> > > > > > > > Yes, TGA read/write is supported in the XCC Library.
> > > > > > > yeah, what good is that gonna do me?
> > > > > > You could use it to load TGAs.
> > > > > my program already loads TGA and BMP files since a long time.
> > > > Oh. In that case you can use the lib to load JPEGs ;->
> > > ok is that your lib then? how did you make it? did you use the info from www.wotsit.org? is that info complete?
> i want you to answer this question Olaf. should i be able to write a complete jpg loader from the info on that site?
> > > > > i was thinking maybe i should add capability to load GIFs and JPGs coz that's what most of the internet models use. but i guess people who make their own models (which is what they should be doing) make the textures straight in TGA or BMP so that's all that's needed. Does windows programming have capability to load any bitmaps using ready-made functions?
> > > > Yes.
> > > which bitmap formats?
> > See the Platform SDK docs.
> sorry, i can't read. damn. that's not going to work :D i wish i was illiterate sometimes.
> > > btw does anyone know if games use mp3 files for sound effects?
> > ReneGade uses MP3 for music, but IMA ADPCM WAVs for sounds.
> what the hell. that's weird. they have legality to use mp3 yet they don't use it. i guess they had enough room on the CD for the sounds and anyway since there's no hardware to do mp3 decoding i suppose it's best just to have them in uncompressed form all the time. you think in the future it will happen?
IMA ADPCM WAVs are in fact very compressed (but I don't know how much compared to MP3s...) even though they are .WAV
You see, just the fact that the extension is wav doesn't mean it's uncompressed. Oh and there are also DivX movies that are heavily compressed with DivX, but have .AVI for the extension.
(I hope you won't get pissed off too much over this, I heard getting mad damages your health and I don't want to see you die and stop working on 3DS2VXL)
> > > i heard there were legal obstacles to people writing mp3 decoders and encoders. is that true?
> > Yes.
> damn
> > > i want to add sound and music to 3ds2vxl but i know how big WAV files can get.
> > Use Ogg Vorbis.
> what the hell is that?! and don't say "read the internet"
> > > do we have sound accelerator cards now where we can load all the sound effects to the sound card and tell the sound card to mix them all together with scaling to change the pitch and volume of the sounds and maybe do a few other effects?
> > No, most soundcards don't have local memory. Main memory is used to store sounds. However, most soundcards (like SB Live/Audigy) have a mixer/processor.
> > > and can those sounds stored on there be compressed as well?
> > No.
> damn. i think sound has been left very underdeveloped. we have graphic cards that use compressed textures like S3TC since quake3. but the sound capability is weak. only 22KHZ in that engine. weird. i think there are many games that have to pause sometimes at critical times to load a sound effect coz they are too big they have to sit on hard disk instead of being in ram. has anyone else noticed this?
> in other news. i tried running my program with other things minimized at the same time and that bug that happens about a second after my viewer starts, where a blank window opens up and occupies a flip page, just gets much worse. in this case it happens every few seconds. if anyone reading this is chuckling coz they know what is causing it then you better speak up now because you're gonna have to live with it. my program is just gonna stay like this and then when that mad flashing happens it will probably just burn your monitor and your eyes and you won't be able to kick my ass coz you can't see it so you'll have to use your other senses to find it, which you won't enjoy, trust me.
LOL !