GapiDraw 1.1 : October 25

[Johan]

[Kzinti]

[Johan]

Hi Thierry,

There are some new devices coming that will be using neomagic accelerators. They will have a large framebuffer with full flip support, and will use Windows CE.NET as their operating system. As of yet it is unclear how the exact SDK will look like, but the driver will be able to access surface data from video memory. I don't think I am in the position to reveal more information on them, but the release date is set to soon (3-4 months). As always, this might change...

It is my personal opinion that today's Pocket PC platform never will receive any "real" hardware-acceleration (real sdk and large frame buffer), especially with all the cool CE.NET devices being released soon... It seems that Pocket PC people are more interested in 128mb RAM, built-in GPRS and finger-print recognizers. But that could change I guess...

Gratz on the .60 release by the way! I am kind of fortunate to be able to work on GapiDraw during work hours (sometimes), otherwise I would have had to cut down on development time considerably. Impressive work considering the short timespan between releases!

[Kzinti]

Thanks for your quick reply Johan. As always, you are really helpful!

[ppcStudios]

Will you maintain backwards compatability with 1.04 in this new release?

-- GR

[Johan]

I am not sure yet. I will post a suggestion next week and see what the response is like...

Changes have to be made to CreateSurface(), OpenDisplay(), and GetSurfaceOptions(). CreateSurface will be modified so that all operations take a flag parameter (to choose where the surface should be stored - in video or memory). OpenDisplay will be changed to support custom resolutions and refresh rates. GetSurfaceOptions will be renamed to GetSurfaceFlags.

While this may sound bad (especially changing CreateSurface) - this will only affect the CreateSurface calls when loading an image from memory or file. The old CreateSurface(dwFlags, width, height) will still be left intact. Moving a project from 1.04 to 1.1 should take less than 5 minutes (compile, go through each line were the compiler gives an error and add an empty flag parameter).

I'll post more details next week.

[ppcStudios]

Updating my code from 1.04 to 1.1 isn't much of a concern to me. My concern is the user having a pre-existing 1.04 based application out there and then having a new application install the 1.1 version dll over top of the 1.04 version dll. I just want to make sure that this situation won't 'break' the 1.04 application.

--GR

[Johan]

Aha.. Well, the current DLL is named "gd104.dll". The new DLL will be named "gd110.dll".

[ppcStudios]

[warmi]

As far as CreateSurface I think introducing default argument (defaulting to the current approach - memory storage) would solve the problem with having to modify existing source code when recompiling with the new GapiDraw library.

[Blacky]

I've not forgotten it. We've the 12. today...

Where can we grab GapiDraw 1.1 ?

Greets,

Michael Ritter (5amcoderz)

[Johan]

Hi Michael,

Unfortunately I am a few days late... Check my other post (Add multiplayer to your CGapiApplication) for reasons why...

I'll have a special version for you early next week...

[Blacky]