DOS ain't dead - DUGL 1.15 + DUGL Plus 0.3

DUGL 1.15 + DUGL Plus 0.3 (Announce)

posted by Laaca , Czech republic, 14.08.2009, 13:45

From the begining of your project I was quite skeptic about DUGL.
But now when it has so many features I am really impressed. Good work.
If I would be a C programmer I would prefer it over allegro.
About topics you mentioned:

Joystick: not needed. Only few people use joysticks. Only for few specializated genres are still popular but generaly are obsoleted by mouse

Files packaging: In my Freepascal projects I started to use .GRP format used in games like Duke3D, Blood, etc. It is extremely simple and described on pages of Ken Silverman, author of the Build engine:
http://advsys.net/ken/build.htm (search "What is .GRP file format")

Images: as DUGL supports 16 bits modes it also should support some decent compressed HiColor (Truecolor) image format. PCXs are problematic, JPEGs not good for all purposes, so you should support at least some subformats of TIFFs or PNGs.
Supports of transparent and animated GIFs would be cool.
I would be espetially appreciated if you write a simple tool which displays .GIF and interactively let you choose color for transparention. And then saves it as a transparent GIF. I painful miss such program in DOS.

Fonts: you should definitely support some common bitmap font. The CPI files are OK, FNT files too. Much more complicated are vector fonts. At least .TTF fonts are extremely complicated. But you could try to add support for .CHR fonts from Borland.

Sound cards and graphics acceleration: The best solution is to use an external modules. I strongly advocate to adapt sound interface from Miles sound system because it allows to use lot of existing sound drivers and opens a possibility for adding a new drivers. Alternative could be the use of sound drivers from Quick view.
It would be cool if you could add the support of use the VESA AF drivers used in allegro via VBEAF.DRV file.
http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/freebe/
I looked into loader code in Allegro and it seems to be quite simple.

And it would be cool to modify some existing Allegro game into DUGL. Like DOOM which was already mentioned.

---
DOS-u-akbar!

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Complete thread:

DUGL 1.15 + DUGL Plus 0.3 - FFK, 12.08.2009, 12:58 (Announce)
- DUGL 1.15 + DUGL Plus 0.3 - Rugxulo, 12.08.2009, 17:30
  - DUGL and FreeDoom - FFK, 13.08.2009, 14:37
    - DUGL and FreeDoom - Rugxulo, 15.09.2009, 10:48
      - DUGL and FreeDoom - FFK, 17.09.2009, 04:25
- DUGL 1.15 + DUGL Plus 0.3 - Khusraw, 12.08.2009, 23:12
  - DUGL 1.15 + DUGL Plus 0.3 - FFK, 13.08.2009, 15:16
    - DUGL 1.15 + DUGL Plus 0.3 - Laaca, 14.08.2009, 13:45
      - DUGL roadmap - FFK, 15.08.2009, 15:07
        DUGL roadmap - Laaca, 15.08.2009, 21:06
        DUGL Sound drivers - FFK, 15.09.2009, 00:58
        DUGL Sound drivers - RayeR, 23.10.2009, 17:50
        DUGL Sound drivers - Khusraw, 23.10.2009, 18:50
        TIFF | DUGL Sound drivers - DOS386, 24.10.2009, 03:31
        TIFF | DUGL Sound drivers - Khusraw, 24.10.2009, 09:41
        TIFF | DUGL Sound drivers - Rugxulo, 24.10.2009, 15:23
        TIFF | DUGL Sound drivers - Rugxulo, 24.10.2009, 15:18
        TIFF | DUGL Sound drivers - FFK, 24.10.2009, 19:22
        DUGL Sound drivers - DOS386, 30.10.2009, 06:45
        DUGL Sound drivers - Khusraw, 30.10.2009, 14:11
        DUGL Sound drivers - ecm, 30.10.2009, 14:25
        DUGL Sound drivers - FFK, 31.10.2009, 11:04
        DUGL Sound drivers - FFK, 24.10.2009, 14:01
        DUGL Sound drivers - Rugxulo, 24.10.2009, 15:22
        DUGL Sound drivers - FFK, 24.10.2009, 17:42
        DUGL Sound drivers - RayeR, 25.10.2009, 01:48
        DUGL roadmap | TIFF vs PNG | emu10k1 - DOS386, 23.10.2009, 05:36
        DUGL roadmap | TIFF vs PNG | emu10k1 - Khusraw, 23.10.2009, 09:34
        DUGL roadmap | TIFF vs PNG | emu10k1 - Rugxulo, 23.10.2009, 09:51
- DUGL 1.15 + DUGL Plus 0.3 update download link - FFK, 15.09.2009, 00:46