Re: [MiNT] XaAES sources for FreeMiNT 1.16.3

[Vincent Rivière <vincent.riviere@freesbee.fr>]

Johan Klockars a écrit :
> I thought the main point for games was speed, not direct write access
>  to the frame buffer. If you get better performance some other way, 
> would that not be preferable?

Sure.
It is always preferable to use the hardware features, as they will be
faster.
But direct access is required to achieve special effects not supported
by the hardware. For example, if the hardware has a simple blitter like
the Atari one, direct is necessary to achieve special effects. Drawing
dots, drawing lines, blitting with semi-transparency, etc.

> > Oh, just for completeness, DirectX allows direct access to the 
> > frame buffer only in fullscreen, not windowed. This is another nice
> > feature.
>
> I'd say it is a requirement, not a feature. You should never allow 
> direct access to the entire screen when there are other applications
>  using it. That the VDI does is one of its greatest faults, IMHO.

VDI access to the entire screen could be a feature, but not an
obligation as it has always been.

> The important thing should be to create something useful, right?
>
> If you (not you personally) persist in only requesting things that 
> the VDI can not usefully provide, there's no point for me to be in 
> this discussion. I don't write, nor care about, XBIOS code or games 
> that do not use the VDI to access the screen.

It is still interesting to speak about things that could be done or not.

To return to the concrete world, we will need your support for the ACP 
project. The ACP computer include a standard VIDEL, plus additional 
video modes. It will support virtually any additional PCI graphics card 
if there is a VDI driver for it.
I plan to port fVDI to ColdFire, but not soon. As usual, it will be just 
a matter of recompilation and patching assembly files. Then we will have 
to add drivers for the new modes.

NB: We could even imagine a VDI driver for multiple displays at the same 
time, like a virtual screen extending on several physical monitors.

--

Vincent Rivière