Considering moving from PocketFrog...

[Johan]

Sm!rk/Warmi: GetBuffer does not copy/rotate/anything the internal buffer of each surface. It simply returns the internal memory area as used by GapiDraw. So it is more like "GetRawBuffer" as Sm!rk suggested.

I have received source code from a user here at PocketMatrix, which is a cache-optimized block rotator. I will publish this (with full regards to the creator of course) as a tutorial on how to create a cache-aligned buffer from each surface.

Lock()/Unlock() were both removed from GapiDraw 2.0. Reasons are that I did not want them mixed upp with LockVideoSurface()/UnlockVideoSurface(), and that they were commonly misused by DirectX programmers (due to their significant overhead).

[warmi]

Ah right .. it was lock() that was copying and "unrotating" surface from whatever native rotation format it was stored internally.

Yeah so at this point the original problem still persists, meaning that the memory buffer is in native format which is not as simple as say , storing it in standard format and doing rotation in the final flip.
On the other hand , I completely understand your decision to store rotated surfaces in native format to avoid shearing.
My current game ( about 95% done) uses variable rate terrain scrolling and shearing , not performance, is the biggest problem at this point so I am actually very glad that GapiDraw works the way it does - I don't want to even think how bad shearing would be if the final blit also included rotating...
:-)


PS.

BTW .. I just finished “porting” my game to GapiDraw 2.x. The performance went up by around 20%-30% which, considering that I almost exclusively use alphablit for all my sprites, is pretty much what I would expect.
Everything else works, fine – I had small issue with drawtext which seems to be a bit more picky as far as font bitmap ( compared to GapiDraw 1.x ) but I resolved all problems and now everything works fine.

PS2.
Here is a little movie of my new game in action.
http://www.warmi.net/images/zraid/game.avi
This is a version with "collisions turned off" for testing so I am plowing thru everything with ease :-)

Back in the day I played River Raid a lot and always wanted to make a clone with modern graphics etc ..

[efortier]

[ppcStudios]

Warmi: Nice little movie. I really like the particle effects on the explosions. How did you create your avi?

[warmi]

I used Camtasia (http://www.techsmith.com/products/studio/default2.asp) which is a $300 app ( "the premier screen recording program" according to official spin.)
It is really simple to use - you select your codec, select the source ( either entire desktop , parts of it or a selected window) and then you ... well, record :-)

Of course you have to have your application running on the desktop which is not a big deal for people using GapiDraw.

PS.
They have 30 day full-featured demo available on their site.