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  10-May-2005
Site news 

Finally I've setted up site at new hosting: http://www.clootie.ru !

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Please take some notes:
  • Mirror at Narod.ru will still exist for some (extended) time, currently even with full (but fixed) content.
  • Starting from now users visiting Clootie.narod.ru will be automatically redirected to new site.
  • New and existing links to this site should be changed to http://www.clootie.ru.
  • In addition to links site owners could add banner-button shown above.
Thanks!
  09-May-2005
DirectX SDK examples 
All DirectX SDK samples for Delphi / FreePascal, previously available at February 2005 SDK Update page, now updated to comply with April 2005 Update of DirectX SDK.

Most changes in samples are due to updated sample framework (or as MS calls it now - DXUT). New framework was redesigned to allow more modular approach. For examples GUI part of framework now can be easily incorporated in your applications - without any (paintfull) changes to app DirectX initialization / finalization functions. One notable exception is remove of DXUTEffectMap file/class, but it was never used in any sample, so...

PS. Both framework and samples can be downloaded from SourceForge CVS repositary.
PPS. Additional media files required by samples can be downloaded from CVS too.
  08-May-2005
DirectX SDK 
MS DirectX SDK Finally I've uploaded Delphi / C++Builder / FreePascal versions of Microsoft DirectX 9.0 SDK April 2005 Update.

Microsoft still doesn't allow redistribution of D3DX9 dll inside your application installer package. Probably they will never allow it to minimize security issues. Seems future redistribution solution for applications with minimum redist size will be based around internet-driven DirectX installer.

  List of changes:
  • D3DX9.pas - Microsoft in new release:
    • Added: UVAtlas API: D3DXUVAtlasCreate, D3DXUVAtlasPartition, D3DXUVAtlasPack
    • Added: D3DXFX_NOT_CLONEABLE flag for effect files
  • dxerr9.pas
    • Changed: DXTRACE_xxx now are inlined functions (were supported by compiler)
  • DirectShow9.pas - syncronized with latest headers from DSPack suite
  Download updated headers, libraries and helper DLL's for: Headers for Delphi and FreePascal and helper DLL libraries can also be downloaded from SourceForge.
  12-Mar-2005
NVIDIA Cg 
Cg ToolKit Updated NVIDIA Cg toolkit for Borland Delphi and C++Builder to Release 1.3 from Jan-2005. Supported Delphi versions: 5 and up.

Fixes to Delphi headers are minimal (couple of new profile ID's and single function prototype changed). CgGL.lib library for C++ now has been generated by coff2omf instead of implib (due to bug in later).

Release 1.3 of the NVIDIA Cg Toolkit includes the following features and improvements (new features in bold):

  • New 'vp40' profile, which enables texture sampling from within vertex programs
  • New 'fp40' profile, which provides a robust branching model in fragment programs, and support for output to multiple draw buffers (MRTs)
  • Support for writing more than one color output (i.e., MRTs) in the arbfp1 and ps_2* profiles
  • New semantics to access OpenGL fixed-function state vectors from within ARB_vertex_program and ARB_fragment_program
  • New -fastprecision option for arbfp*, fp30, and fp40 profiles, to use reduced precision storage (fp16) when appropriate.
  • Interfaces, a language construct that facilitates the creation of general, reconfigurable Cg programs
  • Unsized arrays
  • Parameter instances may be created and shared between multiple programs
  • Parameters may be marked as compile-time constants, leading to more efficient compiled code
  • Support for 16 profiles:
    • vs_1_1 for DirectX 8 and DirectX 9
    • vs_2_0 and vs_2_x for DirectX 9
    • ps_1_1, ps_1_2 and ps_1_3 for DirectX 8 and DirectX 9
    • ps_2_0 and ps_2_x for DirectX 9
    • arbvp1 [OpenGL ARB_vertex_program]
    • arbfp1 [OpenGL ARB_fragment_program]
    • vp20, vp30, vp40 [NV_Vertex_program 1.0, NV_Vertex_program 2.0 and NV_vertex_program 3.0]
    • fp30, fp40 [NV30 and NV40 OpenGL fragment programs]
    • fp20 [NV_register_combiners and NV_Texture_shader)
  • Cg Effects Explained document 
  • Improved runtime functionality
    • Core runtime library for parameter management and loading programs
    • Runtime library for DirectX 8 based applications
    • Runtime library for DirectX 9 based applications
    • Runtime library for OpenGL based applications
  • Documentation updated 
  • CgFX beta support for DirectX 8, DirectX 9, and OpenGL
Due to lack of time I'm not able to provide examples of Cg Toolkit usage.

Download updated Cg toolkit for Borland Delphi and C++Builder...
  05-Mar-2005
DirectX SDK examples 
New translated DirectX SDK samples for Delphi and FreePascal: ShadowVolume, SkinnedMesh.

ShadowVolume image SkinnedMesh image

More detailed description is available on download page.

PS. Both framework and samples can be downloaded from SourceForge CVS repositary.
PPS. Additional media files required by samples can be downloaded from CVS too.
  03-Mar-2005
DirectX SDK examples 
New translated DirectX SDK samples for Delphi and FreePascal available. Note: it's recommended to update D3D Framework (Common.zip) archive. Updated framework better handles error conditions during device creation and user side object initialization. I also recommend to download updated DXerr9.pas header from SourceForge CVS.
New samples include: HLSLWithoutEffects, Text3D.

HLSLWithoutEffects image Text3D image

More detailed description is available on download page.
  26-Feb-2005
DirectX SDK examples 
New translated DirectX SDK samples for Delphi and FreePascal available. Note: it's recommended to update D3D Framework (Common.zip) archive. This archive now includes new DXUTsound.pas unit for simplifying DirectSound usage. Actually this unit is more or less a bugfixed version of DSutil.pas unit distributed with Summer 2003 DirectX SDK.
New samples include: EffectParam, Instancing.

EffectParam image Instancing image

More detailed description is available on download page.
  26-Feb-2005
FreePascal 
The Free Pascal Team is pleased to announce that FPC version 1.9.8 (aka 2.0.0-RC2) is available and ready for download.

Relating to DirectX SDK samples converted to pascal this means: less tricks needed for WideString support and this FPC release comes with updated windres.exe utility which can't compile/convert many of Delphi generated RES resource files. In coming days I'll be updating samples resource script files (RC) to be compatible both with Borland resource compiler and GNU winres 2.9.5.
  20-Feb-2005
DirectX SDK 
For compatibility with previous releases of Delphi DirectX SDK's I'm providing here D3DX92ab.dll compatible with December 2004 SDK Update D3DX9 library.

Note: this DLL provided only for compatibility and not required by current Delphi DirectX SDK. You need to download it only if you have application specially requiring it at startup. This can happen if you have Delphi application compiled against previous Delphi / C++Builder SDK release and developer forgot to distribute this DLL with application.

Alternatively this DLL can be downloaded from SourceForge right from this release: Helper DLL libraries for December 2004 SDK Update.
  16-Feb-2005
DirectX SDK examples 
I've updated all samples from December 2004 DirectX 9.0 SDK Update converted to Delphi / FreePascal to "Februrary 2005 SDK Update". Even then samples are not modified in new SDK release I've to update them as "helper" d3dx92ab.dll is not supported anymore (and most sample binaries available on download pare required this DLL).

PS. Both framework and samples can be downloaded from SourceForge CVS repositary.
PPS. Additional media files required by samples can be downloaded from CVS too.
  13-Feb-2005
DirectX SDK 
MS DirectX SDK Microsoft released February 2005 update to DirectX 9.0 SDK, so I'm presenting Delphi / C++Builder / FreePascal versions of it.

The most notable change in this release for Delphi / FreePascal / C++Builder developers is "D3DX Is Now a Dynamic-Link Library" even for Visual C++ users. Quote from documentation:

Starting with this software development kit (SDK) release, D3DX is being released as a dynamic-link library (DLL). Updates to D3DX in the future will continue to ship as uniquely-named DLLs that exist side-by-side on the system. This allows for continued improvements to the library without imposing regression risk. D3DX9.lib is still provided as the import library for the DLL for your application to statically link against.
The D3DX DLL included in the SDK is automatically installed as part of Installing DirectX with DirectSetup. If your application does not use D3DX, you can remove D3DX from the redistributable (see Directx redist.txt for details).

  List of changes:

  • D3DX8.pas
    • Fixed: LockAttributeBuffer
  • D3DX9.pas
    • Microsoft in new relase added these functions: D3DXCreateEffectEx, D3DXCreateEffectFromFileEx, D3DXCreateEffectFromResourceEx; and couple of additional methods: ID3DXPRTEngine. ClosestRayIntersects / ShadowRayIntersects.
    • Fixed: LockAttributeBuffer
  • dxerr9.pas
    • Reworked to allow applications using this unit to run without dxerr9ab.dll available on target systems.
  Download updated headers, libraries and helper DLL's for: Headers for Delphi and FreePascal and helper DLL libraries can also be downloaded from SourceForge.
  01-Feb-2005
DirectX SDK examples 
New translated DirectX SDK samples for Delphi and FreePascal available. Note: it's recommended to update D3D Framework (Common.zip) archive.
New samples include: AntiAlias, CompiledEffect, DepthOfField, EnhancedMesh, OptimizedMesh, ProgressiveMesh.

CompiledEffect image DepthOfField image

EnhancedMesh image AntiAlias image

OptimizedMesh image ProgressiveMesh image

More detailed description is available on download page.

PS. Both framework and samples can be downloaded from SourceForge CVS repositary.
PPS. Additional media files required by samples can be downloaded from CVS too.
  31-Jan-2005
DirectX SDK 
MS DirectX SDK I've updated DirectX headers for Delphi / FreePascal.

  List of changes:
  • Direct3D9.pas
    • Added D3DSTREAMSOURCE_INDEXEDDATA and D3DSTREAMSOURCE_INSTANCEDATA constants introduced in Summer´04 SDK for extended support of instancing (I don't know how I've missed them initially...)
    • Borland C++ and C++Builder compatibility fixes
  • D3DX9.pas
    • FreePascal fixes: ID3DXInclude, ID3DXAllocateHierarchy, ID3DXLoadUserData, ID3DXSaveUserData, ID3DXAnimationCallbackHandler "interfaces" and functions using them - FreePascal needs special handing for them.
  • D3DX8.pas (fixes available only in Dec-04 DX9 SDK - I've not updated previous releases)
    • fixed: D3DXIntersectTri
  • DirectShow9.pas - syncronized with latest headers from DSPack suite
  • Other
    • Some formatting fixes in number of units: tabs replaced with spaces, fixed some level 2 comments preventing FreePascal from compiling headers then not in Delphi compatible mode.
Download headers: for Delphi, FreePascal from this site, or download them from SourceForge.
  20-Jan-2005
FreePascal 
Issue (1) mentioned yesterday (one have to rebuild samples each time instead of make) was succesfully fixed today on in FreePascal compiler. Fixed version is already available at cvs.freepascal.org.
  19-Jan-2005
DirectX SDK examples 
MS DirectX SDK I've updated common DirectX framework and all available samples for Delphi / FreePascal from October 2004 to December 2004 DirectX 9.0 SDK. In addition to usual bug fixes and new features from MS side, framework and samples now have better FreePascal 1.9.6 compatibility and mostly bug fixes in IME edit control (DXUTgui.pas).

Compatibility: Now with common framework (Common.zip) I'm supplying imm.pp headers for FreePascal, so no additional files are needed to compile SDK examples under FreePascal. The only restrictions I'm aware is what examples should be: (1) rebuid each time or compiler will break at compilation (or compile with DEBUG conditional defined, so INLINE support, still bugged in FPC, will be disabled); (2) compile with register variables optimization [-Or] compiler switch - I still need to investigave this bug in FPC. So then compiling supplied DirectX samples it should be enought to execute this command: "fpc BasicHLSL.dpr -B -Or" (for BasicHLSL sample).

PS. Both framework and samples can be downloaded from SourceForge CVS repositary.
PPS. Additional media files required by samples can be downloaded from CVS too.
  03-Jan-2005
FreePascal 
The Free Pascal Team is pleased to announce that FPC version 1.9.6 (or 2.0.0-RC1) is available and ready for download.
This is a pre-release of version 2.0. As such, it is considered a beta of the upcoming 2.0 release, which is expected to be released in one or two months from here.
While this is officially a beta, we believe that this version is release quality. We would very much like you download and install this version, and give any feedback regarding bugs and other issues.
If no major bugs are found, version 2.0 will be released in a short timeframe.
  
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