aiming at Saturday

Great. 8) Any ideas on the UK release date (we tend to lag behind 
sometimes)

+---------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
| Martin Kift                     |   Software developer (C/C++/OWL/MFC)  |
| Email: [email-masked]   |   Procede Software Ltd., UK.          |
+---------------------------------+---------------------------------------+