Megaflicks v0.2
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This is a FLI player for the GP32. This kind of animation files were first introduced in Autodesk Animator. They were also used in the DOS version of 3D Studio. I had several old 2d and 3d anims in some old CDs that I once enjoyed watching, so I decided to make a player for the GP32. Since there are already players for video and other famous formats, I decided to do this one cause it was much easier and I wanted to release my first programm for the GP32 soon. FLI are kinda ugly for today's standards (320*200*8bpp), but at least it's cool for me to be able to watch some of these oldies on the little handheld!

In the first version (0.1b), I forgot to support the BLU+ users and there are also few things I didn't managed to correct then. There are still many things to fix in the future versions..


What is new in v0.2?
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* BLU+ support
* Diferrent font
* A menu with CPU clock and LCD select, save settings function and scrolltexts.
* Checks whether GPMM/FLI exists and creates it if not. The similar with the config file that holds the settings.
* Improved (faster and better looking) water effect at the intro screen :)
* While file menu runs at 66Mhz, loading runs now at 133Mhz. Thus, files load quite faster now!
* Minor fixes at the file menu. Now you cannot click on a file that is not a FLI and crash the system.
* Frame and speed multiplier display during animation play. L/R changes speed.


What's next?
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There are some minor stuff to fix first.

The frame/speed display isn't visible during some FLI animations, simply because I always use the color 0xFF for the fonts and each FLI uses it's own palette. It will be fixed if I port the player to 16bit. I also need this conversion because I have some very minor problems with flashing colors when the next frame of an animation changes it's palette. There won't be a problem with 16bpp.

Also,. I'd like to optimize my player a bit. The pixel that change each frame are drawn in a VGA buffer and then a VGA2GP32 function does the rest. I should write my player directly to the logic of the vram of the GP32 in order to have it play fast even in very low Mhz. In 66 or less Mhz, you start noticing some flickering stripes, as if the CPU can't catch up with the rendering or something. I am not sure whether after optimizing my player, this will be less visible or it's a problem of the hardware. But I'll have to optimize the player for sure..

A better file selector menu. Also,. if you happen to put a lot of FLI files in the FLI directory, so many that 3 file rows aren't enough, you'll notice filenames upon filenames on the screen. That's because I was too lazy to complete my directory display routine so that it scrolls through pages or something. I'll need that in the future, when I'll also like to have the user browse other directories and load files from there too, not being forced to work in a very specific directory inside GPMM as many GP32 programs use to do. Perhaps this will be the base for a multiviewer I'd like to code in the future.

Then, perhaps I'll finish an FLC player too or also support other formats. Thumbnails (displaying the very 1st frame) during file browsing, streaming from the SMC when FLI are very big (During this moment, reading a FLI which is a little bigger than 7MB will crash GP32. That's because I am loading the whole file to a data buffer and then it's been played from the memory.). Probably redesigning the file menu in order to have some of these stuff..

I think I am gonna make it a multiviewer for various image, animation, sound and other files in the far future.


Buttons
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Intro menu: A/B to increase decrease settings. Start to continue with those settings.
File menu: Arrows to move through files, A to select and watch a FLI.
During animation: L/R to decrease/increase speed multiplier. B to go back to menu.


FLI files at http://optimus.demoscene.gr/fli

Optimus/Dirty Minds^Nasty Bugs^Anubis
optimus6128@yahoo.gr