GapiDraw 2.10 screenshot-of-the-day #1

by **Johan** » Nov 19, 2003 @ 3:52pm

This is not your typical slow "use only for emulation purposes" GDI driver.. This is a turbo-accelerated-mega-superfast implementation..

Of course it works equally as well on stationary PCs.

Have a great game but cannot get the WM2003 certification since it the game will only run in fullscreen mode? No worries. Just install GD 2.10 when it's out and you're set...

by **egarayblas** » Nov 19, 2003 @ 4:24pm

by **Johan** » Nov 19, 2003 @ 4:33pm

by **fzammetti** » Nov 19, 2003 @ 8:01pm

That's actually very cool, and I didn't even know about it... I have been considering updating my Electro product to use GD, which would make the file size and load time much better and of course give me some new capabilities... I have been toying with the idea of writing my own GUI widget toolkit, but what the hell, if I can basically use the standard GUI components and use GD for everything else, that's very cool. Even if it gives me nothing more than the menubar that would be a big plus. Thanks Johan!

by **DillRye** » Nov 19, 2003 @ 11:26pm

by **Kzinti** » Nov 20, 2003 @ 4:21am

by **fzammetti** » Nov 20, 2003 @ 4:34am

by **Johan** » Nov 20, 2003 @ 10:24am

by **Johan** » Nov 21, 2003 @ 12:18pm

Also... GapiDraw has always used GDI blits to display when used in the emulator environments.. If you check the version history it says:

GapiDraw 2.0 Internal Changes
-BltFast, AlphabltFast and FillRect was completely rewritten.
-The entire GDI bridge for emulator environments was rewritten.
-Changes has been done to all function calls to support video surfaces.
http://www.gapidraw.com/docs-relhist.asp
(it's also included in the distribution)

I really didn't mean anything by referring to a "typical slow only for emulation purposes GDI driver" but I really think that being able to achieve 30FPS using GDI is quite cool.. And using prerotated surfaces, this same performance can be achieved in any display rotation! I really believe we'll see many applications using GDI in the near future (providing two versions of a game is easy if a developer uses GapiDraw)...

Finally.. The reason I used the term "typical slow" is that the general concensus seems to be that GDI is useless for most work.. Some quotes...

Frank on using GDI for development: "I can't do the desktop release (because GDI simply won't cut it)"
http://www.pocketmatrix.com/forums/view ... i&start=15

PocketHAL GDI Support: "There is two reasons I include a GDI driver: 1) color conversion for for displays that aren't 16 bpp and 2) as a safety net if everything else fails (no GAPI installed for example).
http://www.pocketmatrix.com/forums/view ... i&start=30

I believe that the performance of using GDI on newer devices is perfectly acceptable for many applications.

by **fzammetti** » Nov 21, 2003 @ 5:42pm

by **Johan** » Nov 21, 2003 @ 7:38pm

by **fzammetti** » Nov 21, 2003 @ 8:07pm

by **egarayblas** » Nov 22, 2003 @ 12:13am

by **Johan** » Nov 22, 2003 @ 11:30am

by **Digby** » Nov 24, 2003 @ 1:43am