This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (91 messages)
>> That's contradiction, not an argument! No, it isn't.
James, >> I find it precarious that anyone could patent the GIF format, given that so many shareware and freeware applications have been developed which make use of the format. Actually it's the LZW compression method that has a patent. Unisys has had the patent for a long time, but…
Jennifer, My program DFV (which is available in the Animation Sources library in this forum) can play FLI, FLC, FLX, FLH, FLB, and FLT animations. –dkm
Fred, The funny thing is, I read somewhere, a programmer on the development team went off on his own to add protected mode to Windows. It wasn't even an officially sanctioned project. It might have been years before we even got 286 pmode in Windows if he'd waited to get…
Yes, that would be its main use, though you could play it back too in 24-bit. –dkm
Jim, I tried the Warp I beta, and liked it. I was never able to even install Warp II successfully. Maybe the final release will work better. –dkm
David, 32-bit anims would be useful for storing individual layers with alpha information (for compositing). –dkm
Fred, PMJI, but… >> … right about true 32-bits being faster than the DPMI-type >> 24-bit stuff. But it was the original Windows that led to this >> bastardization in the first place. Now they're finally "fixing" it >> in Win95 … Actually, the evil geniuses at Microsoft aren't responsible…
David, Not yet. Right now you can do 1-, 8-, 15-, 16-, and 24-bit. I've been thinking of adding 4-bit and 32-bit, though. How useful do you think it would be? –dkm
Andrey, Could you run the VESAINFO program that comes with DFV and send me the resulting VESAINFO.LOG file? –dkm
David, If you already have 1.1.1, then 1.1.2 just fixes a bug that caused it to play 800×600 16-bit flics in 15-bit mode. The only other change is that I documented some undocumented features. (I had no reason to document 1-bit flics until I also uploaded a version of DTA…
Gilles, DTA is fine for building flic animation files, but it won't play them. I've got a player program called DFV which can handle FLIs and some other formats. The latest version is currently available over in GRAPHDEV. (This forum has an earlier version which I haven't gotten around to…
Bruce, Try the PowerSoft forum. I'm sure they'd have plenty of info about PowerBuilder. –dkm
Nik, I got the problem flic, found that the problem was something that I already fixed, and sent an updated DTA to the user in question. BTW, the problem was the first byte on each line in BRUN chunks. The FLI format requires this byte to be set to the…
#125676-
FLC2GIF
Message #125817
Nik, There's probably something a little unusual about the FLCs. If I can get a copy of one, I'm sure I could figure out just what, and make DTA a bit more tolerant. –dkm
Blane, (The current release of DTA is 2.1, not 2.1 beta, by the way.) To convert a .FLC to .FLI with DTA, you could type: DTA XXX.FLC /R1 which will just cut out a 320×200 square from the middle of the FLC or (if its resolution is less than 320×200)…
Blane, Nope, renaming a 320×200 FLC will not make it a FLI file. There are other differences between the formats, including compression method and palette format. (You could translate a FLC to a FLI with DTA, though) –dkm
I don't know about NUMPIC, but I know that my program DTA can convert a sequence of DIBs to a FLC. DTA's available somewhere in this forum's lib as DTA.ZIP. –dkm
Jeffrey, My program DTA (available in the lib) can create a variant form of flic with 24-bit color (.FLT files) or 16-bit color (.FLH files). As someone else mentioned, these files do get pretty big compared to .FLC files and play more slowly… but if there's not too much happening…
Mark, It's called DFV, short for "Dave's Flic Viewer". Doesn't display GIFs, though. –dkm
Alexander, Is that the latest (1.0.3) release that's giving you the runtime error? Error 2 means that it can't find or can't open some file. Let's see, are you running the .EXE from a different directory? Did you make the EXE read-only? What's the size of the new EXE? –dkm
Paul, I did a little program called BUILDSV (in the lib somewhere as BLDSV.ZIP) which appends a flic to a viewer stub to make an .EXE. The resulting .EXE will play on any VGA if you start with a .FLI, or on VESA-compliant display cards if you start with a…
John, DTA (in the lib) can convert flc frames to GIF, TGA, PCX, etc. (There's also probably some way inside of Animator Pro to do this.) –dkm
I've got a flic builder called DTA which can create (nonstandard) 15- and 24-bit animations, and a viewer called DFV which can play them. DFV is in the lib here in ASOFT. The final release of the version of DTA which can create the hicolor and truecolor flics isn't online…
Kent, The shareware renderer Polyray (version 1.7) has a utility for converting text to 3d objects using Truetype fonts. It's also pretty simple to build an animation in which the text rotates or moves around. Polyray builds a series of TGA files which you could convert to a FLI or…
Jesse, Way back in the days before the 7th Guest, Trilobyte released a shareware viewer for .FLI and .FLC files called PLAY. It was real quick and came in a small .EXE file. They've stopped supporting it, sad to say, now that their game business has taken off. I've done…
Ed, The new BUILDSV is now in this forum's lib, as BLDSV.ZIP. I think it's in area 9 (what's new). –dkm
Ed, Whoops, I must have compiled it with the 32-bit system module. That was stupid of me, especially since it didn't really increase the speed hardly at all. I'll build a new one that'll run on a '286. –dkm
Mark, Yes, I agree Trilobyte's play is great… which is why I included it with both my books. –dkm
Mark, I believe Trilobyte stopped supporting Play when their game, the 7th Guest, hit it big. –dkm
Ed, The latest versions of all my programs are available on CIS. DMorf can be found in GRAPHDEV's morphing lib as DMORF.ZIP, DTA in GRAPHDEV's animation library as DTA.ZIP (also a beta called DT21PB.ZIP), DFV in GRAPHSUP's animation players library as DFV.ZIP, and BUILDSV both over in GRAPHDEV's animation lib…
Mark, Could you tell me a bit more about this problem, I don't think I understand. If they get "unable to initialize svga mode", how can they see the 640×480 flc ? With another player that doesn't require VESA? –dkm
Mark, Maybe… I'll think about it. –dkm
Loren, DTA can extract frames from an FLC, just type "DTA XXX.FLC /FT" to create .TGA files, or "DTA XXX.FLC /FG" to greate .GIFS, etc. But grab the beta copy of DTA 2.1 that's over in GRAPHDEV… it does a better job of reading FLCs than earlier releases. -dkm
Mark, Yes, I'm thinking about making a version of BUILDSV that sticks large flics into XMS/EMS. (Also a new version of DFV that does that instead of requiring protected mode with a dos extender). Haven't done any work on it yet, tho. –dkm
Mark Whoops, didn't think of that. I'll add some extra disk-space checking to the next release of BUILDSV. Or at least have it bomb if it runs out of space while writing. Thanks for catching that. –dkm
Greg, Congrats on the book. Just saw in in a local bookstore. It's next on my list of books to get, even though I don't use 3DS. Looks like the CD has a bunch of intense texture/image maps. –dkm
Maura, I think most SVGA cards come with some sort of a VESA driver even if they don't have VESA in hardware. Kendall Bennett makes a program called UNIVBE, a VESA driver which will run with almost any graphics card known to humanity… you should be able to find a…
Ted, Sure, I can probably make it to your 3DS User Group meeting. Where and when? –dkm
Mark, "Lynn, Lynn, city of sin, you never come out the way you went it." See if your friend recognizes that little phrase. 🙂 –dkm
Jonas, Sure, if somebody would send me a free copy of 3DS and the IPAS toolkit 🙂 –dkm
Mark, I live way down south in Boston, MA. –dkm
Mark, Sorry to hear about the snow. I'll have to call my sister, who lives in St. Laurent, and give her my condolences. Fortunately I think I've seen my last snow for the season down here in Boston. –dkm p.s. Hopefully I'll get the 002 bug fixed tonight.
Mark, Aha, we're making some progress… this time we got an error message so we can track this down. A runtime error 002 means "file not found". So for some reason the EXE either doesn't know what its own name is or can't find it for some other reason. Are…
Erland, You could try DTA, which is in the lib somewhere… it's a shareware animation conversion utility. Just use a command line like "DTA OLD.FLC /ONEW.FLC". It'll read the flic, build a new palette based on the colors it finds, and then create a new flic. –dkm
I'm not sure how much help looking at the DFV code would be… it's about 4000 lines of mixed Pascal/assembly (mostly assembly) with a total of about three comments. What particular problems are you having with reading flics? I might have some ideas. –dkm
DTA *1.0*? Wow, where'd you get a copy of that one? 1.0 is real old (early '91) and there have been a lot of changes and bug fixes since then. It would not surprise me to hear that it produced buggy FLI files. Might you be able to try a…
Mark, Whatever the problem is, it looks like the BUILDSV player was making it even worse by erasing the screen right after it wrote out an error message… –dkm
Mark, I'll try uploading 1.0.1. One of the fixed I made get it to at least produce an error message if it fails again… I hope. –dkm
Maura, I'll take a look at your file, and try to get the problem straightened out. –dkm
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