| Re: [AD] updated todo list and more |
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On Mon, 25 Dec 2000, Angelo Mottola wrote:
> 1) A function to get a list of supported video modes (Emmanuel Anne suggested
> this a while ago, and I find it a very useful addition) for the driver. If
> driver is windowed, the function pointer in the gfx driver structure could be
> NULL, telling Allegro the driver is infact windowed and thus it handles any
> resolution.
But it doesn't: let's say I have a 640x480 screen and the application
requests a 800x600 presuming the windowed driver handles it. In fact, it
will handle it, but I won't be happy with that screen size.
IIRC the proposal about a "supported list of video modes" has not been
done before because there are drivers which simply don't know the
available video modes until you try to set them and fail, being DOS the
most notorious example of this (or as somebody pointed out lately, his
DirectX says 320x200 is available, but Allegro is unable to set that
resolution, for some unknown reason).
AFAIK the only way to support this would be to create a huge database with
the supported resolutions by each driver; under dos this would mean
storing the possible resolutions for each video card.
Instead, I would like to propose another thing: the setup program could
have a "try all possible resolutions" button which would generate a
supported video modes list in the appropiate specific or global
allegro.cfg file for the user. Even with this, you are still not getting
all possible combinations (I know people requesting things like 700x500
even when they know it's only possible in a windowed mode), but possibly
quite close.
Of course, there should be some mechanism (maybe random code generation
based on graphic chip/environment?) which would prevent users from getting
an already made list which could crash their systems or disallow program
execution (the game believes the resolution is supported, sets it, goes
presuming it worked all right but crashes on the next graphic call).
BTW, if this can be supported with the new unified graphic architecture
planned on the todo file, just say how.
> [window resizing]
How could a game handle this? Usually most of them set their graphic
routines to work with a fixed screen size. Would Allegro rescale the
screen automatically? What practical use does this have?
PD: Is it me, or am I terribly negative? Damned christmas... :)
Grzegorz Adam Hankiewicz gradha@xxxxxxxxxx - http://gradha.infierno.org
Other web pages: http://glub.ehu.es/ - http://welcome.to/gogosoftware/