Are Intuition and Graphics libraries used in hardware programming?

[Nightfox]

Hi all,


I was wondering if Intuition and graphics libraries have any place when doing hardware non-system programming on the Amiga or if they are only used in system programming. For example do screens and windows even have any meaning anymore?

[Tigerskunk]

There are some games using this.
Battle Chess and Marble Madness for instance.

[mr.spiv]

Common example of "mixed use" back in days was to graphics.library to open RastPorts and print text (using topaz) at the init phase and then bang the hw. Today graphics.library is essential to take over & restore the display/view in a way that hw banging in "native mode" works on RTG amigas.

[Minuous]

By a strict definition if it's "non-system programming" it will not be using system libraries such as these at all. But as mr.spiv pointed out there is a continuum between that and full use of the OS for everything. If the OS is going to keep running in the background it's wise to at least allocate what you will be needing (memory, sound channels, etc.) so the OS and other programs will not try to use them.

[mr.spiv]

Originally Posted by Minuous

By a strict definition if it's "non-system programming" it will not be using system libraries such as these at all. But as mr.spiv pointed out there is a continuum between that and full of use of the OS for everything.

Okay.. AFAIR there are also demos/intros that do mix both like taking over the copper and partly IRQ vectors but still continue using graphics.library to draw stuff.

[meynaf]

You can use intuition.library to open your screen and then access bitplane data directly. Not sure it can still be called hardware programming, though.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by meynaf

You can use intuition.library to open your screen and then access bitplane data directly. Not sure it can still be called hardware programming, though.

As soon as the screenmode is redirected to an RTG mode, this will crash you.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

As soon as the screenmode is redirected to an RTG mode, this will crash you.

The OS doesn't have any right to do this. I'm asking for a planar mode, i get a planar mode. For using RTG modes, you have to ask for them explicitly.