Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!scea!peter_alau@playstation.sony.com
From: Elliott Lee <tenchi@netmagic.net>
Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.programming.2d_graphics
Subject: Re: General question.
Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 17:07:28 -0700
Organization: Cisco Systems
Lines: 84
Message-ID: <35524CC0.B7F2B618@netmagic.net>
References: <3551E529.39700A51@chowfam.demon.co.uk> <6isrju$aek3@chuka.playstation.co.uk> <35520452.5385308E@netmagic.net> <35521703.6AC7A819@chowfam.demon.co.uk>
Reply-To: tenchi@cisco.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: dhcp-e-39-237.cisco.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.03 [en] (Win95; U)

James Chow wrote:
> Elliott Lee wrote:
> > Mark Wilson wrote:
> > > >I was wondering if all TIMs have to loaded into main memory
> > > >first then copied over using LoadImage or is it possible to
> > > >load them directly into the VRAM?
> >         [...]
> > > Once TIMs have been transferred into the frame buffer, then generally
> > > speaking you don't need them anymore in the main memory any more. This space
> > > could then be used for your program's data.
> > >
> 
> How do you free the space used up by the TIMs after transferring them
> to VRAM?
> But they weren't malloc'ed in the first place. They were just put there.

Like Mark Wilson said, just allocate a buffer.  I don't think you have
to clear it because it will get overwritten.  I like to make a general-
purpose buffer:

	char *workbuf;

	workbuf = malloc( 65536u );
	if( workbuf==0 )	// fail on malloc?
	  exit(0);
 
Now see below.

> >
> > Extending this: take all your TIMs, compress them into 1 data file,
> > upload that to the Yaroze, extract each TIM 1 by 1 into a spare memory
> > scratchpad and upload them to the frame buffer.  It'll let you save
> > tons of space with those large 16-bit/24-bit images.
> >
> 
> How?
> Can you give me a suitable algorithm?
> 
> Cheers.
> --
> jc

Assume that you've got your images compressed in a PKZIP-like
archive and it's sitting in memory at 0x80140000.  Assume that
you have been given a compression/decompression library.  Then
you could do something like:

	#define	TIM_PACK_ADDR	0x8014000
	int	i;
	char *workbuf;

	// get some space for extraction
	workbuf = malloc( 65536u );
	if( workbuf==0 )	// fail on malloc?
	  exit(0);

	for( i=0; i<GetNumberOfFilesInPack( TIM_PACK_ADDR ); i++ )
	  {
	  // extract from the pack at TIM_PACK_ADDR the file i into
	  // the working area pointed to by (char *)workbuf.
	  // Always use the same memory space for extraction.
	  ExtractFromPack2Mem( TIM_PACK_ADDR,i,workbuf );

	  // load the CLUT and TIM image data.
	  LoadImage( ...CLUT stuff here... );
	  LoadImage( ...TIM data stuff here... );
	  }

	// okay, we're done.  clean up memory by deallocating the
	// working buffer
	free(workbuf);

For a compression/decompression library check out Jeff Lawton's (SCEA)
stuff:

	http://yaroze-world.org/

Under the "Win Stuff" category, there's a WAD builder that he made.
It has some compression libraries which you link in with your Yaroze
programs to decompress stuff in memory.

- e!
  tenchi@netmagic.net
  http://www.netmagic.net/~tenchi/yaroze/