Turing 4.1

[Dan]

As has been reported a bit on this site befor, holth soft has realsed a new verson of turing some time ago and again forgot to tell any one about it.

This is what the help file says the chages are:

Turing 4.1 wrote:

What's New in Turing 4.1
Turing 4.1 introduces a number of new features. This page shows some of these features.

Sprite
The Turing Sprite module allows users to create animation without having to worry about erasing and drawing the objects on the screen. A sprite is created from a picture, and then commands by the program to move the sprite to the desired location. The program then automatically erases the sprite at the old location (restoring the background) and redraws it at the new location (placing it underneath "higher" sprites, if necessary).
Here is an example of a program that used sprites. Each triangle is a sprite, and the height of each sprite appears on the sprite. Sprites with a height of -1 or -2 actually behind the background, which in this case is a set if green and blue bars. Note how sprites with a higher depth always appear above a sprite with a lower depth.

Here is a second example of a sprite being used to animate a figure moving across the screen. In this case, the figure is taken from a multi-frame GIF file and the sprite module is used to make it appear to move.

The Sprite module is fully documented here.

Special Effects
Turing supports a veriety of special effects. These are obtained by drawing a picture (obtained using the Pic.New, Pic.FileNew, or the new Pic.FileNewFrames functions). When the picture is drawn, the programmer can specify the transition that should be used to display the new picture. These transitions can includes wipes, slides, a growing image, fade-ins, and so on.

Here is an example of a program that demonstrates many of these transitions.

The different transitions are fully documented here.

GIF Image support
The Pic.FileNew command can now read GIF files (now that the patent has expired in Canada). GIF files can specify a "transparent color", and this is supported by Turing. When a GIF with a transparent color is loaded by Turing, the "transparent color" is added to the color palette (if not already present). If the picture is displayed using the picMerge mode, the "transparent color" will not be displayed. Note that the "transparent color" is a real color. If you use the picCopy mode, this color is displayed.
Here is an example of a program displaying a GIF with a transparent color. In this case, the transparent color is dark blue.


Multi-frame GIF Image support
Turing also supports multi-frame GIF images. A GIF program can contain multiple images (this is how animated GIFs work). The Pic.FileNewFrames procedure can read a multi-frame GIF into an array of integers. These can then be displayed one at a time, or all in one call using the Pic.DrawFrames procedure.
Here is an example of a program that displays a rotating globe found in a multi-frame GIF file using these procedures.

Faster animation
Turing has been improved to speed up animation when the picMerge mode is used. Speed improvements from 50% to 500% have been reported.

Other graphic routines
Turing now includes the Pic.Blend function to blend two pictures together and the Pic.Blur function to take an existing picture and make it blurry.

The examples refured to above are not inciuded in this post unless any one is intrested. I have not full tested out turing 4.1 yet but hopfuly it will slove alot of it's problems. Tho it has been reported that it makes turing exe files much biger. That is probly not that bad consider speed increases of 50% to 500% coule be happening. Also GIF suprot yay! And even better animated GIFs at that.

Overall it seems to mostlay be a grapficks update to turing. As was most of the last ones since turing 3.x this makes one whonder wthere holth has there golas set right.

Any how any one who has 4.1 or questions on it please post. I realy whont to know what the ones with 4.1 one think.

P.S. We will not give you a copy of 4.1 and the only way to get it is form holth or your school if they have such rights.

[[Gandalf]]

Indeed, it is a fairly good graphics update, but nothing noticable to me has been changed in the actual language behind it. GIF support is especially useful for transparency, because I observed that it's much more speed efficient to use a transparent gif than any other image format with Pic.SetTransparentColour. Still, the multi-frame GIF support is not great, and seems to only work properly on some .gif files.

[Dan]

I also found that they added Pic.DrawSpecialBack and Pic.DrawFramesBack. Both do there task in the backgorund (ie. in a fork/thread) so you can have an animated gif or effect working well your code keeps on going. Probly not a bad thing for games if it works.

As turing puts it:

Truing 4.1 wrote:

Pic.DrawFramesBack is very similar to Pic.DrawFrames. The only difference is that Pic.DrawFramesBack returns immediately after being called and program execution continues while the frames are being drawn. This allows you to continue to draw other graphics while the frames are being drawn.

Turing 4.1 wrote:

Pic.DrawSpecial is used to draw a picture on the screen with a special effect such as a wipe, a slide, or a fade-in. The picture is drawn with the lower left corner at (x, y). The duration specifies how long the transition should take in milliseconds. For example, a fade-in could be specified to last 1/2 a second by using a duration of 500.

Truing 4.1 wrote:

Pic.DrawSpecialBack is very similar to Pic.DrawSpecial. The only difference is that Pic.DrawSpecialBack returns immediately after being called and program execution continues while the special effect continues. This allows you to continue to draw other graphics while the special effect is continuing.

[MysticVegeta]

wow after decades finally a decent update eh? But still Turing will never be complete as it lacks so many things and no OGL support and no API support >_<

[iamcow]

can be found here:

Username: masseyshare
password: massey

hint: Google will rule the world someday

[Clayton]

Know that we don't support piracy here... posting this kind of thing is not appropriate. Read [The Rules] when you post.

[Naveg]

Is linking to other forums not working in v3? Just noticed that Freakman's post didn't link to The Rules...so I'm pointing it out.

[Amailer]

They probably have to re-add it?

[Clayton]

I think Dan said something about having to add it to the word censor list (that's how they do it).

[McKenzie]

Cow, What on earth are you thinking??? Our school has a licence that allows students from our school to legally have a copy of Turing. Placing Turing in a gmail account is well within the licence agreement. You being a fool and posting the password is not, that is ILLEGAL. Give your head a shake.

[McKenzie]

You forgot the other AWESOME feature of 4.1. It so much easier to get a Segmentation Violation. Just try using takepic and drawpic. There also seems to be less room on the stack. Stack overflows are more common this year.

[Clayton]

or students just don't know how to use it appropriately.

[BenLi]

hey sir, what exactly are segmentation errors? I ran into this problem a couple times last year with my final project

[Prince Pwn]

McKenzie @ Tue Jan 09, 2007 9:59 pm wrote:

Cow, What on earth are you thinking??? Our school has a licence that allows students from our school to legally have a copy of Turing. Placing Turing in a gmail account is well within the licence agreement. You being a fool and posting the password is not, that is ILLEGAL. Give your head a shake.

Nothing he did was illegal. I see no piracy in his post. Where does he mention an email account? I can mention the two words, Bit Torrent and that doesn't mean I'm breaking the rules.

[ericfourfour]

I think his post was edited by a moderator. Obviously they would not just leave it up there.