Some frequently asked questions:


Q: I think you forgot to include the sources of some programs?
A: No, I just couldn't include some units where I'm unsure about the legal
   issues: they were once published in a magazine and I changed them a bit
   to fit my needs. I didn't want to get into _any_ troubles, so I decided
   not to publish them.

Q: I don't see (a documentation for|the sources of) TRANSLAT.EXE, either!
A: I just included it for the single purpose to translate ANIVGA.PAS; if
   you think of using it for your own sources, drop me a note)

Q: GRAB won't popup!
A: As GRAB does disk writes, it can't popup while MSDos is in a critical
   section (unfortunately, MSDos isn't reentrant, as we all do know).
   Sometimes, GRAB doesn't even pop up, if it could. That's because of the
   TSR-unit I use (I think it is because the unit doesn't supply an appropriate
   INT28h-handler). Sorry, but I didn't found a better TSR-unit til now.
   If you have a more radical image grabber, then use that, save the picture
   to disk, use an image viewer program to display it and grab then!

Q: GRAB shows a messed up capture box|screen!
A: The application played some tricks to the VGA-card; reboot and start GRAB
   again, this time supplying "/BIOS" as parameter -- and hope the best!

Q: I can't run MAKES; my machine displays nothing|a mess when I start it!
A: MAKES uses a 640x400x256 video mode only available at SuperVGA cards.
   Although the BGI-driver tries to identify the chip-set of your VGA card,
   it may fail on some, even if your card would supply this mode!
   If it doesn't work even if you do have a SuperVGA card, then please drop
   me a note, specifying which brand of VGA-card you use (especially which
   chip-set)!
   If you do know of a way how to trick a *standard* VGA card into this
   resolution, then write me and the next version will run on all cards
   --promised!
   'Til then, you'll have the (ugly) MAKES of V1.0, sorry!

Q: MAKES sometimes hangs when I start it or repeats an error, when I quit!
A: These are spurious errors I encountered, too. It hangs when trying to
   initialize the mouse driver - I suppose this is a problem of the mouse
   driver! I couldn't track down the other error, sorry. If you find a way
   to reproduce the error, then let me know!

Q: How may I speedup things?
A: Naturally, STATIC background is faster than SCROLLING backgrounds, but you
   can speed up SCROLLING backgrounds, too: make sure that StartVirtualX
   always is a multiple of 4 (that is, StartVirtualX MOD 4 = 0), because then,
   ANIVGA can (and will) use the VGA's write mode 1 which is a lot faster than
   normal write mode 0.
   Another idea is to shrink NMAX: if you don't need more than 100 sprites
   (say), then change that constant and recompile ANIVGA!

Q: I'm using scrolling backgrounds and would like to display some items|text
   at the same (absolute) screen position.
A: Transform your coordinates, using StartVirtualX and StartVirtualY! See
   EXAMPLE6.PAS for a small example!
