December 2006 - Fractdev - mailman.xmission.com

use of _fastcall
by Richard 16 Dec '06

16 Dec '06

Does anyone know the reasons behind the sprinkled use of _fastcall throughout the code? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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fractint CVS policy
by Tim Wegner 14 Dec '06

14 Dec '06

For many years the fractint team has used simple diff files and occasional complete zipped source packages to communicate versions. This worked well. Everything was public and anyone could follow along. The CVS repository is relatively recent. Jonathan started it and we're still puzzling over how to organize it. Jonathan has put out diffs and source packages for changes he committed to CVS, so no one is cut out; CVS acess is not a prerequisite for permitting. There are two hosts and two CVS repositories. Both of these require shell access on the respective hosts. Damien Jones manages fractint.org users on his host at our request. He has say over who he is willing to give access to - after all, he is donating his hosting to the team. Very few people have access, and not all those who have access use it - it's basically Jonathan and myself. I have purchased space from a shared hosting provider, and hosted fractint.net there (a mirror of fractint.org) We made a copy of CVS and added Rich at his request so he can use CVS help with his refactoring the video interface. I control who has access to fractint.net. It will be mostly Rich's call when to make what he is doing public. He would probably find it distracting to have anyone looking over his shoulder before he's ready. It would be great to have an increase in participation on the developer team. Rich's branch may make that possible, but probably not until he gets it to a working alpha version. We can rethink the mechanics of CVS/Subversion access as needs dictate. I hope this helps expain the current setup. Tim

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Compiling the branch
by Richard 13 Dec '06

13 Dec '06

Also, for anyone else out there that wants to compile the branch; it should compile just fine with the Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition that is available for free download from Microsoft's site. You won't be able to build the deployment project, but you should be able to build the code and an EXE, although I haven't tried it with the express edition yet. It will convert the solution and project file to 2005 format and then it should just work. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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favicon questions
by Tim Wegner 11 Dec '06

11 Dec '06

I made a 16x16 favicon.icon and put it in the root directory of both fractint.net and fractint.org. It's just the default mandelbrot, which seems as good an image as any. I also added this statement to index.html in <head> </head> secion: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> If you are not familiar with this, the little image shows in the URL field of your browser. Seems to work for FireFox. Works with IE 7.0 on fractint.net but not fractint.org. It is supposed to show in subdirectories also. If anyone knows anything about favicons, let me know if I did it right. At first it only showed in the top directory, I fooled around with it and now it seems to show in subdirectories, not sure what I did. On other sites I manage I just placed the favicon image in the root directory and everything just worked. We haven't talked about this, but I registered fractint.net and am hosting it on one of the cheap shared hosts (dreamhost). It has a mirror of fractint.org which is at fractalus. Tim

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Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic Edition
by Richard 11 Dec '06

11 Dec '06

I thought I had given all of these away, but I found about 8 more in the basement while cleaning up last weekend. Tim and Jonathan: do both of you have a copy of this? If not, email me your USnail address off-list and I'll send you one. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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first text screen rendering
by Richard 11 Dec '06

11 Dec '06

I've got the intro screen rendering now.... <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/2006/12/10/fractint-for-windows-first-te…> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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cmp_bf vs. cmp_bn?
by Richard 11 Dec '06

11 Dec '06

In calcfrac.c, routine StandardFractal, the HEAD has this comparison: line 2212: if (cmp_bf(abs_a_bf(sub_bf(bftmp,bfsaved.x,bfnew.x)), bfclosenuff) < 0) if (cmp_bf(abs_a_bf(sub_bf(bftmp,bfsaved.y,bfnew.y)), bfclosenuff) < 0) caught_a_cycle = 1; notice that its two calls to cmp_bf(..., ...). In the float-only version, the same code has this comparison: if (cmp_bf(abs_a_bf(sub_bf(bftmp,bfsaved.x,bfnew.x)), bfclosenuff) < 0) if (cmp_bn(abs_a_bf(sub_bf(bftmp,bfsaved.y,bfnew.y)), bfclosenuff) < 0) caught_a_cycle = 1; With one call to cmp_bf and one to cmp_bn. Does anyone remember fixing this bug? The first one looks correct to me. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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Intro screen scrolling!
by Richard 11 Dec '06

11 Dec '06

Now I've got the intro screen scrolling... There's something wrong with my input though, I'm not getting key presses. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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*name?
by Richard 10 Dec '06

10 Dec '06

In looking at differences between the float-only version and the head, I'm seeing a number of changes relating to recognizing the '*' at the start of the fractal name. What is the nature of this change and what does it do? Should I prefer the float-only code which doesn't check for names starting with *, or should I prefer the code on the head? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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Limping through the intro()
by Richard 10 Dec '06

10 Dec '06

I've got the branch limping up through a stubbed out driver through the intro screen. I'm thinking I should have a text window displaying before the weekend is out. Hopefully it will be responding to keyboard input as well. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

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