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Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 11:02:22 -0400

Subject: [delphi-3d] opengl.dcu in Delphi 3

I was at the Borland Conference earlier this week and thanked Charles

Calvert for shipping the opengl.dcu file with Delphi 3. He told me that

Danny Thorpe was the one who put it in.

On the back cover of his book, "Delphi Component Design", it says he is

a R&D engineer on Borland's Delphi development team.

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Date: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 01:42:17 +0200

Subject: [delphi-3d] need Help with Direct3D-IM Mode

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Hi folks !

I have just started with programming D3D-IM, and so i have a few

questions.

1) I don't understand why the VIEW, PROJECT and WORLD matrizes exits !

Or better, how belong them together ?

2) I tried to programm a translation(tx, ty, tz) with following matrix:

( 1 0 0 tx )

( 0 1 0 ty )

( 0 0 1 tz )

( 0 0 0 1 )

i multiplied this maxtrix with the WORLD one, but only the

translation in the z-direction

worked. But if i try to change the tx or ty value some strange things

happened to the scene !

Next, i tried a rotation. And with this matrix i got perfect results

!

Rotate z ( cos(a) -sin(a) 0 0 )

( sin(a) cos(y) 0 0 )

( 0 0 1 0 )

( 0 0 0 1 )

I hope someone can explain me the secrets of the 3 standard matrizes.

3) Ok, and the last questions is about clipping in the viewport.

My test-example are a few triangles in a plane. I scaled the plane

until it

is bigger than the viewport, and must be clipped ! But if an edge of

the triangles

hits the border of the viewport, it won't be clipped but stayes at

the border !

This error is displayed in the picture which is attached !

Ok, thanks to everyone who can help me

PS: I do programming in Delphi 2.0 with the DirectX-Header files from

BStone, which have

a lot of errors in D3D-RM declarations. But i think in IM nothing

can be wrong

with the header files. Or not ?

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Date: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 11:15:46 +0300 (EET DST)

Subject: [delphi-3d] Newbie here, with a Direct3D RM question

Hi!

I just yesterday joined this Delphi3D list, and already I have a

question. But first, perhaps I should sort of introduce myself.

I have been programming with Delphi for about 5 months now, and with

Direct3D just a few weeks. I've been programming 3D games for almost

10 years, though. My first major project was LineWars, back in 1988,

coded with Turbo Pascal and Assembler. The sequel, LineWars II, was

finished in 1994, it was coded in pure assembly language. Both are

3D space shoot-em-ups with multiplayer support. And now I am learning

DirectX/Direct3D programming with Delphi, which will hopefully lead

to LineWars III in the future.

I am using Blake Stone's Delphi headers, and Retained Mode, at least

for now.

Well, my question (which hopefully is not a FAQ, my FTP client timed

out every time when I tried to connect to the archive site):

What is the best way to create a starfield? That is, a number (a few

hundred) of faraway stars, rendered as single pixels, behind

everything else rendered on the screen.

I want my program to work both in any fullscreen mode and in a window.

In a fullscreen mode I was able to GetDC and draw a few pixels onto

the BackBuffer before calling Tick(), but how do I do this in a window?

How do I get a pointer into the offscreen buffer that Direct3D blits

to the screen when I call Update()?

I wonder if I am doing something weird in my program, I have been

copying from a couple of examples, one for windowed mode and one for

a fullscreen mode, and they seem to be using rather different

approaches. For example, in a fullscreen render loop I have:

DXCheck( FView.Clear );

DXCheck( FD3DRM.Tick( lMoveVal ) );

DXCheck( FFrontBuffer.Flip( nil, DDFLIP_WAIT ));

while in the windowed mode the renderloop does this:

DXCheck( FScene.Move( lMoveVal ));

DXCheck( FView.Clear );

DXCheck( FView.Render( FScene ) );

DXCheck( FDev.Update );

That was the only way I got it working, but I still think they are

more different than they perhaps should be.

Any help would be appreciated, I hope I did not spend too much of

your time.

Thanks!

Patrick Aalto

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Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 14:08:57 -0400 (EDT)

Subject: [delphi-3d] LoadTextureFromResource Desperation

Having problems loading a texture from a dll resource.

I'm a LITTLE desperate, since we are going to beta in 't minus 5' days, and

we don't want our resources readily available.

LoadLibrary and FindResource are reporting success, but

LoadTextureFromResource is reporting a D3DRMERR_BADFILE; and

occassionaly an access violation.

The call back is callin-backin just fine. Loading the texture from disk

using LoadTexture() works dandy.

The call definition looks ok

function LoadTextureFromResource ( rs: HRSRC ; var lplpD3DRMTexture:

IDirect3DRMTexture ): HRESULT ; virtual ; stdcall ; abstract ;

versus microsoft

STDMETHOD(LoadTextureFromResource) (THIS_ HRSRC rs, LPDIRECT3DRMTEXTURE

*) PURE;

any ideas? Jodi.

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TextureInstance : THandle;

Function GetTexture ( tex_name: PChar ; lpArg: Pointer ;

var lpD3DRMTex: IDirect3DRMTexture ): HRESULT ; CDecl;

var

reshandle : HRSRC;

TextureName : String;

Begin

{ TextureName := ExtractFileName(String(tex_name));

TextureName := ExtractFilePath(Application.Exename) + 'Textures\' +

TextureName;

DXCheck(theWorld.FWindow.D3DRM.LoadTexture(Pchar(TextureName), lpD3DRMTex));

Result := D3DRM_OK;}

TextureName := ChangeFileExt(ExtractFileName(String(tex_name)),'');

ResHandle := FindResource(TextureInstance, PChar(TextureName), RT_BITMAP);

if ResHandle <> 0 then

Begin

DXCheck(theWorld.FWindow.D3DRM.LoadTextureFromResource(ResHandle,lpD3DRM

Tex));

Result := D3DRM_OK;

End

Else

Begin

ShowMessage(TextureName + ' Missing');

Result := D3DERR_TEXTURE_LOAD_FAILED;

End;

End;

procedure TMainForm.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);

var

TextureLibrary : String;

begin

//Load up the textures

TextureLibrary := 'Textures.dll';

TextureInstance := LoadLibrary(PChar(TextureLibrary));

if TextureInstance = 0 then

Begin

ShowMessage(TextureLibrary + ' not found');

Application.Terminate;

end;

End;

Technical Director, Partner

Digital Machine Interactive Inc.

Toronto, ON Canada

[v] (416) 406-1162

[f] (416) 766-4796

[c] (416) 720-9981

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End of delphi-3d-digest V1 #8