Calling TransparentBlt in MASM - windows

I'm trying to make a game in Masm (my teacher said so) and I'm experiencing some problems with the TransparentBlt() function.
I made a base for my game and I was using BitBlt, like this:
invoke SelectObject,memDC,hPerson ;// selecting the Handler of my bitmap
mov hFImage, eax ;// putting the result in hFImage(using in other locals)
invoke BitBlt,hDC,0,0,500,478,memDC,coordX,coordY,SRCCOPY ;// drawing
Where coordX and coordY represents the coordinates os the principal character and the default values(500, 478) are the size of my window.
It's was working really nice, but some day I was searching and I found the TransparentBlt, I was fascinated with it's demonstrating results. Then I tryied to put it on my project and just VUSH! What's going on? My character just disappeared...
invoke SelectObject,memDC,hPerson ;// same
mov hFImage, eax ;// same
RGB_b 0,160,192 ;// it puts the RGB of background on ebx
invoke TransparentBlt,hDC,0,0,500,478,memDC,coordX,coordY, 59, 30, ebx
In case you're wondering, 59 and 30 are the width and height of my bitmap.
Could some one tell me how to use TransparentBlt (more than just MSDN)? I'm really excited with this almost PNG function...

You are probably passing the wrong dimensions.
Conceptually, BitBlt is a very simple function. You can think of it as simply "blitting" (copying) a block of pixels from one device context to another. So, it needs the following parameters:
The source device context
The destination device context
The origin (upper-left corner) of the source rectangle.
The origin (upper-left corner) of the destination rectangle.
The dimensions (width and height).
It also takes a raster-operation code, but you're passing SRCCOPY, which means exactly what I described above: copy a block of pixels from one device context to another. You can do fancier stuff with BitBlt, but we'll ignore that.
The thing to notice here is that BitBlt never does any resizing. The source and destination rectangles can have different origins (i.e., they can start at different coordinates), they they always have the same sizes (i.e., the source and destination always have the same width and height).
If you want to do resizing (stretching or compressing) of the bitmap when you blit it, there is a function that can do that: StretchBlt. StretchBlt is basically just a version of BitBlt that is capable of stretching. It can scale the source image up or down in size, so it takes separate dimensions for the source and the destination.
What does this have to do with TransparentBlt? Well, TransparentBlt also supports resizing. It is basically an extended version of StretchBlt that supports a limited form of transparency.*
So the progression is basically this:
BitBlt is the basic function.
StretchBlt builds on this by adding the ability to resize the source image as it is drawn onto the destination.
TransparentBlt builds on this by adding the ability to make a particular color in the source image transparent as it is drawn onto the destination.
I think this conceptual understanding is important, because it helps you keep straight how the functions should be used.
It also helps answer your question. If you want to use TransparentBlt as a transparent equivalent to BitBlt, then you don't want any stretching, and you therefore need to pass exactly the same dimensions for the source as for the destination.
In other words, call TransparentBlt as follows:
invoke TransparentBlt, hDC, 0, 0, 500, 478, memDC, coordX, coordY, 500, 478, ebx
One final note: you really need to be checking the return values of Windows API functions, otherwise you won't know whether they are failing. Generally, they will return FALSE (== 0) on failure. Sometimes (check the MSDN documentation to see if this is true), the GetLastError function can be called immediately after another function has returned FALSE to get additional information about why the function failed. Your code doesn't check any of the return values, so you have no idea if the functions failed or not, and therefore no good way of knowing where to start debugging.
__
* Technically, everything that you can do with TransparentBlt can be done with StretchBlt using that last parameter, the raster-operation code. And, in fact, this is how it had to be done prior to Windows 98/2000, before the TransparentBlt function existed. And even on Windows 98, you often wanted to do it the old-fashioned way, avoiding TransparentBlt, because TransparentBlt had a leak in it. Now that those days are well behind us, everyone just uses TransparentBlt because it is much simpler.

Related

Winapi How do I draw a rectangle to a specific Window handle?

I'm Using a Wrapper Library in GMS2 That was made back in GM6 Days (gamemaker) Someone was able to wrap majority of the win32API to use in GM6-8. There is only 1 odd instance in where the WinAPI system seems to mess up when drawing the controls to the Main Application Window.
The desired goal is to draw an image to an Child window and draw a grid defining it's splitting according to the user input EX: 16x16 and having the user select squares VIA Mouse Click + Dragging over the boxes.
Unfortunately I have little to no experience in win32API so i'm a bit lost as to where to start.
Looking over the documentation it looks like he left majority of the script names of the DLL to mimic the format of that when calling in C++ or C (just my assumptions).
From His Documentation he has things like "Drawing System" Which Contains things like "Move Item","Add Line","Add Graphic Buffer" etc... and then other Graphic Buffer functions. But then theres the "Draw" functions which has things like "Draw Fill Rect , DrawSelectObj" etc... he doesn't really provide examples so i'm unsure as to how to use these things together to get my desired results. What is the difference between a drawing system and a draw function? Do I have to use them in conjunction, along with the Graphics Buffer?
Can Someone point in the right direction of the necessary steps to get it done? An Example without code and just the function equivalent will suffice, I just need to know out of which functions to use and then later bind it to the Child Window.
An Example Code from his demo is something like this
GbGradient2 = API_GB_Create (105,105); //Graphics Buffer
DcGradient2 = API_GB_GetDC (GbGradient2);
API_Draw_Gradient (DcGradient2,0,0,105,105,0,c_yellow,c_lime);
BrGradient2 = API_Draw_CreatePatternBrush (API_GB_GetBitmap (GbGradient2));
API_Draw_Gradient (DcGradient2,0,0,105,105,0,c_red,65535);
BrGradient3 = API_Draw_CreatePatternBrush (API_GB_GetBitmap (GbGradient2));
hRectangle = API_DS_AddRectangle (2,5,5,105,105); // Adds a rectangle(Drawing System)
hEllipse = API_DS_AddEllipse (2,5,5,105,105);
hNoPen = API_Draw_CreatePen (PS_NULL,0,0);
API_DS_SetItemBrush (hRectangle,BrGradient2); // Sets the brush
API_DS_SetItemBrush (hEllipse,BrGradient3);
API_DS_SetItemPen (hRectangle,hNoPen); // Sets the pen
API_DS_SetItemPen (hEllipse,hNoPen);
API_Draw_Gradient (GbGradient2,0,0,16,16,0,c_yellow,c_lime);
Lookin at it a little more it looks like the draw functions are linked to GDI somehow.
since GMS2 is a cross platform tool , its windows-only functionality gas been removed.
you can make a nice GUI for that porpose by using GMS2 objects , as you have a little Xp
about Win32 API,this will be easier than that big stuffy coding
here are some tips ,
creating a window object with a rectangle sprite
creating ui objects at the create event of above object
adding some code to the global mouse event

Rendering to CAMetalLayer from dedicated render thread / loop

In Windows World, a dedicated render thread would loop something similar to this:
void RenderThread()
{
while (!quit)
{
UpdateStates();
RenderToDirect3D();
// Can either present with no synchronisation,
// or synchronise after 1-4 vertical blanks.
// See docs for IDXGISwapChain::Present
PresentToSwapChain();
}
}
What is the equivalent in Cocoa with CAMetalLayer? All the examples deal with updates being done in the main thread, either using MTKView (with it's internal timer) or using CADisplayLink in the iOS examples.
I want to be in control of the whole render loop, rather than just receiving a callback at some non-specified interval (and ideally blocking for V-Sync if it's enabled).
At some level, you're going to be throttled by the availability of drawables. A CAMetalLayer has a fixed pool of drawables available, and calling nextDrawable will block the current thread until a drawable becomes available. This doesn't imply you have to call nextDrawable at the top of your render loop, though.
If you want to draw on your own schedule without getting blocked waiting on a drawable, render to an off-screen renderbuffer (i.e., a MTLTexture with dimensions matching your drawable size), and then blit from the most-recently-drawn texture to a drawable's texture and present on whatever cadence you prefer. This can be useful for getting frame timings, but every frame you draw and then don't display is wasted work. It also increases the risk of judder.
Your options are limited when it comes to getting callbacks that match the v-sync cadence. Your best is almost certainly a CVDisplayLink scheduled in the default and tracking run loop modes, though this has caveats.
You could use something like a counting semaphore in concert with a display link if you want to free-run without getting too far ahead.
If your application is able to maintain a real-time framerate, you'll normally be rendering a frame or two ahead of what's going on the glass, so you don't want to literally block on v-sync; you just want to inform the window server that you'd like presentation to match v-sync. On macOS, you do this by setting the layer's displaySyncEnabled to true (the default). Turning this off may cause tearing on certain displays.
At the point where you want to render to screen, you obtain the drawable from the layer by calling nextDrawable. You obtain the drawable's texture from its texture property. You use that texture to set up the render target (color attachment) of a MTLRenderPassDescriptor. For example:
id<CAMetalDrawable> drawable = layer.nextDrawable;
id<MTLTexture> texture = drawable.texture;
MTLRenderPassDescriptor *desc = [MTLRenderPassDescriptor renderPassDescriptor];
desc.colorAttachments[0].texture = texture;
From here, it's pretty similar to what you do in an MTKView's drawRect: method. You create a command buffer (if you don't already have one), create a render command encoder using the descriptor, encode drawing commands, end encoding, tell the command buffer to present the drawable (using a -presentDrawable:... method), and commit the command buffer. Whatever was drawn to the drawable's texture is what will end up on-screen when it's presented.
I agree with Warren that you probably don't really want to sync your loop with the display refresh. You want parallelism. You want the CPU to be working on the next frame while the GPU is rendering the most current frame (and the display is showing the last frame).
The fact that there's a limit on how many drawables may be in flight at once and that nextDrawable will block waiting for one will prevent your render loop from getting too far ahead. (You'll probably use some other synchronization before that, like for managing a small pool of buffers.) If you want only double-buffering and not triple-buffering, you can set the layer's maximumDrawableCount to 2 instead of its default value of 3.

Why might the scaling of SetWindowExtEx be just wrong?

I am trying to scale images/text etc using MM_ANISTROPIC and what I've done is the following (by the way if the syntax is a little weird, it's originally from delphi so treat the following as pseudocode)
I would expect the following code to produce a rectangle that is 70% of the width of the PaintBox and 30% of the height, yet it doesn't, instead it it noticeably too small.
SetMapMode(hdc,MM_ANISOTROPIC);
SetWindowExtEx(hdc,100,100,0);
SetViewportExtEx(hdc,70,30,0);
Rectangle(hdc, 0,0,PaintBox.width-1,PaintBox.Height-1);
if, on the other hand I change the code so that the SetWindowExtEx has 91 instead of 100 as its parameters (as shown below) then it works, which makes no sense to me at all...
SetMapMode(hdc,MM_ANISOTROPIC);
SetWindowExtEx(hdc,91,91,0);
SetViewportExtEx(hdc,70,30,0);
Rectangle(hdc, 0,0,PaintBox.width-1,PaintBox.Height-1);
My sanity test case was to add the following pseudocode
SetMapMode(hdc,MM_TEXT);
DrawLine(hdc,Round(PaintBox.width*0.7),0,Round(PaintBox.width*0.7),PaintBox.Height-1);
DrawLine(hdc,0,Round(PaintBox.height*0.3),PaintBox.width-1,Round(PaintBox.height*0.3));
I would have expected this to overwrite the lower / bottom edges of my original Rectangle but it does not unless I uses that 91,91 SetWindowExtEx.
Can anyone duplicate this?
FURTHER EDIT: Here is my exact original code I had given pseudo code before to make the question more accessible to non-delphi users but one of my commenters wanted full code to see if my contention that it was a delphi quirk was true or not.
The entire project consisted of a VCL form with a rectangular paintbox dropped on it centered so there was space all around it, and its onPaint event was set to the code below resulting in this image::
procedure TForm11.PaintBox2Paint(Sender: TObject);
var
hdc:THandle;
res:TPoint;
procedure SetupMapMode;
begin
SetMapMode(hdc,MM_ANISOTROPIC);
SetWindowExtEx(hdc,100,100,0);
SetViewportExtEx(hdc,70,30,0);
// These lines are required when we're painting to a TPaintBox but can't be used
// if we're paiting to a TPanel and they were NOT in my original question but only
// got added as part of the answer
// SetViewportOrgEx(hdc,PaintBox2.Left,PaintBox2.Top,#ZeroPoint);
// SetWindowOrgEx(hdc,0,0,#ZeroPoint);
end;
begin
//draw a rectangle to frame the Paintbox Surface
PaintBox2.Canvas.Pen.Style:=psSolid;
PaintBox2.Canvas.Pen.width:=2;
PaintBox2.Canvas.Pen.Color:=clGreen;
PaintBox2.Canvas.Brush.Style:=bsClear;
PaintBox2.Canvas.Rectangle(0,0,PaintBox2.Width-1,PaintBox2.Height-1);
PaintBox2.Canvas.Brush.Style:=bsSolid;
//initialize convenience variable
hdc:=PaintBox2.Canvas.Handle;
SetTextAlign(hdc,TA_LEFT);
//as doing things to the PaintBox2.Canvas via Delphi's interface tends to reset
//everything, I'm ensuring the map mode gets set **immediately** before
//each drawing call
SetupMapMode;
/// Draw Text at the bottom of the PaintBox2.Canvas (though as it's mapped it
/// SHOULD be 1/3 of the way down and much smaller instead)
TextOut(hdc,200,PaintBox2.Height-PaintBox2.Canvas.TextHeight('Ap'),'Hello, World!',13);
PaintBox2.Canvas.Pen.Color:=clblue;
PaintBox2.Canvas.Brush.Style:=bsClear;
//ensure it's set before doing the rectangle
SetupMapMode;
// Redraw the same rectangle as before but in the mapped mode
Rectangle(hdc, 0,0,PaintBox2.Width-1,PaintBox2.Height-1);
PaintBox2.Canvas.Brush.Style:=bsSolid;
//reset the map mode to normal
SetMapMode(hdc,MM_Text);
//draw text at the "same" position as before but unmapped...
TextOut(hdc,200,PaintBox2.Height-PaintBox2.Canvas.TextHeight('Ap'),'Goodbye, World!',15);
//Draw lines exactly at 70% of the way across and 30% of the way down
//if this works as expected they should overwrite the right and bottom
//borders of the rectangle drawn in the mapped mode
PaintBox2.Canvas.Pen.Color:=RGB(0,255,255);
PaintBox2.Canvas.MoveTo(Round(PaintBox2.Width*0.7),0);
PaintBox2.Canvas.LineTo(Round(PaintBox2.Width*0.7),PaintBox2.Height);
PaintBox2.Canvas.MoveTo(0,Round(PaintBox2.Height*0.3));
PaintBox2.Canvas.LineTo(PaintBox2.Width,Round(PaintBox2.Height*0.3));
end;
Okay, I don't know WHY the following is necessary -- it may be a Delphi quirk, the fact that I'm using a TPaintBox with is a TGraphicControl rather than a Component, or if I'm missing out on some fundamental concept on how this whole mapping mode works, BUT if I add the following code:
ZeroPoint:=TPoint.Zero;
SetViewportOrgEx(hdc,PaintBox1.Left,PaintBox1.Top,#ZeroPoint);
SetWindowOrgEx(hdc,0,0,#ZeroPoint);
Then it all displays as expected. Anyone have any explanations as to why this is necessary?
EDIT: Okay, I've got a PARTIAL explanation. It has to do with the control I was painting on being a TPaintBox, which is a TGraphic control rather than a TWinControl. To wit:
TGraphicControl is the base class for all lightweight controls.
TGraphicControl supports simple lightweight controls that do not need the ability to accept keyboard input or contain other controls. Since lightweight controls do not wrap Windows screen objects, they are faster and user fewer resources than controls based on TWinControl.
As such, although they APPEAR to have a separate canvas, I have this sneaking feeling that they are really sharing the form's canvas which is why, when I switched to a TWinControl descendant, which DOES own its own Windows DC, then the display worked as expected without setting the ViewpointOrg.
So it was a Delphi quirk after all...!

any quick and easy way to capture a part of the screen? getPixel was slow and GetDIBits seemed a bit complcated as a start

I was trying some code to capture part of the screen using getPixel on Windows, with the device context being null (to capture screen instead of window), but it was really slow. It seems that GetDIBits() can be fast, but it seems a bit complcated... I wonder if there is a library that can put the whole region into an array, and pixel[x][y] will return the 24 bit color code of the pixel?
Or does such library exist on the Mac? Or if Ruby or Python already has such a library that can do that?
I've never done this but I'd try to:
Create a memory Device Context (DC)
using CreateCompatibleDC passing it
the Device Context of the desktop
(GetDC(NULL)).
Create a Bitmap (using
CreateCompatibleBitmap) the same
size as the region your capturing.
Select the bitmap into the DC you
created (using SelectObject).
Do a BitBlt from the
desktop DC to the DC you created (using SRCCOPY flag).
Working with Device Contexts can cause GDI leaks if you do things in the wrong order so make sure that you read the documentation on all the GDI functions you use (e.g. SelectObject, GetDC, etc.).

Win32 CreatePatternBrush

MSDN displays the following for CreatePatternBrush:
You can delete a pattern brush without
affecting the associated bitmap by
using the DeleteObject function.
Therefore, you can then use this
bitmap to create any number of pattern
brushes.
My question is the opposite. If the HBRUSH is long lived, can I delete the HBITMAP right after I create the brush? IE: does the HBRUSH store its own copy of the HBITMAP?
In this case, I'd like the HBRUSH to have object scope while the HBITMAP would have method scope (the method that creates the HBRUSH).
The HBRUSH and HBITMAP are entirely independent. The handles can be deleted entirely independent from each other, and, once created, no changes to either object will effect the other.
The brush does have its own copy of the bitmap. This is easily see by deleting the bitmap after creating the brush and then using the brush (works fine)
Using GetObject to fill a LOGBRUSH structure will return the original BITMAP handle in member lbhatch, though, and not the copy's handle, unfortunately. And using GetObject on the returned bitmap handle fails if the bitmap is deleted.
Anyone any idea how to get the original bitmap dimensions from the brush in this case? I wish to create a copy of the pattern brush even though the original bitmap is deleted. I can get a copy of the original bitmap simply by painting with the brush, but I don't know it's size. I tried using SetbrushorgEx (hdc, -1,-1), hoping the -1's would be reduced modulo its dimensions when brush selected into device context and get values when I retrieve with GetBrushOrgEx. Doesn't work.
I think the bitmap must outlive the brush: the brush just references the existing bitmap rather than copying it.
You could always try it and see what happened.
I doubt that the CreatePatternBrush() API copies the bitmap you give it, since an HBITMAP is:
a GDI handle, the maximum number of which is limited, and
potentially quite large.
Win32 and GDI tend to be conservative about creating internal copies of your data, if only because when most of their APIs were created (CreatePatternBrush() dates to Windows 95, and many functions are older still), memory and GDI handles were in much more limited supply than they are now. (For example, Windows 95 was required to run well on a system with only 4MB of RAM.)

Resources