DeluxeDraw Animator 2.0 README.TXT file Copyright (c) 1998 Timothy Edwin Roden. All rights reserved. March 29, 1998 ______________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS 1. License agreement 2. About DeluxeDraw Animator 3. Video compatibility 4. Improving performance 5. Running DeluxeDraw Animator from Windows 95 6. Differences in the Demo and Registered versions 7. How to order the Registered version 8. What's new in version 2.0 ______________________________________________________________________ 1. License agreement No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any other language or computer language in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, whether it be electronic, mechanical, magnetic, optical, manual or otherwise, without prior written consent of the author. Timothy Roden disclaims all warranties as to this software, whether express or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, functionality, data integrity or protection. MS-DOS is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Trademarks of other companies mentioned in this documentation appear for identification purposes only and are the property of their respective companies. The registered version of this software is for use by a single person on a single computer. The demo version of this software may be freely copied and distributed. However, any commerical, business or government use of the demo software is prohibited. ______________________________________________________________________ 2. About DeluxeDraw Animator DeluxeDraw Animator is an advanced paint program/image editor for the DOS operating system. 13 video modes are supported up to 1280x1024x256 colors. Supported file formats are PCX and BMP. ______________________________________________________________________ 3. Video compatibility DeluxeDraw Animator supports several video standards, including VGA, VESA and selected S3 chips. S3 video modes offer enhanced performance by taking advantage of the special graphics acceleration hardware built on some S3-based video cards. Currently, DeluxeDraw supports video cards with the following S3 chips installed: S3 964/968/Virge. On some machines it may be necessary to start the computer with Windows 95 and then shut down to DOS in order to run S3 modes. On other machines it may be necessary to boot the computer directly to DOS. If you have an S3 card and are having trouble running the S3 modes, try both of the above methods. DeluxeDraw also supports the VESA standard for Super VGA graphics. Many Super VGA graphics cards are VESA compatible at the hardware level, requiring no special action on your part in order to use DeluxeDraw VESA modes. If you are having problems getting VESA modes to work correctly, try one of the following: I. If you have the VESA driver that came with your graphics card, install the driver and then run DeluxeDraw. Most software VESA drivers can be installed from a program you run at the DOS prompt. Consult the documentation for your graphics card or computer for installation instructions and VESA compatibility. II. Call your graphics card or computer system manufacturer or check their Internet site. You may be able to obtain a driver from them by mail or downloading from the Internet. III. Obtain the Universal VESA VBE driver from SciTech Software. A Windows and DOS-only version of this software exists. The Universal VESA VBE driver supports over 160 different graphics cards. It is available in a shareware-version so you can try it before you purchase it. Contact SciTech at www.scitechsoft.com or call 1-800-486-4823. Note the Universal VESA VBE driver is part of their Display Doctor package. ______________________________________________________________________ 4. Improving performance Here are some tips for improving the performance (speed) of DeluxeDraw: First, if you are using a 16-color video mode, you may actually see less performance than if you use the same resolution 256-color mode. That's because 16-color modes are included with DeluxeDraw for historical reasons and run using emulation software. In other words, the program thinks it's in 256-color mode. A layer of 'translation' software takes care of the actual 16-color hardware details. There is quite a bit more processing taking place inside your CPU in order to run 16-color modes. For the greatest increase in speed and rendering, try using a graphics card that has an S3 964, 968, or Virge chip installed. DeluxeDraw recognizes and uses the graphics acceleration capabilities of video cards with these S3 chips. Finally, when using VESA modes, DeluxeDraw recognizes two VESA standards - VBE 1.2 and VBE 2.0. VBE (VESA BIOS Extension) 1.2 uses a banked frame buffer scheme developed orignally for machines with 640K maximum RAM. VBE 2.0 has the ability to utilize a linear frame buffer scheme which can be much faster since there is no need for bank switching software. Unfortunately, most video cards and VBE software drivers only adhere to the VBE 1.2 standard. If your video card or driver only supports VBE 1.2, try to get an updated VBE 2.0 driver from your computer or video card manufacturer. If that fails, try the Universal VESA VBE driver from ScitTech Software (see Video compatibility section above). The UNIVBE supports the VBE 2.0 standard which may allow your video card to run using a VBE 2.0 linear frame buffer which can increase the performance of DeluxeDraw considerably. However, even though UNIVBE supports the VBE 2.0 standard, not all video cards can support a linear frame buffer. SciTech can provide more details for your particular video card. Of course, since UNIVBE is available on a try before you buy basis, it can't hurt to try it. To find out if DeluxeDraw is using the VBE 1.2 or 2.0 standard, watch the messages that display just before DeluxeDraw switches into a video mode. These messages go by quickly, so hit your pause/break key to stop them. You will be able to tell which VESA standard DeluxeDraw is about to use for that particular video mode. ______________________________________________________________________ 7. Running DeluxeDraw Animator from Windows 95 DeluxeDraw for DOS cannot generally be run from a Windows 95 DOS box. That's because, like most DOS graphics-mode programs, DeluxeDraw writes directly to the video hardware to achieve the highest performance. Unfortunately, this interferes with Windows. However, there is a way to run DeluxeDraw, or any other DOS graphics program, from Windows 95. It involves creating a shortcut icon. Here how it's done: 1) In Windows, open a directory window where the program file is - DD.EXE. Use the Windows Find utility if you don't know what directory DD.EXE is in. The Find command can be found by clicking the Start button on the taskbar. 2) Right click on the program icon (DD.EXE) and select Create_Shortcut. A shortcut icon will appear. 3) Right click and drag the shortcut icon onto your desktop. 4) Right click on the shortcut and select Properties. 5) Click the Program tab. 6) Click Advanced. 7) Check the box MS-DOS mode. 8) Click OK. 9) Click OK. 10) You can now run DeluxeDraw by double-clicking on the shortcut icon. Windows will switch to DOS-only mode and run DeluxeDraw. When you exit out of DeluxeDraw, you will be switched back to Windows. 11) From the Properties dialog, you can adjust other attributes of the shortcut such as the name and icon style - nice features to help you customize the way the shortcut looks. ______________________________________________________________________ 6. Differences in the Demo and Registered versions The demo is fully functional in an all VGA video modes. All other modes have 'save file' functionality disabled. The registered version of DeluxeDraw operates in 13 video modes. Owners of the registered version receive free technical support by email for 1 year and are entitled to free minor version updates, patches and bug fixes. In addition, registered version owners will also receive discounts on future upgrades (a version for Windows 95/NT is planned). ______________________________________________________________________ 7. How to order the Registered version To order the registered version, see our website at www.trstudios.com for ordering information. ______________________________________________________________________ 8. What's new in version 2.0 Version 2.0 of DeluxeDraw has been renamed DeluxeDraw Animator due to the inclusion of animation capability. Animations can be created, edited and saved. In addition, options are available to control how an animation is played including setting the frame rate and movement offsets. Other enhancements and bug fixes include: Increased speed of scrolling and drawing in VESA modes, particularly in zoom mode. Fixed several bugs with picking up custom brushes. Added a custom grid capability (see OPTION menu). Can now save files in either PCX or BMP formats.