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Animation Techniques in WIN32 by Thomson Recommended

ISBN: 1 55615 669 3       Publisher: Microsoft Press       Pages: 260pp & CD       Price: £31-95

Categories:   animation     MS Windows

Reviewed by John Merrells in C Vu 7-5 (Jul 1995)

There is an excellent explanation of the windows bitmap formats and especially palettes. He explains exactly and clearly what goes on under the hood. In the past I have tried to get to grips with how Windows applications co-operatively manage the system palette and I thought I pretty much understood it; this text has cleared up some of my misconceptions. I was gratified to find that he also regards it as a mess. It is necessary to understand how an image gets onto the screen after you pass the bits to the Windows API. The way the bitmap data, palette data and environment are set up greatly affects the display performance.

Later chapters cover advanced topics such as minimising redraw regions, collision detection, Z-ordering of images and shape changing sprites. These enhancements provide a final sample of an intriguing world of snooker balls bouncing around inside a frictionless universe.

The only thing I was slightly disappointed about was that the speedy new WinG library is demoted to an appendix. However, I can forgive the author for that, since it's fairly new. There is also a chapter about adding sound effects, which is nice but it might be a little bit out of place.

If you are not a seasoned graphics programmer and you're looking for an entertaining home project, or you want to add some wizzy features to your latest application, this is the book for you. It is a very practical and extremely well presented book which makes a good, easy, enjoyable and entertaining read.