[Ohrrpgce] Feature: Secondary, stationary overlay

[TeeEmCee]

Well, people would have to understand that it would be a slow feature,
but in theory, couldn't one suspend overlay to simply counter the
slowdown?

Actually, how much would the slowdown depend on how many tiles are
actually overhead, verses the cost of doing another pass? Can we
expect much change if the overlay only draws a few tiles?

TMC

On 5/17/05, Bob the Hamster <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 01:08:36AM +1200, TeeEmCee wrote:
> > *jolts list (hopefully) back into discussion*
> >
> > Here's the idea:
> >
> > An extra layer (on a per map basis) above overhead tiles but below
> > textboxes, strings, etc could be used by designers to display icons
> > and useful info such as current weapon, or bars for status
> > indications. I think this would be a pretty cool feature, and prevent
> > alot of pain caused by trying to do this with npc's. People could even
> > put black bars at top and bottom for a wide screen effect :D
> >
> > After the regular overlay is drawn, a second overlay could easily be
> > added with another drawmap call in displayall with transparency. The
> > second overlay could be stationary by using fixed map coordinates, or
> > even using special 16x10 scroll and pass arrays (The memory could come
> > out of limiting the size of any maps with this feature to 31840
> > instead of 32000).
> 
> Although I agree that would be cool, I would be concerned that it would
> result in pretty serious slowdown, especially in DosBox, where
> screen-drawing is the speed bottleneck.
> 
> > I think not using special arrays would be preferred, because it adds
> > bloat, but otherwise people have to set aside an area of the map for
> > the overlay, where tiles with O set are drawn, but this definitly
> > makes manipulation with plotscripting easier.
> 
> Keeping data in separate arrays is only a few bytes more bloaty than
> hacking the data into one existing array-- and the simpler code would
> make up for those few bytes.
> 
> > Now, what would be really cool would be the ability to specify some
> > npc's to be drawn over this layer (mouse cursors, prehaps?)
> >
> > Related, I'm wondering why, throughout the code, instead of simply
> > using the commands setpassblock and readpassblock (which are in the
> > assembly code, and just need to be added to allmodex.bi), instead
> > scroll() is swapped with pass() and the commands for reading/writing
> > maptiles are used.
> >
> > TMC
> 
> do setpassblock and readpassblock get used at all? *checks* Oh, yes. I
> see that they are not used. I am not sure if I had a reason for doing
> that or not. Using them would be worth it if it results in simpler code
> overall.
> 
> ---
> Bob the Hamster
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