Pixomatic??

#1 PixOmatic is a stand-alone renderer by RadGameTools, and based on pure software rendering, making it too slow to accomplish complex taska like AlphaBlending/RotoZoom, and PixOmatic's price is actually more than $2500 from the mail I receive.

In this concept, PlayBasic does better, which utilizes DX3 and special Math algorithm and faster than PixOmatic.

TGB's PixeBlast uses hardware accleration and is very mature, so don't bother to go backward or cost tons of money.

#2 Yes. I have used Pixomatic with TGB and TGEA. We weren't positive how far the backward-compat rabbit hole we wanted to go on some IA games and so I wrote a Pixomatic GFX device. Please contact Brett Seyler for more information regarding licensing.

As far as speed goes, it ran Marble Blast Ultra at around 20fps. It does alpha blending just fine, and has a very strong API. RAD Game Tools is also fantastic about supporting their stuff, as well. If you are super-serious about backwards compatibility, I would recommend taking a look at Pixomatic. There are a bunch of articles on Dr. Dobbs Journal about Pixomatic, as well, and it's development and pipeline-welder. It's very cool tech.

#3 Thanks, Pat

I'm not bashing PixOmatic tho, just considering indies won't have the initial budget to get start with it as the RadGameTools's price policy. Although we know the more compatibility, the more customers, but this(software rendering) is much way out of the current gamers' field, thatt migh not be worth it.

PopCap's SDK is worthy looking as they have some decent software fallback rendering codes should suit 2D game programming.

#4 Thanks, guys. Not saying that money is no object, but I do want to support computers with lower end graphic cards as well. I want to continue to work with TGB, so if there's a way to use Pixomatic with TGB, I don't mind spending the money for it. Especially when I can get the results I want.

#5 @Pat, does your GFX device integrate with TGB? Do you have a copy that I could use?