Re: Interested in starting some basic development

[Joel Stanley <jstanley@up.edu>]

On Sat, 14 Nov 1998, Christian Reiniger wrote:

> All these APIs exist because it's terribly hard to program directly to the
> hardware. Almost all gfx boards need to be accessed differently at the
> lowest level, i.e. if you wanted to write a game that will run on more than
> just a few computers you'd have to write about 80 versions of your gfx code
> - one for each type of gfx board. Much fun ;)

Sure, but will using existing APIs give me a good understanding about what
is really going on? Some of the DOS-based examples I've seen actually
involve filling video memory with various byte values and then calling
interrupts, setting video modes, etc. Once I understand what's really
going on at the hardware level, using an existing API would clearly be the
way to go. However, I'm immediately at a disadvantage if I don't get down
and dirty with the hardware at least once before writing multi-platform
multi-gfx card portable code...

That said, anyone know where I can get some fairly down-to-earth SVGALib
examples?

Joel

--
Joel R. Stanley                   *  jstanley@up.edu       
http://rainier.up.edu/~jstanley   *  #include <std_disclaimer.h>