Ray Tracing Box/RAY_CD.mdf/RAYTRACE/DTA/DFV.DOC

Text File | 1994-01-19 | 7.7 KB | 168 lines

                        DFV (Dave's Flic Viewer)
                          Rel 1.0.0 (??/??/??)
                   Copyright (c) 1993, 1994 by David K. Mason

  This is another alpha test version of my flic player, DFV.
  DFV plays .FLI, .FLC, .FLX, .FLH, and .FLT animation files.

  It should be able to handle any 320x200 .FLI you throw at it.
  If you've got a VESA-compliant SVGA or are running a VESA
  driver, then DFV will be able to display .FLC files
  with dimensions up and including to 1024x768 (in 640x480,
  800x600, or 1024x768 mode).
    If you've got a VESA 1.2 hicolor SVGA, or a hicolor SVGA with
  a VESA 1.2 driver, then DFV can also handle .FLX and .FLH files
  up to 800x600 (in 640x480 or 800x600 mode).
    DFV can handle .FLT files up to 640x480, only if you've got
  a VESA 1.2 truecolor SVGA, or truecolor SVGA with a VESA 1.2
  driver.

  For a while, because the protected-mode version of this program
  sometimes failed to initialize VESA graphics modes with some
  video cards, I included a real-mode version of DFV too.
  I'm pretty sure these particular bugs are fixed, so there
  won't be a real-mode version anymore.  The real-mode version
  was pretty useless because it often couldn't load reasonably-
  sized flics completely into memory and had to do a lot of
  painfully slow disk-swapping.

  If your flic is larger than 16MB, you're going to get some
  pauses when DFV reads from disk... DFV uses '286 protected mode,
  not '386 protected mode, so 16MB is the max even if you've got
  more in your machine.

  DFV requires RTM.EXE and DPMI16BI.OVL files from either the
  DTA archive or the DMorf archive.  When DFV goes "final", I'll
  include these files in the archive (or just bundle DFV with
  DTA, my program which builds .FLI, .FLC, and .FLX files).

  For a list of current command syntax, just type "DFV" with no
  parameters.

Version History
---------------

Rel. 1.0.0 (??/??/??) -
 o Fixed code that supports weird wingranularity settings,
   as you get with cards containing Cirrus chips.
Rel. 0.0.8 (12/20/93) -
 o Got rid of "tweaked VGA" modes... it was way too slow and
   often worked incorrectly.
 o Added support for higher resolution flics... up to 1024x768
   for .FLC, up to 800x600 for .FLH and .FLX.  .FLT will only
   go to 640x480 since most SVGAs won't go higher for truecolor.
 o Got rid of TS4000 support... now that VESA works right, it's
   a waste of code.
 o Got rid of some obsolete options... /FV, /FS.

Rel. 0.0.7 (12/01/93) -
 o Fixed some bugs that prevented DFV from playing some ANIPRO
   .FLC files.
 o Speeded up SVGA .FLC and .FLX display by about 11%.
 o Added support for .FLH (hicolor, but better compressed than
   .FLX) and .FLT (truecolor) flic files.  DTA is the only
   program that currently builds these, but I'm willing to
   share file format info with anybody who's interested.

Rel. 0.0.6 (11/24/93) -
 o Fixed some bugs which prevented DFV from playing some
   FLC files in tweaked VGA modes.
 o Added /FS switch, which forces DFV to go into SVGA display
   mode even when a .FLC's resolution implies one of the
   tweaked VGA modes (320x240, 320x400, 320x480, 360x480).
     SVGA display is higher resolution, has square pixels, and
   it's much faster because it doesn't have to bother with
   EGA-style bitplanes.

Rel. 0.0.5 (11/04/93) -
 o I think I finally got the DFVX/VESA bug fixed.
 o Added /L, which lets you specify how many times to
   loop the animation.
 o Got some more speed out of SVGA and hicolor display.
 o Got some more speed in 320x200 .FLI display...
   instead of using "tweaked" VGA for 320x200, I switched
   it to regular mode 13h display.
   (Tweaked VGA resolutions like 360x480, 320x480, 320x400, 320x240,
   etc. still display pretty slowly.)

Rel. 0.0.4 (09/30/93) -
 o Fixed a bug in the timer routines... if you typed DFV
   with no parameters to get the syntax, DFV forgot to
   turn off high-speed timing, and the system clock would
   go crazy, advancing a minute every few seconds.
 o Added direct support for TS4000 boards (hicolor only, so
   far) ... well, it works on the one I've tried it with, anyway.
   Hopefully it'll work on other folks' machines, too.
     Because it doesn't have to use real mode interrupts at all,
   it's faster than VESA and there don't seem to be the
   incompatibility problems I've run into using some VESA
   TSRs.
     Later on I plan to add TS4000 support for the 256-color SVGA
   modes, and also direct support for some other SVGA chipsets.
     (DFV seems to play .FLX files *lots* faster when using the
   TS4000 code... but this may be partly because I was using
   it on a '486 DX-50 with local bus video instead of a '486
   DX2-50 without local bus video.)
 o Added a /B command line switch, for specifying the number of
   64K buffers that DFV is allowed to try allocating...
   Unless told otherwise, DFV will allocate as many buffers as
   (1) it needs to hold the entire flic; and (2) are available.
   This can fill up memory real fast, so if you type
    dfv x.flc /b1
   DFV will only use up 64k for flic storage.
   Sometimes, when there isn't enough memory for a whole flic,
   there can be lengthy pauses when DFV stops to refill all
   the buffers with the next portion... the more buffers you
   use, the longer this pause will be.  If you use fewer buffers,
   there will be more pauses, but each one will be a lot shorter
   and less distracting.
 o Changed the keys for variable speed a bit... <2> now represents
   33 milliseconds per frame, which works out to about 30 frames
   per second (the speed of American television) and <3> now
   represents 42 milliseconds per frame, or about 24 frames per
   second (the speed of motion pictures).
   (FYI, <4> = 75, <5> = 125>, <6> = 175, <7> = 275, <8> = 375,
   and <9> = 500.  <1> still represents "as fast as possible",
   and <0> still represents whatever speed is built into the
   flic file.

Rel. 0.0.3 (09/17/93) -
 o Got flic speed working right in protected mode... I think.
   It messes with timing, but it looks like it sets it back
   to normal when it's finished playing.  I dunno, but this
   might cause problems with running DFV in a DOS window in
   Windows or OS/2.  Haven't had a chance to try it out.
 o Added variable speed based on keys 0-9, in a sleazy imitation
   of Trilobyte's PLAY program.
   1 sets speed to 0, the fastest that DFV can display a flic.
   2 through 9 slow the flic down in increments, with 9 being
     real slow.
   0 resets the speed to the speed from the file.
 o DFV was having problems playing some .FLX files produced
   by Tempra Turbo Animation... I think I've got this fixed.
 o Fixed a problem in the real mode version that made DFV display
   graphics in VESA modes *much* too slowly.  It was doing bank-
   switching calculations for every pixel when it didn't have
   to.
 o Got the protected mode version to play FLX files on a couple
   machines which had VESA TSRs instead of VESA hardware.
   Hey Dan R., does this work on yours?
 o DFV expected every palette chunk in a flic to have exactly
   256 colors in it... which was okay if it was playing a
   flic built with DTA, which always does, but was NOT okay
   for flics built in some other programs.
   Expanded the code to fully support partial and multiple
   color packets.

Rel. 0.0.2 (09/12/93) -
 o Split DFV into two versions: DFV (real mode) and
   DFVX (protected mode).
 o Fixed a problem with disk paging... whenever a flic
   was bigger than memory, it would crash when it finished
   playing the first chunk.
 o DFV couldn't play hicolor flics in resolutions other than
   640x480 correctly.  Now it can handle lower-res FLX files
   okay.

Rel. 0.0.1 (09/09/93) - Initial release