IT WORKS!

Everything is fixed with the latest video drivers -- transparency, calling SetOrthoGraphicProjection after text printing, setting the graphics mode... it all just works now exactly as it should.

Thank you all! And forgive me for bashing Fladimir when it was all my fault for not getting the latest drivers

Glad to hear it! 'tis a great day for OpenLayer and the like.

Now back to work on my APSL and 'Dread' game!

-- I am going to start a thread in the off-topic forum about why I don't get to spend as much time as I want on this tho

I have antialiasing switched off. It makes it run even faster anyway. Antialiasing is nice for some things but it's not always really necessary.

I guess that does look nicer since you can type in the exact parameters instead of (true, false, true). But it's not really that big of a problem, in my opinion.

Code is untested, but I hope it gets into openlayer(tm)

Now we need arcs!...

Arc( float x, float y, float start_angle, float end_angle,
     Rgba col, float accuracy ); //ummmm... pie slice
ArcOutline( float x, float y, float start_angle, float end_angle,
            Rgba col, float lineWidth, float accuracy );
ArcGradient( float x, float y, float start_angle, float end_angle,
             Rgba innerCol, Rgba outerCol, float accuracy );

Fladimir: For polygon vertex lists, do you have any plans to add template functions to support
arrays of generic objects
with x and y members? (object.x, object.y)

In addition to arrays of objects being supported,
users could support a regular array of x,y values like so:

<code>
//please excuse any syntax errors

struct myvertex{
float x;
float y;
}

float array1[20]; //filled with x,y values
*myvertex array2;

array2 = array1;

Polygon(,,array2,10,,);

Just a quick question for Mr. Gorf - Why haven't you placed openlayer on the SF CVS yet? It would allow us to help patch your code much more efficiently, not to mention it provides a nice way to "roll back" potentially buggy changes.

You could even move your openlayer page to the SF page hosting services...

Hmm... maybe the C/C++ extension for eclipse would have such functionality? I'll look into it.

Huh! good idea.:) Will this be the first gamelib with rotatable ellipses?

Instead of OL forcing us to use it's data structures,
Template Polygon(); functions would allow us to store our vertices almost any way we like.

Mr. Gorf:
LineListGradient(); ? // good for movement trails
LineList(); ? // just to be complete

Did you get my message that openlayer 1.82 has the demo compiled for allegro 4.0 but comes with the 4.2 dll?

I feel a great disturbance in the force. I think Mr. Gorf might be preparing a new release... (in which the demo is probably fixed)

conalleg: Depending on it's internal structures, maybe OL (glyph) could read from conalleg.:D

TileMap rendering : having only 1 function keeps it simple

TileMap( x, y, map_x, map_y, map_width, map_height,
       *BITMAP )  //points to an array of *BITMAPS

Transforms could handle the rest such as centering map coordinates center-screen while rotating and scaling the thing.

clip area: good for split-screens & minimaps

SetClipArea( int x, int y, int width, int height);
relative screen coordinates:
All players see the same world area no matter what the resolution.8-)
Coders could easily change the hardware resolution & artwork by just adding 1 line after SetupScreen(); :

SetRelativeCoords(1200);
//only the relative x-resolution is specified
//In the case of a 4:3 window ratio, the relative y-resolution automatically becomes 900 in this case.

Setup::SetupScreen(); should automatically call
SetRelativeCoords(int width); to support exhisting code.

conalleg- A simple scrolling console component for Allegro
http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/~fcecin/conalleg/
Scrollable text in a fixed size text buffer.
You can read & write to it.
...

So, If I wrote my game for 640x480, but changed the res:

float stretch_x = new_screen_w / 640;
float stretch_y = new_screen_h / 480;

SetStretch( stretch_x, stretch_y );

cool. no need to gum up the api
I don't see why it wouldn't work with any onscreen SetPosition();