G A M E M A K I N G U T I L I T I E S for DOS GMUTILS June, 1995 First Release by Petri Hassinen Contact via Internet: phassine@alpha.hut.fi COPYRIGHT GMUTILS package is FREEWARE meaning that you may use and distri bute it as much as you want provided that no money is charged at any stage and no modifications are made to the contents of the original GMUTILS.ZIP file. DISCLAIMER Although the author of these programs and their documentation, Petri Hassinen, has spent time testing his creations, he makes no warranties either expressed or implied regarding the programs and accompanying material, their suitability for any purpose, or even that they will function as expected. In no event shall the author be liable for any damage caused by the use of, or any defects within, the software. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would especially like to thank my two friends for the support and ideas I have got. Mr. Petri Hodju helped a great deal in the process of designing the functionality of PPFIX and BOXCRS. Without him these utilities would not exist in their presen t form. Generally, he has also been an unfailing source of good ideas and suggestions. I also want to thank Mr. Saku Jalkanen who tested ANIME and in the process suggested some major improvements that were implemented eventually. He also created the graphics that I have incorporated in this package. HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS 500kb free disk space. VGA display and adapter. All Intel 80xxx processors sup ported. Preferably DOS 5.0 or higher. PURPOSE I have created and compiled this set of 8 utilities and other stuff for all the people out there who are interested in making a game of their own. Actually, many of these programs can be used generally for tasks not related to actual game making process. This package of utilities consists of two kinds of sets; one set mainly handles graphics while the other one consists o f programs of more general nature. If you are planning to create a game which would operate on a 320x200x256 graphics mode then you will find these utilities most useful. Namely, not one of the graphical utilities is capable of handling more than one segment of data at a time. You also need a painting program (or a file converter) that produces LBM files, e.g. Deluxe Paint (a trademark of Electronics Arts). If you feel th e project you will be working with more or less satisfies the above-mentioned facts, then you will probably find these utilities of great value. With them you should practically find the answer to very many predicaments. WHAT CAN THESE GAME UTILITIES DO? This is the question that certainly first pops into your mind. Well, I present a list that more or less illustrates the features that you have at your disposal. By combining the se features in a right manner, you can achieve much more than is presented here. The name of the utility is mentioned first and the accompanying feature list always refers to that particular utility. Please note that more information on these features can be found in separate documentation files. GRAPHICAL UTILITIES: PPFIX -Viewing pictures -Getting detailed information on picture and palette usage -Optimizing (removing redundancies) colors in a picture and palette -Moving palette entries in a picture -Efficient reduction of colors -Concatenation/combination of two or more pictures -Picture file conversions ANIME -Visual sprite animation (speed and shape) on a blank screen or on a background graphics BOXCR -Normal sprite generation e.g. for a sprite routine of your own -Normal sprite data translator i.e. converter back into visual (recognizable) format BOXCRT -Tweaked mode sprite generation -Tweaked mode sprite data translator OTHER GENERAL UTILITIES: FILECROP -Cutting selected portions out of a file FILEFLIP -Flipping a file BINTOC -Creating C files out of b inary files and enabling them to be linked into your executables PAPA -Enabling other programs to be called with multiple input files. Is a good help to make full use of other utilities in case multiple files need to be processed CRSPR -Not a program but a batch file that uses the other utilities to produce sprites from multiple sprite files 'Sprite' refers to a moving o bject, e.g. a moving car in a game. PC technology does not support hardware sprites but similar effects can be achieved indirectly by copying and erasing portions of graphics on the screen. HOW DO I LEARN TO USE THEM? Each of the utilities has been programmed to follow the same philosophy in the accessibility of help. By typing only the program name you see the "gist" of the matter, which is the supported switch struct ure by that particular utility. In addition, each utility has an on-line help that can be accessed by adding a switch /? after the program name. The on-line help is designed to contain all the features and functionality in a nutshell. More general level help on the use of each program is given in documentation files. Although the documentation files do not have a table of contents, I have shared the information at least i nto the following chapters (typed in capital letters), which should be easily found: PURPOSE = what is this utility in the first place? OPERATION = what can this utility do? EXAMPLES = some practical examples on how to use the utility IN CONCLUSION = famous last words or further information To familiarize yourself with the contents of GMUTILS.ZIP, please refer to the file FILEINFO.TXT. All the files and their purposes are generally described there. REQUEST If you have any questions that cannot be found within the documentation, I will be happy to answer them. I would also like to get comments or possible bug reports concerning this release. Although I do not right now seem to have the time to develop these utilities any further I will, however, accept any suggestions on how these utilities could be improved. Before yo u rush to comment on any enhancements or bugs though, you should read the file IMPROVE.TXT which contains the possible improvements that have occurred to me. All in all, I'd like to know if there are people, who find utilities like these of value. If I get no feedback, I'll drop the project and the release you now have will be the first and the last one. Enjoy! EOF