peck@sol.ral.rpi.edu (Joseph Peck) (06/06/91)
Now that people have had a chance to fool around with DCTV I thought I could ask some questions.... Most of these arise from not knowing how DCTV encodes their images in the standard hires 3 or 4 bitplane screens. 1) Is the "magic" data at the top of each image specific to each image, or can I blit in brushes from any other image without any color distortion? 2) Is there any reasonable way to display sprites on the screen, or will their color information be distorted due to the encoding? 3) How do the 3 and 4 bitplane images compare? (Not necessarily in the actual number of colors, but a subjective opinion.) 4) In a review (AmigaWorld) it states that version 1.1 of the software will include undo, better text rendering, and Arexx support. Has anyone heard roughly when this will be? 5) Is a developer's package available, detailing how the encoding works? That would save me a lot of trouble. (So the answer will probably be no :) 6) Has anyone tried to use dual playfields with DCTV? Two psuedo-24bit playfields can have quite a few applications.... (Games, games, games!) That's about all of the questions for now, so thanks for reading this, Joe Peck peck@ral.rpi.edu
seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) (06/08/91)
In-Reply-To: message from peck@sol.ral.rpi.edu
Right now there's no way to bring in any brushes or sprites from an outside
application. Any attempt to do so (like animating a brush over a still
from within DPaint 3, will cause all kinds of tearing and other distortions
to the image). I have succeeded in putting TEXT over an image without it
damaging the image, but the text came out black.
Depending on the image, you'll notice severe "banding" when viewing a
3plane image.
Supposedly v1.1 is supposed to be out at the end of June, but I'm going to
give a call to Digital Creations to check on this.
You'd have to talk to Digital Creations about the developer's package. If
they want 3rd party vendors to support their product, they'll play ball.
I'm not a programmer, so I won't comment on #6 (Dual playfield).
Sean
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