PAlib BETA: Sweating the small stuff

“Little things kill…” someone once sang. It means that we shouldn’t take small details for granted because it’s what makes big things better; sweating the small stuff does work. Most homebrew developers are a perfectionist lot–one small flaw can make or break a program. Such is the case with Mollusk‘s new PAlib BETA version; it may have a lot of minute changes but that’s what makes this one exceptional.

For example, according to one program user, he noticed a significant change in his test background conversion, it was 20 times quicker from the last version! In short, homebrew game development gets faster and more efficient with this particular update. We’ll be waiting for more versions, minuscule or not, from the great Mollusk.

For those new to PAlib, it’s an extraordinary program that allows one to create a homebrew game or application like the Mario DS-Game & Watch, Breakout DS and Squash DS. After seeing these homebrews, doesn’t it make you want to download this program?

Download: [PAlib ver as of 9.30.06]

The full changelog awaits after the jump!

Important changes/updates:

Sound updates/fixes
PA_EasyBgGetPixel and the new diagonal collision example
Video functions migrated to PAFS and working
PAGfx speed boost (the beta version I already published)

New Stuff

[Sound] Added PA_SetSoundChannelVol(channel, volume) to change the sound’s playing volume… Added SoundChannelVolume as an example to show how it works.
[Sound] Added PA_SetSoundVol(Volume) to change the global volume level, and the example to go with it…
[SpriteTouch] Added PA_SpriteStylusOver, similar to SpriteTouched, but which doesn’t check if the stylus is held or not… Can therefore be used with Stylus.Released 🙂
[DualBg] Added DualEasyBg functions, and an example to go with it : DualBackgrounds/EasyBg
[8bit] Added PA_InitBig8bitBg(u8 screen, u8 bg_priority) : Same as PA_Init8bitBg, but with an available size of 256×256. Takes up a little more space but allows correct vertical scrolling…
[SpriteSys] PA_ResetSpriteSysScreen(screen) added, to reset the sprite system only for a given screen. Highly untested, might give unwanted results, especially for running animations, please report any bug 🙂
[PAFS_Bg] Added void PA_FSBgNameLoad(u8 screen, u8 bg_number, char* bg_name) to load a background by inputting it’s name (should be easier 🙂 ), and the example to go with it…
[BgPixel] Added PA_EasyBgGetPixel(screen, bg_number, x, y) (to get the palette color number) and PA_EasyBgGetPixelCol (same thing but returns the u16 color). Added 3 examples to go with it (tested with normal backgrounds, largemaps and infinite tile backgrounds…). Scrolling is of course taken into account 😉
[Platform] Added Platform4 example, which changes the collision system to use PA_EasyBgGetPixel, and can now manage diagonal collisions 🙂

Updated Stuff

[PAFS] Added PA_FSGetFolder(char *name), to get a folder number from its name… Returns -1 if not found
[Sound] SoundBusy doesn’t flush the cache all the time anymore
[PAGfx] Better total time output (useless, but I don’t care Blue_Colorz_PDT_05. Removed the Palette generation purcentage, it always takes less than a second now :p
[PAGfx] Completely new tile detection code, should be MUCH faster when converting very big/complex backgrounds…
[PAGfx] Found on the net a different method to read images, which is like 10 times faster, I’m pretty sure you’ll be amazed by how fast it converts backgrounds now Blue_Colorz_PDT_16. Works for very large sprites too
[EasyBg] Smaller code when using multiple backgrounds
[Video] Video system moved to use PAFS. GBFS code removed. Example modified…

Things Fixed

[PAGfx] 256 pixel wide backgrounds were rounded up to 512, this is fixed
[Video] Fixed the video system
[EasyBg] Fixed Tile flip bug when loading an EasyBg with more than 1008 tiles, not sure why it was still there 🙂
[Sound] Sound no longer stops when turning screens off or setting the led to blink mode…

Download: [PAlib ver as of 9.30.06]

Via PAlib

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