PIX Information

What is a Game Kernel?
Well, it's really simple. A game kernel contains all the necessary routines to handle the core of the game. By having a complete game kernel available to you, you will be able to concentrate on your game coding, and not on the most basic core of it, like drawing a sprite, loading images, etc... A good game kernel must also contain specialized functions to take care of the input devices such as the keyboard, the mouse and the joystick. In brief, the game kernel handles all the user interactions. With such a kernel linked to your program, you only write the code relevent to your game. This makes developement a lot easier and faster.

What is PIX?
Well, Pix *IS* a game kernel, written for TP/BP7, and currently being ported to C. Sure there are a lot of other "game kernels" out there, but this one is slightly different then most. It's developed by anybody who wants to on the web. Jonathan Nicolas personally started the core of it, and many people joined and programmed more modules. So we could say it's made BY programmers FOR programmers! One of the best things about this library is its totally FREE! You can use PIX in your game, for either personal or commercial uses, without any charge nor obligations. Ofcourse all the programmers who have worked on this project would appreciate that you mention you used PIX in your game's credits. This is not an obligation though.

• While PIX is free to use, each programmer holds his/her copyrights to thier portion of code that they have added to PIX.
• You may distribute PIX as much as you like in anyway possible, except you are not allowed to charge any fees for it, except for any media costs. So called "CD-ROM" companies may only distribute PIX on a commerical CD-ROM after notifing Jonathan Nicolas.
• While you may make any modifications you desire to any of the code contained in the PIX library. You may NOT re-distribute any MODIFIED copies of the PIX library.

Right now I think we will all (anyone who has looked at what PIX can/cant do) agree that PIX is not a complete package. But if enough people help out, in time it will trully become something great.

As you certainly know, the most popular video mode used by games today is mode 13h (MCGA), which allows a resolution of 320x200 with 256 colors. Even though many games are starting to move towards super vga, MCGA is a great starting place for beginning game programmers because of it's simplicity and efficiency. So, PIX uses mode 13h solely. Perhaps as time goes on we could make a SVGA (vesa) module.

PIX Features:

• Mode 13h support only. 320x200x256.
• Virtual Pages for flicker free animation.
• Sprite Handling.
• EMS/XMS support. (soon to be implemented for sprites and virtual pages; no extra coding will be needed from you to use this feature)
• Input Devices supported: custom Keyboard handler, Joysticks, and Mice.
• Simple Sound Blaster support.
• [*** list not completed ***]
• ...

Just check out the module page for information about the various modules contain in PIX, that will give you an idea on what it can do.

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