RE: [AD] First try to change GFX_SAFE fb behaviour.

["Vincent Penquerc'h" <vincent@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Please, somebody tell me if you want/will reject this change, or let me
> continue it. When I posted this question long ago, I didn't recieve any
> feedback :(

Well, I might be biased too, because I am using fbcon as well, but here
are my thoughts on the subject:

GFX_SAFE is meant to open a graphics mode no matter what. It being 8 bit
is IMHO just because in the past 8 bit was a mode that was known (?) to
work with any video adaptor. This is an approximation of "no matter what"
and a better (still IMHO) way would be to pick a mode that we know has
the best chances to succeed. This means using the fbcon color depth when
using fbcon.
I do not think Allegro's GUI routines would suffer from that. For the
moment, I believe they use constants 0 and 255, or the like. These can
be replaced by calls to makecolor (speed difference won't be an issue for
this type of routines). This will make better programs anyway, as they
will be able to use any color depth.
Now, some games won't be able to use that. Some people code for 8 bit,
others for hicolor/truecolor, and a few can cope with all. That is OK,
GFX_SAFE was never meant to provide a mode *suitable* for any game, just
a mode suitable for getting a graphics mode: once there, the programmer
can check the mode (color depth and/or resolution) and decide if running
the game is a viable solution or not. If not, an appropriate message can
be displayed. If yes, then maybe an amulation mode can be used (like I
do, when I only have 8 bit mode, I still use hicolor, but quantize the
back buffer to the screen; the speed and quality are bad, but at least
it runs).
To sum it up, the fact that GFX_SAFE always tries an 8 bit mode is just
a coincidence, not by design. Thus, I would agree with your patch.

On the other hand, in reality you are probably right than many games
might suffer from it and these assumptions that wouldn't be true any
more. And backward compatibility is something that Shawn tries to keep
whenever possible. So ...

-- 
Lyrian