JPDEV

See JPDEV Source Code

NOTICE!
  
  I have not updated this site since 2003.  However, there is still useful
code here, and maybe even a little inspiration too.  The forum is as popular
as ever, but the chatroom seems to have died quite a bit.  Oh, well.
  Back in 2003 this site crashed somehow and I didn't have the patience
to redo everything, which is why some page titles and links don't match up.
Maybe someday I'll get this site going again.  Maybe not.  Either way, coders
make the world go 'round so keep at it guys!

Today is Jan. 29th, 2008



For almost a year now, i've been working on a graphics developer. what
is that exactly? it's kind of like a sprite editor, tile maker, map maker
and animator all rolled into one program. the whole reason i started this
thing was on a dare. i can't remember who it was that dared me, but i do
remember i had some limitations which were as follows:

1)program must only be 1 module
2)no GOTO's (which i NEVER use anyway)
3)no GOSUB's (also which i never use anyway)
4)no XMS or EMS memory (stuck with 640k)
5)must use mouse and be full graphics (gui) e.g. no text, therefore, PRINT,
  LOCATE and other text related keywords are never used.

upon receiving the dare, i was fully confident that i could do this and do
it very well. here is a listing of the current and future capabilities:

°2D and 3D sprite editing
-includes more drawing features than standard sprite editors
-can save sprite data in many different formats(masked or unmasked for
 transparency, BMP, GIF, PCX, TIFF and program specific formats)
-rotation of image when drawing in 3D. for example, PP256 only allows
 rotation in 90° increments. this allows rotation to a fraction of a degree)

°Tile maker
-for single or multilayer maps
-more drawing functions than most tile makers

°Map maker
-allows maps to the size of 4096x4096 tiles
-allows single or multilayed maps

°Object maker
-allows the creaton of graphic objects which can be imported into other
 graphics images

°Palette maker
-design paletts specifcally for your needs
-save paletts in different formats

°Font maker
-create fonts to add to images or use externally
-can make many different popular font sizes
-can save in different formats

°Animator
-allows the animation of images
-'joints' can be defined within an image and then controlled to create
 specific movement
-also, with joints defined, a starting position can be declared along with
 an ending position, the number of frames can be chosen, and the image will
 be animated start to finish with the option of saving the frames to a data
 file.
-saves time. instead of drawing an image in many different positions, just
 draw it once and animate

°History
-lists the actions you have made to an image in order of occurrance

°Undo feature
-allows the undoing of last 3 actions

**BONUS TOOLS/ACCESSORIES

°CALCULATOR
-digital appearance
-over 70 functions
-16 digit readout
-capable of array storage

°RPG Stat Creator (this will probably be external also)
-easy way of creating player/enemy stats for RPG characters
-choice of different equations until you get the output you desire
-output can be saved as a data file

°GAMES (accessible from main prog, external files)
-will not be part of main program. i can do this and still keep with the
 dare as this was just a bonus i thought of adding when you need a break
 from creating
-several games will be included of a decent caliber. the specific games
 have not yet been decided upon

°Code injector
-adds code to your QB program in the form of subroutines
-makes using created images/fonts much simpler

°File manager(separate from main prog)
-fully manage all drives
-full drive editing capability (copy, delete, info, etc.)



**Other notes
°full gui. includes text boxes, scroll bars, windows, pull down menus, etc.
 i put a VMM (virtual memory manager) in to handle the windows. my goal is
 to make this the best graphics developer in existence. i want to hear
 PP256 (among others) being deleted left and right. it's also my goal to
 have more copies of this downloaded from QB45.com than the future library
 (which is their #1 download).

**Special note
°Help feature. my intention on providing help is not only to help the user
 with my program, but also to help them with programming. the help section
 contains everything from a full INTERRUPT list, dozens of tables and
 charts, port listings, glossary of all things computer related, listing
 and definitions of file extensions, and more. the help file to end the
 need for other help files. also, i have thought of including tutorials
 within the help section. not sure if i'll do that yet or not.

Help data is stored notated by a scripting language i created for this
project. All access to and within the help section is done by hyperlinks
which i encoded into the data. it's much the same as surfing the net.
click on the highlighted text to see whatever it is you want to see.

it was thought impossible for anyone to put all of these things into a
single module. the games and file manager are the only things not included
in the main module (still not sure on the RPG Stat Generator). however,
when the file manager or a game is accessed, it is windowed over the main
program, same as accessing anything that is built in. after the file
manager or game is exited, you will find yourself still in the graphics
developer. it's a very smooth operation. as for every other feature that's
jammed into the single 64k module(interpreted), when compiled, i expect
the EXE to take LESS memory space than PP256 which doesn't do near the
number of things this can.

anyway, any thoughts or comments would be appreciated
i may have forgotten to mention a feature or 2. if so, i'll get around to
it eventually.

-JP_Doom