GFXFX2 general 'documentation' and registration info ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Some people may wonder 'how on Earth did he do THAT!?' - I know I ask myself that very question a lot when watching new demo's or some revolutionary games, like Descent, for instance. Basicly this is the reason why I decided to make a collection of Pascal sources like this one, specialized in Graphics Effects, hence the name GFXFX, part two. Requirements ~~~~~~~~~~~~ All sources were implemented and tested on a 386dx/40 with a TsengLabs ET-4000 video card (1Mb). Most of the sources were tested on a 286, 386, 486 Laptop, 486dx2/66 with several video cards. Minimum requirements: þ 286 þ Standard VGA þ Turbo Pascal 6.0 Recommanded: þ 486dx2/66 (or better) þ a FAST SVGA videocard (SpeedstarPRO for instance) þ Borland Pascal 7.0 The Gouraud Shaded Texture Mapping runs great on a dx2! I tested some source on a 286/something with a Trident VGA - I realy cannot recommand THAT! All sources were implemented, compiled and tested (using BP7.0) with the following compiler-directives: {$a+,b-,d+,e+,f-,g+,i+,l+,n-,o-,p-,q-,r-,s+,t-,v+,x+} That is: - 286+ code on - all error checks off (range, stack, etc...) Registration ~~~~~~~~~~~~ I spend quite some time on the files in this package over the last few months, while it could be better spend on following colleges and stuff like that. So I paid the price. If you think this package is usefull, you want to learn somethings or you want me to stimulate on making part 3, then please register. Remember: this is shareware! What do I get? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you register you'll receive: þ a personalised disk with all sources (also of the units) and comments. þ full documentation of the units and the demo-sources þ explenation (pseudocode) about several general effects What must I pay? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To get all this (ahem) one must pay the meazly amount of US$10 PLUS US$5 or Hfl.20,- PLUS Hfl.5,-. I do not except other currencies. The additional 5 Guilders or Dollars are for shipping costs, disk, envelope, stamps, etc... How do I register? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To register fill in the registration form (REGISTER.GFX) and sent it to one (or more) of the following addresses: Snailmail: Bas van Gaalen, Brain Made Productions, Vuurvlinderstraat 2, 5641 DM Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Europe. Internet: basg@stack.urc.tue.nl, or (if no reply): B.V.v.Gaalen@stud.tue.nl Fidonet: 2:284/123.2 Pascalnet: 115:3145.103.2 Please note that the Snailmail address is very subject to change, so I don't realy prefer that one. It's better to send anything through Internet or Fidonet. If I move, I'll drop some lines in the Pascal echo's - where I can be reached at any time, btw. What about the fee? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The registration-fee can be paid in cash, cheque or a money-transfer to my bank or postbank account. Rabobank: 150928084 Postbank: 4088566 Make sure you make it payable to: B.V. van Gaalen, Eindhoven. Basicly, make sure I'll receive Hfl.25,- (also AFTER currency-transfer), and you'll get your part of the deal. ;-) Notes ~~~~~ þ Please don't mind the spelling in the docs. I didn't have a spellingschecker or dictionary available at the time of writing. þ Some of the code might look odd (first putting something in tmp, and next using the result in a function - for instance). But this is done because of the errors Turbo Pascal likes to create. Same thing for functions which didn't denote the result... þ Buy me a dx2 and you'll get GFXFX2 for free! - Seems fair enough... þ I'm aware of the fact that Unisys is bugging with license-agreements for the LZW-decoding techniques in the GIF-format. Nevertheless I released the GIF-decoder unit in this package because I think it's the third party developers resonsibility if they realy want to use the code. The GIF-viewer is not the main goal of the package. It's just a small part of the whole... Anyway, personaly I think GIF is dead. I only included it because it was requested by a lot of people. þ While trying to release this package some things went wrong. Ofcourse this was AFTER I actualy uploaded the file to the FTP-site. ;-( Guess I didn't checked EVERYTHING out. Well, it's hard to keep track of over 100 files and more than 13000 lines of code. So, please don't blame me... þ As you may have noticed, I'm not the only author of the sources. The Texture Mapping, Gouraud Shading and the Voxel routines were made by Jeroen Bouwens. Disclaimer ~~~~~~~~~~ As any shareware package GFXFX2 also has a disclaimer. The author of GFXFX2, Bas van Gaalen, can't be held responsible for any damage the program might cause to you, your computer, your parents, your state of mind or whatever. The only guarentee I can give is that the source codes will take up space on your harddisk. Future ~~~~~~ I _think_ this will be my last production for a while. Although I'm already looking forward on GFXFX2.1 or GFXFX3 (some sourcecode can still be speeded up, extra picture fileformats and/or updates for special types, faster and rotating Voxel-space, etc...), but that'll take a large amount of months and I can't make any promises. But it'll be free for anyone who registered GFXFX2 already, THAT I can promise! For now... I got a live to attend to... Thanx ~~~~~ Finaly I wish to thanx the following people - in no special order - for contributing in one way or another: My mom, Jeroen Bouwens, Sven van Heel, Mark Schipper, Alexander Eugene Chalfin, Andrew Eigus, Arne de Bruijn, David Dahl, Sean Palmer and the people at x2ftp.oulu.fi for their enormous patience! ;-))