| XTILE is fast,full-feature VGA driver hand written in x86 assembler. It has support for sprites?,tiles?, a mouse?, fonts?, and undocumented VGA modes. I toyed around with VGA after Michael Abrash wrote about Mode-X in Dr Dobbs Journal. At the same time?, an acquaintance was working on a C application that needed reasonable fast tile based graphics. I offered to complete a library if he would give me a small cut of his revenue. Much of the original architecture?, such as stack based parameters rather than structs (which would have been a tad faster)?, was catered to his needs. There are three versions of XTILE--1.0?, 2.0?, and 2.1. Version 1.0 was a shareware that expected payment for commercial usage or the source code. Version 2.0 included split screen?, a mouse driver?, and other new features. It was to be a commercial-only release?, but I sent a copy to all the registered shareware customers. It seemed only right. For 2.1?, I had to add 386 support to a few functions?, as well as an adapted scaled-bitmap routine?, so I could complete a sale. On top of a few bug fixes?, this was the final version?, and it was used in a couple commercial games?, as well some personal projects?, such as the REVERSEM game. Ultimately?, I think people paid for XTILE because I gave the source code for cheap. A few years later?, open source projects made it obsolete. However?, at least one of my customers was a significant contributor to one of the major open source library efforts?, so I'd like to think XTILE lives on. Nevertheless?, this was my last shareware project. I completed documentation only for the 1.0. None of my commercial customers asked for new documentation for 2.X. They did get my personal support and they had the source code so they didn't really need it. I briefly played with SVGA modes and had some success?, but I saw no point in adding them to XTILE. I published my results and retired the project. |
