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+4/1/94\r
+\r
+Don and I have decided to charge $50 for ROADS, plus $150 for the source\r
+code.\r
+\r
+4/2/94\r
+\r
+April Fools.\r
+\r
+ROADS is an attempt to play around with tiles and tiling methods.\r
+We were working on ROADS before Diana Gruber's PC Techniques\r
+articles on tiling came out, and I thought it would be nice to share\r
+some code showing a different mechanism for tiling.  It was written\r
+using Borland C++ 3.1 (by choice) and Fastgraph from Ted Gruber\r
+Software.\r
+\r
+ROADS uses 16x16 tiles that were drawn in Autodesk Animator.  They\r
+are stored on a hidden page in Mode-X and screen-to-screen copied as\r
+needed.  ROADS implements page flipping, so the frame rate will max\r
+out at 70fps (although I only get 29fps on my 386/40).  The screen\r
+scroll rate is 16 pixels, although 4 pixel scrolling could be added\r
+fairly easily by doing partial-tile copies.  The scrolling is pretty\r
+fast because, like in Diana Gruber's article, we copy the still\r
+valid portion of the screen to the new page, then update the new\r
+tiles.\r
+\r
+Tiles can animate (I'm pretty proud of my fire pit animation), even\r
+while scrolling, and fading.  The fading algorithm is based on a\r
+previous upload to the Dusk Devil BBS -- I took out the floating\r
+point calculations and made some modifications.  There's also a\r
+walking frog with red sneakers.  To discover what keys you can press\r
+when the program is running, type ROADS /?.  "Frog watch mode"\r
+doesn't work -- I wrote some bad code, and decided it wasn't worth\r
+fixing.  So much for the hacker ethic.\r
+\r
+The program uses Fastgraph's keyboard handler, so you can press, for\r
+example, down and right arrows together, and the view will scroll\r
+down right.\r
+\r
+Feel free to take any of the code you like for your own use.  I'm\r
+providing it because ... uh ... because I'm altruistic?  Nah.  The\r
+program doesn't really DO anything, just tests out some tiling\r
+algorithms.  Don flipped when I said I wanted to distribute the\r
+code, but when I reminded him that ROADS was an exercise in\r
+futility, he agreed we should share the pain.\r
+\r
+If you have any questions, comments, or conversation, I'd be pleased\r
+to hear from you.  Have fun!\r
+\r
+Dust Devil BBS (Home of Fastgraph):  Eric Lund\r
+Delphi:  ELUND or elund@delphi.com\r
+GEnie:  e.lund1 though I think I going to cancel it\r
+Compuserve:  74041,1147 or 74041.1147@compuserve.com\r
+\r