PPC and PC support

[ElSeeker]

I used GapiDraw before it was highly priced and I could create PC and PPC games because it supported both. Does PocketFrog allow you to do the same thing?

What I am looking for is a library that I can create PC and PPC games with so I do not have to support 2 different graphics libraries.

Any thoughts on if this is supported?

How fast is it on the PC side?

Does it use DirectX or GDI for PC if it is supported?

If PocketFrog does not support this do you have any suggestions on one that may (free/cheap if possible)?

Thanks in advance!

[Conan]

PocketFrog works fine on PC. I only use the PC version for development however I can confirm that one set of sources can build for PPC & PC. Performance on PC is very fast obviously so as I was testing for PPC use I just limited to 30FPS. I assume it's using GDI.

If you used the .7 version (ie: not with PocketHAL you get full source code so you could change to directx)

[Bunkai]

Conan hello,

are you saying that using Pocket Frog, you can develop your Pocket PC game completely on PC, and then simply release it for Pocket PC?

How do you hande 16 bit 565 images then? uau, that would be amazing, if I dont have to always wait for data sent to Pocket PC.

Moreover, if the above is true, how do you hande sound then? With regards, Bunkai.

[Presto]

You can certainly use PF for making PC builds. Just compile it using VC6 or higher, and link the PocketFrog_x86 library in your game. Additionally, you can change the resolution of the PF app to be anything you want. (You'll see it hard-coded as 240x320 in PocketFrog's game.cpp file.) What I did was add "width" and "height" variables to the m_config struct, and then set them during the game's initialization. Note that that only affects the PC build and as far as I know, there's no way to do full screen with it on PC. Once you're done developing/testing your game on PC, just compile it using eVC and link to the PPC libraries.

For the RGB565 images, PocketFrog converts the images when they're loaded, so it doesn't matter what they were to begin with.

For sound, I use the FMOD library, which is quite powerful and relatively cheap for hobbyists (and free to develop with). It includes compiled libraries for PC and PPC builds. But you can also use Hekkus or MikMod, which are both free.

Also, I've looked at Allegro, and it's actually really nice for PC game development. It'll let you go full screen at any resolution, and it comes with lots of classes you can utilize.

http://www.droneship.com/
http://www.fmod.org/
http://www.shlzero.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mikmod/
http://www.allegro.cc/

-John

[Bunkai]

Hello Joghn,

Thank you very much for detailed explanation. All the links will be very useful to me. I went through them..

There was one thing that I found missing: PocketHall/PocketForge does not support formats with Alpha Channel. Therefore, they must be loaded individually, as 24 bit file format and therefore two jpg files (one having color value and another having alpha layer) take more memory than RGBA file format.

Well, but I might be completely wrong. Thank you very much, PocketFrog is excellent gift for all PPC Game Developers.

Regards,
Rene.

[jaguard]

There was one thing that I found missing: PocketHall/PocketForge does not support formats with Alpha Channel. Therefore, they must be loaded individually, as 24 bit file format and therefore two jpg files (one having color value and another having alpha layer) take more memory than RGBA file format.

It is also not a very good thing to use jpgs for masked blit.
And this is where another problem lies - you cannon use jpgs because they brake the masking color. You cannon use pngs because PocketFrog PC doesn't support them. What's left is only gifs and bmps. We had to stick to gifs..

[Bunkai]

Thanks Jaguard. I know what you mean. Have a nice day.

Rene.

[BIGBEN]

Bunkai, if you need true RGBA surfaces, you may find this thread useful TGA in PF_0_8_1

[Presto]

You cannon use pngs because PocketFrog PC doesn't support them. What's left is only gifs and bmps. We had to stick to gifs..

That doesn't mean you can't use PNGs for the PPC builds, however. I always use PNGs for the PPC builds, and BMPs for my PC builds.

Just do something like this in a header file:

Code: Select all

1  2  3  4  5	#if defined(_WIN32_WCE) #define IMG_IMAGE1 _T("res\\image1.png") #else #define IMG_IMAGE1 _T("res\\image1.bmp") #endif
	5 lines; 6 keywds; 0 nums; 6 ops; 2 strs; 0 coms    Syntactic Coloring v0.4 - Dan East

Then your LoadImage() function will always take IMG_IMAGE1 as an argument, and work independent of platform.

-John

[Conan]

In answer to the question asked of me above, yes you can develop 100% on a PC version & then build for PPC however there are so many real life things that only the real PPC can catch that it's really necessary to have at least one device.

nb: VS2005 / WM5 has a fully functional (running the ARM code) emulator so things improve if you have VS2005.

I just have an X51v sitting in the cradle & build to the device.