GAMESMITH - a FREEWARE library

Internet: alexad3@icebox.iceonline.com
See the FTP site ???? for your copy!

Copyright (c) Jan. 1996 by 
Alexander J. Russell, and Bruce Miller
ALL rights reserved.

A new Freeware game library for Xmode 
programming under DOS.

Suitable for:

Action games - overhead/side scrolling
     Fast bitmap drawing
RPG's (Role Playing Games)
     and an easy to use, full featured, GUI.

Gamesmith is a library of ASM and Borland C 
compatible modules in the MEDIUM memory model, 
DOS real mode.

Gamesmith includes powerful utilities to be 
used by programmers to quickly create a wide 
variety of games. Gamesmith is based on the XLIB 
xmode libraries.

A copy of DPAINT II (trademark of EA)
is also very useful!

Who is GameSmith for?

You know C and want to make real cool games. 
You know about near and far pointers. You are 
comfortable with pointers and structs.
You know how to use LIBS, and how to LINK C programs.
You don't need to know any Assembler.

-----------------------

GameSmith Features!

 * Xmode, your choice of various resolutions.
 * Visual GUI editor
 * Visual Animation Engine Editor
 * Visual TileMap Editor
 * Automatic erase rect handling 
 * Timer tweaking
 * Page flipping
 * Full set of graphics primatives. 
     (blit, line, rect, circle, etc...)
 * Colour cycling support, simple fades
 * Palette grabbing tools
 * Tools to convert LBM (dpaint), and PCX art 
    to various FAST formats.
 * Generic Data Library maker
 * Debugging support
 * XMS access via easy to use functions
   similar to file i/o functions
 * Fast bitmap scaling


VISUAL GUI EDITOR
 *  Draw and edit your GUI on the screen
 *  Move and re-size all gadgets with mouse
 *  Clone gadgets
 *  Easily edit all attributes 
      (colour, size, font, etc...)
 *  Edit tab order
 *  One function call in your project to use the gui

 *  Gadgets
        Buttons
          text
          graphics
        Sliders  * proportional thumbs
        Text input with complete editing
        Pick-lists with built in sliders
        Radio buttons
        Text
 * Mouse, keyboard, and joystick support built into GUI.

SPRITE ANIMATION ENGINE:

 * Fast, object-oriented animation with 
   VISUAL EDITING of sprites without re-compiling 
   application. Can replace or modify sprites for 
   an existing application with no change to source 
   code.

 * Fast drawing, erasing, clipping of several types of 
   bitmaps.

 * Scaling of linear bitmaps with automatic time-based
   increase/decrease size to limits.

 * Fast animation of large, irregular shaped bitmaps 
   with new .PKB packed bitmaps with automatic switch
   to standard PBM bitmaps for clipping at edges only.

 * Object-oriented sprite instance data structures
   with user modifiable attributes to support drawing
   and erasing, timing of scaling, movement and bitmap
   frame changes, movement control, collision detection,
   storage and retrieval from disk, etc.

EDITSPR.EXE:  (Edit Sprite) VISUAL EDITING UTILITY:

 *  Visually edit all frames of internal animation:

       * Adjust center of each frame.
       * Adjust collision rectangle for each frame.
       * Adjust speed of internal animation cycle.
       * Adjust 4 sets of attach points: (eg: the point
               at which a bullet appears when shoot gun).

 *   Preview how the animation will look in your 
     application.

TILE MAP ENGINE:

 * Background tile maps larger than screen size with:
      
 * Tile maps can be created or modified with 
   VISUAL EDITING of maps without re-compiling 
   application. Can replace or modify the 
   maps for an existing application with no change
   to source code.

 * Maps include following elements:
     * background tiles of any size (width in 4 pixel 
      incr's)
     * dressings (larger bitmaps) attached to map, drawn
      both under (low dressings) and over (high 
      dressings) sprites
     * anims (animated bitmaps) attached to map

 * Animation engine support (hooks)

 * Object-oriented map instance data structures with 
   user modifiable attributes to support drawing and 
   erasing, movement and bitmap frame changes, movement
   control, collision detection, storage and retrieval
   from disk, etc.
  
OTHER FEATURES
  
 * Interrupt driven Mouse I/O
   * Easy mouse drawing
   * Use any art for mouse pointer

 * Joy Stick support

 * Complete keyboard handler
   * multiple key presses
   * handle wierd key-presses easily
      access via general event queue and 
      array of 'down-keys'

 * ALL Input goes into one easy to 
   handle event queue
  
 * Debugging support
   register deinit functions
   printf to an MDA (second monitor)
   track memory
   check for memory overwrites
   hot keys to 
        display all allocated mem
        display on-exit functions
        pause

 * Fast 3D Polygons
   Clipping
   Solid colour
   Texture maps

   ACK!!! no polygon editor...

 * Script language to make simple intro screens
   * Move and scale sprites
   * Automatic clipping
   * Time or position control

* Completely Missing! (and not coming soon)
    * Sound
    * Doom-ish type stuff

Special thanks to: 
Themie Gouthas for writing the original Xlib.
Micheal Abrash for the fast 3D polygon code,
and being the 1st to publish xmode code 
(that I know about).

Freeware version:
 All include files
 Library, Debug version 
   (meaning all debugging tools are enabled)
   Borland C++ 3.1 compatible
 Demo source code
 Demo exe's
 All tools exe's

 Nothing is crippled.
 No time Limits
 No Royalties

-------------------------------------------
Unzipping gamesmth.zip
after you download it:

Create a directory to install Gamesmith to.
copy gamesmth.zip there.
Unzip it with the -d parm:
        pkunzip -d gamesmth.zip

-----------------------------------------
And if you want the complete source code:
 Full source code in C and ASM

 cost: $100.00 Canadian.

 Order by emailing

 Internet: alexad3@icebox.iceonline.com

Please READ GAMESMTH.DOC
