On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 06:07:17PM +0800, Orlando Andico wrote:
 
> it's a virtualization of your video card.
> your video card appears to be an area of memory.
> 
> so by writing to that memory (e.g. you can define a pointer to point to 
> the address, so simply by using indirection) you can draw graphics in a 
> sort-of system-independent way, without using X.
> 
> if you remember the old CGA graphics card, di ba 0xb800:0000 yung address 
> nun? and if you write data into that area, it will show up on-screen?

this reminds me of how we used to program in Apple/Atari/Commodore
BASIC with PEEK and POKE to screen memory addresses, then later
learning how to do that in 6502 assembly. i remember attempting to
write a silly program for the apple that allowed you to define your
own fonts (8x8 bit) which i had mapped in a DIM (?). this was all done
in Apple BASIC and i had started writing a basic D&D type game (D&D
was "uso" back in Pisay during my freshman year, and we later
graduated to AD&D and its ilk)

i wonder if they still program games with character sets instead of
complete screen bitmaps these days, or do we all do blits now?

eric
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