Subject: REND386 libraries available

From: Bernie Roehl <broehl>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 9:53:22 EDT

The latest REND386 libraries are now available for ftp.

The long delay was partly due to a seasonal disruption; Dave moved to a
different city and began a Masters degree, and Bernie has been busy getting
things set up for the start of the Fall semester.

The libraries are in devel4.zip, and the latest version of the demo (not
much different from the last time you saw it) is in demo4.zip; both are
on sunee.uwaterloo.ca in the pub/rend386 directory.

The current IP address for sunee.uwaterloo.ca is 129.97.50.50; note
that this has changed since the last release.  If you're at a site that has
a working nameserver, you won't need to worry about this.

If you don't have access to ftp, you can use the ftpmail service; just send
a mail message with the word help in the body (not the subject line!) to
[email-masked], and you'll receive mail back telling you how to use
the service.  (If you have problems using ftpmail, mention them in an
appropriate newsgroup -- not to the rend386 list!).

As before, neither Dave nor I have time to service requests for floppy disks
in the mail, or uuencoded files sent via email, or what have you.  We'd much
rather be working on the software.

Remember to transfer .zip files in binary mode, both when ftp'ing and when
downloading to your local 386 system.  This is by far the most common mistake
people run into when getting the package.  Also be sure to use the -d option
to pkunzip (or whatever unzipper you're using), since the zip files
expand into several subdirectories.

If you get devel4.zip, you should also get demo4.zip (since some of the doc
files in it are referred to by the docs in devel4.zip).

Note that some of the incompatabilities with different C compilers have
been fixed, but not all.  I'm developing using Turbo C++ version 1.00,
Dave is using a recent version of Borland C 3.00-something; both work fine.

Several people have reported attempts to port to Microsoft C,
but have found it impossible for a variety of reasons.  If anyone is
successful, please post your results.

Changes in the most recent version (version 4.00)

- coordinate system is now standardized (true left-handed system, not hybrid)

- Support for single-vertex polys, displayed as single points on-screen

- objects now keep track of what objlist they're on; therefore:

  - remove_from_objlist() no longer takes an objlist as its first parameter,
    but now returns the objlist the object was on before it got removed
  - next_in_objlist(), prev_in_objlist(), is_first_in_objlist() and
    is_last_in_objlist() no longer take an objlist as their first parameter

- new function: walk_objlist()

- splitting planes added to help reduce visibility errors

- "areas" added

- very simple "multi-tasking" added

- copy_obj function removed (should be at a higher level)

- object_bounds() renamed to get_object_bounds()

- support for multiple representations of an object

- various changes to all the segment-handling routines; no longer compatable
  with the old code, so be sure to check the documentation

- fast horizon-drawing

- faster palette loading, so faster startup

- high-resolution timer routines

- smarter joystick handling

The 3D pointer-handling code has also been rewritten, and is not compatable
with the old version.  Caveat programmer.

This may be the last release for a while (a few months), since both of us are
busy with other projects (mostly related to REND386).  For those of you
who are hoping for texture mapping (and there seem to be a lot of you), all
we can say right now is "stay tuned".

If you have any questions/problems/etc, please direct them to Bernie
([email-masked]) or Dave ([email-masked])
and we'll try to help.  Please don't post things directly to the
list unless you're sure they'll be of general interest; we're trying
to keep mailing list traffic as light as possible.

-- 
	Bernie Roehl, University of Waterloo Electrical Engineering Dept
	Mail: [email-masked]
	BangPath: uunet!watmath!sunee!broehl
	Voice:  (519) 885-1211 x 2607 [work]