posted 09-26-2008 01:58 PM         

Window Layering allows Windows to make a Form appear transparent over other windows. You can define a transparent color or alphablend the form.

By using the S (Splash) property for a form, you display a form with no broders. Then create a Canvas control the same size as the form and you now have a work area for animation which take advantage of the Windows layering feature.

The demo animates sprites on a Canvas control. The form uses EZ_SetFormAttrEx to define the layering options. The Canvas background color is considered the transparent color for layering. The sprites are drawn without antialiasing, since you can't antialias to the desktop using this technique.

You can download the demo here:

http://cwsof.com/ezlayer3.zip

Unzip the file into its own folder.

Warning: The ezgui40.dll runtime is compressed in this file (using UPX), so don't let it overwrite your runtimes in the ezgui folders.

posted 09-26-2008 02:13 PM         

code:

SUB SFORM_Events(CID&, CMsg&, CVal&, Cancel&)
     TestKeys CMsg&, CVal&
     SELECT CASE CID&
          CASE %EZ_Window
               SELECT CASE CMsg&
                    CASE %EZ_GameLoop
                          SpriteDraw 0, CVal&
                    CASE %EZ_Loading
                    CASE %EZ_Loaded
                         EZ_SetFormAttrEx "SForm", EZ_ColorVal(8,0),0,"T"
                    CASE %EZ_Started
                         RunSprites
                    CASE %EZ_NoFocus
                         EZ_SetFormAttrEx "SForm", EZ_ColorVal(8,0),25,"TA"
                    CASE %EZ_Focus
                         EZ_SetFormAttrEx "SForm", EZ_ColorVal(8,0),0,"T"
                    CASE %EZ_Close
                    CASE ELSE
               END SELECT
          CASE ELSE
     END SELECT
END SUB

posted 10-10-2008 08:38 PM         

It now works full screen, uses 18 sprites and animates the sprites using flips (you can animate sprites using multiple frames for realism).

I didn't have a chance to create a multiframed bitmap for the sprites yet, but when I do I will update this demo.

I also found that running full screen and with a layered window, updating each sprite one at a time is actually faster, than updating the entire screen at once (which requires a complex region).