Picedit Source

[Kon-Tiki]

If I'm not mistaken, Picedit's written in C. I've just found a C compiler and a beginners tutorial to C. I'll TRY to make Picedit better, if someone could send me the source code. I guess it'll take lots and lots of time, because I don't know anything of the language yet, so don't expect a new version of it next week. I'll do what I can, and hope it'll work.
Every help is welcome.

-Kon-'What am I getting myself into this time'-Tiki-

[Joey]

i thought u said u were gonna work on pascal? thats what you told me. u should concentrate on 1 language at a time. but if you wanna do C its up to you.

[Nailhead]

I think it would be more useful if PicEdit was turned into a Win32 app.

Just my $0.02

[Kon-Tiki]

Joey> I looked at both for a while. Because Picedit's made in C, C's looking quite a lot like AGI and you giving up on Pascal made me consider learning C and then C++.

Nailhead> I'm working with C for 20min. now, so I haven't got the faintest idea how to do that. I'll get a compiler that runs in Windooze so that'll make it possible (bubye Pacific) and see how I can make Win32 programmes. Maybe that's the best way to start for that.
Also, I didn't have any problems with Picedit being a Dos program. It just wasn't really user friendly, so I wanted to enhance that (and maybe, if I know how, put a copying-pasting feature in it.)
I'll go look into it and try to make Picedit for Windooze.

-Kon-Tiki-

[Joey]

oh ok. well good luck kon tiki.

[Kon-Tiki]

Found the source. Now I can start the real work, although the Windooze programming's still far too complicated and difficult, I'll improve Picedit, even if it was with a tiny bit.
Any suggestions for the better Picedit (or for the programming ) are always welcome.

-Kon-Tiki-

[Chris Cromer]

The only thing I can suggest is making it a windows utility instead of dos... this would be more usefull and easier to work with.

[Joel]

you would have to practically rewrite the program, I think, to make it a Win32 app. The PicEdit source uses some assembly language, if I'm not mistaken, and accesses the hardware directly. Windows doesn't let you access the hardware directly.

I'm not sure editing PicEdit's source is the best place for you to start learning C (it uses pointers heavily, for starters). Though if you want to try it, go for it. As for writing a Windows program, a compiler that runs in Windows won't cut it. You'll need to learn either the Windows API or a library such as MFC or whatever the Borland library is called that hides the API from you.

I don't mean to be negative here, but how much programming experience do you have? Are you just learning your first "real" programming language (i.e. C or Pascal instead of AGI)? If so, I should warn you that you won't learn the Windows API or any of the Windows libraries overnight.

I also think the most useful extension to PicEdit would be to make it a Windows program, but before you try it, you'll first need to learn C; then once you have a pretty good grasp of C (you should be comfortable with pointers and bitwise operations at the very least) learn a Windows programming library.

[Parabola]

how about support for loading custom 16 colour palette files

also i think it would be great to make it win32.

it seems there are quite a few ppl out there with programming knowledge, i wonder why this hasnt come up before....

[Te Rangi]

It would be cool having picedit in windows. From Microsoft's perspective, DOS is dead, and picedit may die along with it.

BTW, this is the 4000th post on the AGI board!  

[Kon-Tiki]

Yeah, I wondered about why people with programming experience didn't do this earlier, but because they didn't it's up to someone else to do that.

For Joel: I've spoken to a friend of mine who's a professional programmer. He said the same thing about Dos and Windooze. He said it's better to start from scratsh and that it takes a couple of very frustrating months to learn C, but once you gain that knowledge, it's the best thing you can have. He also suggested to use DLL-files, which will be used (I think). Oh, and I never planned on doing this overnight.

First thing I'll try to do, is make a Windooze Picture editor. This'll mean I'll have to spend less time on Little Pirate, but I think this's more important for everybody, so I don't mind it.

As for the learning of the language:
  1) Tim (from the OS dev.) wants to help me to learn   making Win32 programmes (if I can get that d*mn newsgroup to work)
  2) I'll use lots of tutorials from the internet
  3) That friend suggested a book 'C' by Kernishgan (or something like that) and another guy, which I'll go look for in libraries
  4)I'll ask lots of help from friends who know C for Windooze
  5)I'll ask lots of questions here too (propably in this thread or in Off-topic.
Hope this'll be enough.

-Kon-Tiki-

[Joey]

i have visual C++ and a book for it. i also have an old book called Lets C. i have the disks with C on it, but they are 5 1/2". i have a 5 1/2" drive, but the disks are bad. what im saying is, if you need any help i can look it up.


plus, i am fine with this pic edit. take as much time as you need. if you want to finish your game first go for it.

[Te Rangi]

Your game should take priority over a new version of picedit as it is very good, Kon-Tiki. (Too many good AGI demos have fallen into the "I'll do it later/I won't) trap.

[Joel]

By "you won't learn it overnight", I mean it'll probably take you several frustrating months to get comfortable with Windows programming, the same way it will take you some frustrating time to get used to using C.

I've recommended these books in another thread somewhere on this board, but two of the most useful resources I own are C++ in Plain English by Brian Overland (has a very good C++ language/library reference) and Programming Windows by Charles Petzold. There's a good chance that almost any Windows programmer you'll ever talk to has heard of Petzold. It's sort of THE Windows programming book.

Like I said, I'm not trying to discourage you from working on this, I'm just trying to let you know that you've chosen a difficult first project. I happen to agree that C is a very valuable skill to learn. I'd also be willing to give you whatever C or Win32 programming help you might need.

[Joel]

One other thing: why use DLLs?

The main reasons for using DLLs are 1) to have code that can be updated (or replaced) without changing the programs that use it 2) to have code that can be used by multiple programs without having to include redundant code in each executable

If you're planning on writing a picture drawing routine or something like that which can be used by other programmers writing AGI utilities for Windows, then I can see the point. If not, then it sounds like increasing the complexity of an already complex project without much purpose.