Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!pasteur!cory.Berkeley.EDU!koster
From: koster@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Herbert West)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: I would love some advice...
Message-ID: <4902@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 8 Aug 88 18:31:14 GMT
References: <6058@xanth.cs.odu.edu>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: koster@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Herbert West)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 27

(He wants to do a chess display, and wants to know about doing the graphics)
Use a painting program like Deluxe Paint II and draw the figures. Put them
in some order, and perhaps draw boxes around them.

Then in your program, read in that file every time you want the program to
run. Treat it as an IFF, grab the graphics and keep them in your own
format, whatever is handiest.

This way, if you want to change the graphics, all you have to do is change
the picture file, not re-compile/assemble your program. Also it makes
end-users happy as they can costomize the graphics if you intend this for
distribution.

I suggest the following in your program:

Create a bitmap of whatever resolution the picture file will be. Have it
look exactly like a bitmap(you must initialize fields like bytes per row and
numrows and the bitplane pointers). Then read in the IFF file, into this
bitmap, and use the BltBitmap() function to copy from this hidden bitmap
to a visible one, created say with an OpenScreen().

For an IFF reader, look at FF16 and later updates. These provide source in
'C'. Also someone wrote a program called MicroShow which reads and displays
an IFF file. I think he will give out the source for some money or pleading
or something.

Good luck!