Here comes a preview of the forthcoming new AFlib2!!

[Adigun A. Polack]

To all of you tonight:

I got some thrilling news for ‘ya, so better pay real big attention right here to what I gotta say.  :king: !

Now, let me show you first of all the full-fledged characters of ALL TEN (10) of my custom fonts built in to AFlib2:




Like them?  They are all based off of a full 256-character ASCII set.  MAN, It took quite a lot of hard work and determination to come up with all of that, and praise God that He has first enabled me that hard work and determination indeed.  And that is just for starters, too.  

Also, in this original FreeBASIC library, there are two ways for you to write your text on the screen: normal and optimized.    

Here is the thing: with the normal way, you have an 8x8 text that can actually scale, italicize, and can be displayed in either a dazzling array of colors or just as a single color, all akin to the great RelLib!!  As for the optimized way, get ready for an intense shocker right here: you can actually grab your character sets and in any of a phenomenal grand total of 32 different slots (yep, you *heard* right!  :cool: ), and then use them to write your text RATHER MUCH faster than the normal way, but only this time, the new mind-blowing features are gonna be tacked on such as text translucency, text brightness control, real-time text typing, text fading in and out (without even making a littlest scratch to the 256-color palette in an 8-bit mode at all!), and a whole lot more!!!  =b !

Take such a good, GOOD look at these next shots:



......and with a special routine supporting the regular GET/PUT sprite placements in GFXlib2, you can even write to a buffer, too!!  Check these out:




You wanna see them all in full bloom?  Alright then, here is this next download that I have just whipped up tonight for you all:

•

AFLib2 Font Test[/list]
Enjoy, and start dreaming about implementing them in your programs and games in FB, even as soon as I finish this lib and set it for release to all of you as well!  Peace!!!  d==b !



ONE STEP AHEAD,


Adigun Azikiwe Polack
One of the Founders of “Aura Flow” ::: Continuing Developer of “Frantic Journey”
Current Developer of “Star Angelic Slugger” ::: Webmaster of the “AAP Official Projects Squad”
Original Creator of the “The New FreeBASIC 8-Bit Palette Machine”

[Torahteen]

Need I say more? This would be great for my GUI. Do any normal windows fonts come with it? That is, Courier, Times New Roman, Arial, Lucida, etc.

[Dr_Davenstein]

Lookin' good.  Just for reference... the optimized sets display faster than the normal sets, right?

[Jocke The Beast]

Yeah, looks sweet.

[Adigun A. Polack]

To Torahteen:

Do any normal windows fonts come with it? That is, Courier, Times New Roman, Arial, Lucida, etc.

Unfortunately not, sad to say.    BUT, according to the way I set it all up on from that Font Test you just saw, you *can* create your own 144x144 BMP sheet of your own custom 8x8 or 9x9 font of any color or group of colors you wish!  It must, though, be placed in such a position that it actually matches the positioning placements of any font set, just like the ones that were shown from my previous post in this thread you are looking at now.  Then, with AFlib2 in place, you can BLOAD the BMP sheet of your own custom font indeed (can be your own version of either Windows-based font or whatever you like, if you prefer!  =b ), and then capture it as a 256-character ASCII-based set in one of the slots ranging from 1 to 32.  Then you can freely use it as an optimized font, my man!!  

And all of that is what I will position this lib to do.  No question about that, Torahteen, and thank you so much, by the way!  :king:



And next today, I will go to you, Dr_Davenstein:

Just for reference... the optimized sets display faster than the normal sets, right?

Yes, they sure as heck do, obviously!  d==b  I have discovered so firsthand on the comparison between the normal and optimized font settings, because I found out simply that printing text on the screen here out of a normal font setting of AFlib2 is at least a bit slower (since they are based in native PSET and LINE commands in FB), whereas printing the exact same text out of an optimized one can be mastered in full in a lot shorter time than ever, since I have obviously used GET and PUT commands, as well as some heavy-duty tweaking and experimenting with the ASM side of FB for the different translucency routines and stuff, you know what I mean?   !

Thanks a lot to you for your fine question, good man!  ()//



And finally, over to Jocke the Beast:

Hey, thanks so much to you as well!  :wtnod:=b  You know, it will be *really* so amazing for such an excellent FreeBASIC RPG and stuff to be made using AFlib2 when it gets released eventually, because man, I am currently going out of my very way to make programming in GFXlib2 and FB much easier and simpler, right down to the very loading of the PP256-based sprites, too!  You just hang on and see, Jocke!  



All of you, get your hopes up as I continue working on this lib, because next, I am gonna be setting up now the custom screen-fading routines that do not even interfere with the 256-color palette at all.  Ever.    Bye for now as I prepare for this, guys!!!



WORKING SOME FB MAGIC THIS AFTERNOON,


Adigun Azikiwe Polack
One of the Founders of “Aura Flow” ::: Continuing Developer of “Frantic Journey”
Current Developer of “Star Angelic Slugger” ::: Webmaster of the “AAP Official Projects Squad”
Original Creator of the “The New FreeBASIC 8-Bit Palette Machine”

[Torahteen]

WORKING SOME FB MAGIC THIS AFTERNOON

This afternoon? My friend, you've been working magic for quite some time now. Keep it up!

[Adigun A. Polack]

To all of you tonight:

I want to greet you all again here as I deliver the sure goods here!!!

Ok.  I promised you from my last post here that I was gonna set up some custom fading without the interference of the 256-color palette in an 8-bit mode, and here it is!  Look!!   !



And this is just a delicious taste of what you will see in my next all-new test for AFlib2 available for download:

•

AFlib2 Screen Test[/list]
Also, memory-wise, I have just implemented a way in this very lib to store (and you had just *better* get ready for this!   ) up to a grand total of 64 DIFFERENT SCREENS AT ONCE!!  Wow, you can’t get no better than that, and best of all, it can possibly be done through any 8-bit graphics mode of your choice at all, fullscreen or windowed!!!  d==b !

Have a peek right here, right now:



The drawing modes for the stored screen blits are:

•

Transparent (skipping Color #0)
• Translucent (see-thru)
• PSET (FB PUT-based)
• PRESET (FB PUT-based)
• AND (FB PUT-based)
• OR (FB PUT-based)
• XOR (FB PUT-based)[/list]
......with some of them buffer-supported as well also!!  :cool:

Hope you enjoy it richly now, and talk to you later as I plan to work on a lot more!!!  :king: !



BRINGING YOU THE BEST,


Adigun Azikiwe Polack
One of the Founders of “Aura Flow” ::: Continuing Developer of “Frantic Journey”
Current Developer of “Star Angelic Slugger” ::: Webmaster of the “AAP Official Projects Squad”
Original Creator of the “The New FreeBASIC 8-Bit Palette Machine”

[Dr_Davenstein]

64 screens at once?

:lol:

Holy shit! That's insane! Have you tried using all 64 screens at the same time? I, for one, would like to see a demo with some sprites. If this thing has any speed, you should go ahead and make a regular game lib out of it.

Keep it up!

[Adigun A. Polack]

To Dr_Davenstein:

Yes, 64 screens at one time is a helluva lot if you ask me, man, you know?  

And no, I have not tried to put 64 screens in simultaneously (so as to blit them all in in a row!), but rather in that test from just tonight, I got them all in separately for testing purposes, one at a time.  At first I started out with only 8 screens, but then when I tested them out and found out that they all worked great, I was like, “What the hey, huh?  I am boosting this up to 64 screens!!”.  That is exactly what was done tonight.  Make no mistake about that, Dr_Davenstein.   !

Just as I was programming and testing this one in FB, some ideas that sparked into my mind there included adding a “Stored Screen”-to-sprite collision detection, which I am gonna plan on doing, and I *just* might do it, too!  Understand?  :cool:

With all of that in mind here from this post, you have yourself a great weekend, Dr_Davenstein!!!  d==b !




- Adigun Azikiwe Polack
One of the Founders of “Aura Flow” ::: Continuing Developer of “Frantic Journey”
Current Developer of “Star Angelic Slugger” ::: Webmaster of the “AAP Official Projects Squad”
Original Creator of the “The New FreeBASIC 8-Bit Palette Machine”

[Dr_Davenstein]

Just as I was programming and testing this one in FB, some ideas that sparked into my mind there included adding a “Stored Screen”-to-sprite collision detection, which I am gonna plan on doing, and I *just* might do it, too! Understand?  

Do you mean to have a pixel perfect collision detection layer? That would be really cool. A versatile game lib is one of the major things that FB needs(besides a way easy gui maker, imho) to get some newbie people making games... More often than not, these people have the most original ideas... even if they are far fetched sometimes.  :lol:
Nevertheless, good work, and keep it up!  

btw: How much of this are you doing in ASM?

[Torahteen]

My man AAP, you've done it again. Please keep up the good work.

[Adigun A. Polack]

To Dr_Davenstein again:

In essence on AFlib2, about me making it into a game library now, thank you so much for bringing that up.  =b !  So yes, just like RelLib seriously did for good ‘ol QB, this original lib here in FB is to be used for such high-caliber 2D games in 8-bit mode as truly as ever.  Speed, performance, sprites, collisions, and everything!  I can promise you that myself!!  :cool:

As for a pixel-perfect collision layer, yeah.  I am gonna go along the lines of that, definitely.  Currently, that is all in terms of the stored screens here.  I will see if I can prepare up a batch of it this weekend, and if I do get it out into the open here, hey, expect to see it right here in this thread, you got me loud and clear?  



And to Torahteen once more:

Thank you once again so much for that comment!!  :king:  Hey, in addition to me making AFlib2 into a game library in FreeBASIC, it can also be used for GUIs and other stuff as well, too, so just stay tuned!   !



Dr_Davenstein and Torahteen, you two wonderful people are a real pleasure to have around here and I thank you both richly for your positive feedback and support!!!  Check ‘ya later!  ()//




- Adigun Azikiwe Polack
One of the Founders of “Aura Flow” ::: Continuing Developer of “Frantic Journey”
Current Developer of “Star Angelic Slugger” ::: Webmaster of the “AAP Official Projects Squad”
Original Creator of the “The New FreeBASIC 8-Bit Palette Machine”



UPDATE (on November 9, 2005 at 4:37pm EST):  And now, all of you, brace yourselves now for this awesome new AFlib2 test which is:

•

AFlib2 Screen Collision Test[/list]
......and it features such amazingly good “stored screen”-to-sprite collision detection as well as the collision detection between two (2) stored screens!!!    Watch!



Notice the red circle I put on the second screenshot of this post.  This just shows you the preciseness of it all because it is all pixel-perfect collision detection, and boy it is VERY FAST, I must daresay!!!  =b

Enjoy this brand new test, everybody!!!  :king:

[MystikShadows]

Wow, that's getting to be quite impressive :-).  and from the test I just did, you're right it does seem very fast. :-).

Excellent work as usual Adigun.  Always can't wait to see what will be in AFLIB next :-).

[Dr_Davenstein]

I second that... I got 64 fps in screenres 1024x768. That means it was running alot faster, I'm sure because my vsync seems to be locked by the system somewhere. I haven't been able to find a way to turn it off. It's even set to application controlled  in the video card's settings.  :roll:

Anyway, Good Job! Keep it up! :wink:

[Torahteen]

I love the bouncing circles part. That is the coolest. Keep up the excelent work my man. You're on fire for sure. Can't wait for the first release.