| From: | Mark Sibly |
| Date: | 30 May 2000 at 13:56:30 |
| Subject: | Re: BlitzPC |
Hi,
> Are you planning to support force-feedback and other devices like mice
with
> mouse-wheels? What about 3D stuff? Not sure if you have mentioned it on
the
> site, cant remember, but will there be a proper system for doing easy 3D
> stuff?
Mouse wheel support should be in already, a-la DirectInput. There are
MouseX(), MouseY() and MouseZ() functions - mousez is apparently the wheel,
but I don't have a wheeled mouse to try it with.
Force feedback is pretty low on my list at the moment. For one thing, I
don't have a force feedback joystick!
3D Stuff will not be in the first release, but is my first priority for the
second. This should actually be pretty good, as I've done a lot of 3D stuff
since the Amiga days, and have a fairly good idea of how I want to do it.
> Would that require a lot of work? Or would it just be a case of using
> DirectX?
> (I have no idea how far directx goes towards doing 3D, I`m guessing
> it just controls all the rendering work?)
DirectX can do the transformations and rendering, but in my experience it's
a lot faster to do the transformations yourself. This is what I'll be doing,
but leave the rendering up to DirectX.
> Personally, I think a good library system is important. There were some
good
> ideas in the blitz library system originally, but it always seemed a bit
of
> a bodge
> to me. Limited library numbers does not help.
The library system in AmiBlitz was awful! The first release of Blitz will
probably not have a library system at all, because I want to spend more time
on this to get it right - probably priority 2 for the second release. One
key thing, I think, is to use an existing file format for the libs -
probably COFF .obj format. This way, you'll be able to write libs in pretty
much any language you want - Blitz included.
> What is ASM like on the PC mark (to use I mean)? From what I`ve
> seen and learnt about it. It looks EVIL compared to 68k ASM.
> Is it as easy (pah) to work with?
PC ASM is not actually all that bad - although not nearly is nice as 68K.
One thing that complicates it immensely is that many assemblers use a really
bizarre syntax, full of crap like 'assume', 'offset', 'dgroup' which are
mainly to do with 16 bit stuff.
If you're interested in getting into x86 ASM, I'd recommend having a look at
the NASM assembler, which has a very sensible, consitant syntax, and doesn't
include although the above confusion. An assembler similar to this will be
built into BlitzPC.
> Rob, "no-sig", Hutchinson - rob@satanicdreams.com
Bye!
Mark Sibly
www.blitzbasic.com
marksibly@blitzbasic.com
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