Requirements
The floating-point RenderWare library requires an IBM PC compatible with an Intel Pentium or 80486 processor (or equivalent), 4Mb of memory, and a color VGA or SuperVGA display adapter.
The recommended minimum configuration for the floating-point RenderWare library is an Intel P90 with 8Mb of memory. For highest performance rendering a display adapter running in 8-bit (256 color) mode is recommended. For highest quality rendering a display adapter running in 16-bit (65536 color) mode is recommended.
Version 10.6 or 11 of the Watcom C/386 compiler are required to build programs.
Environment Variables
The RenderWare library makes use of several environment variables, RWDEBUGSTREAM, RWSHAPEPATH etc. These environment variables are optional. The library will operate correctly if they are not set. It is strongly recommended that the necessary environment variables be set in the host machine's AUTOEXEC.BAT.
RenderWare Library Configuration
The VESA modes will not function without a VESA driver being installed (V1.0 or later). If your card does not have a VESA BIOS built in it is likely that there is a VESA TSR (terminate and stay resident) driver to make it appear as if it has a VESA BIOS. Install the TSR and RenderWare for DOS should function correctly.
UNIVBE is a universal VESA TSR package and comes as part of the RenderWare package. The program supports a wide range of video cards. If your card is supported then it is best to use the UNIVBE TSR driver as often it allows more VESA resolutions than a card’s native VESA BIOS.
UNIVBE is shareware and no registration is required for its use by RenderWare customers. If UNIVBE is bundled with a product then an agreement must be made with SciTech. See the UNIVBE documentation for details.
RenderWare V2.1 for DOS has been extensively tested with the UNIVBE package, and thus is likely to provide the best performance and stability in this configuration. To find if your card is supported by UNIVBE look in the UNIVBE documentation.
The default mode is a width of 320, height of 200 and depth of 8 (as this mode is available on all VGA cards with or without a VESA driver).
Include Files
For the purposes of describing how to build programs, the following assumptions are made:
· the RenderWare include files are installed in \rwdos\include
· the RenderWare library files are installed in \rwdos\lib
Source files must include the RenderWare include file:
#include <rwlib.h>
If your application use the platform specific RwOpenExt() options or RwGetDeviceInfo() information types then the application will also need to include the Dos specific header file rwdos.h. However, it is recommended that, to ensure future compatibility, all source files which use RenderWare API functions include rwdos.h after including the standard RenderWare include file:
#include
<rwlib.h>
#include <rwdos.h>
Also included is the source file doswrap.c which provides simpler access to DOS specific device controls.
DOS Device Access
If using loadable device drivers RenderWare for DOS has a predefined method for locating device drivers. The highest priority of these methods is via the RWDEVICEPATH environment variable. This should specify where RenderWare should find the loadable device drivers. I.e. if the device drivers are located in
c:\dos\dlls
then RWDEVICEPATH should be set via
SET RWDEVICEPATH = c:\dos\dlls
Note that multiple semicolon delimited paths may be given. If the drivers are not found using RWDEVICEPATH, then RenderWare will look at the current directory, and finally RenderWare will search the system path given by the PATH environment variable.
The first located device will be the device which is accessed. If an absolute path is given when trying to open a device then the device searching will not be performed and the driver at the given path will be loaded.
The naming convention used for RenderWare DOS DLLs is as follows:
RWD[R|S] L [6|8|M] [A|B|C|D] [P|D].RWD
The file extension and prefix are always rwd (standing for RenderWare DOS).
R Register
S Stack
L Floating point
P Production
D Debugging
M MMX 16 bit
6 16 bit
8 8 bit
A 32 bit Z buffer, 256*256 textures
B 16 bit Z buffer, 256*256 textures
C 32 bit Z buffer, 128*128 textures
D 16 bit Z buffer, 128*128 textures
A register, floating point production library can only link with a register floating point production loadable device driver.
DOS Specific API Function Parameters
A small number of RenderWare API functions have device dependent parameters or return values. The following pages describe these device dependent parameters and return values under MS DOS.