Ok looking more at this Chipsets documentation/specs. I dont think there is any way I can make this work acceptably... err defeat!.
Issue surrounds lack of 32bit texture support for card and BlitzMaxs lack of 16bit support for Pixmaps.
They way MAX works with images/pixmaps all of them are internally in 32 bit format. To get them to this card would require sampling down to 16 bits. The problem is best format I can get would be a A4R4G4B4. The image quality would be stinko and runtime image conversion is not something I really want to code. 16->32 is easy 32->16 not so easy.
If and thats a big if MAX supported 16bit pixmaps it might be better since the image can be preprocessed before loading.
Very weird how DX7 seems to handle this but DX9 doesnt. As the Dx7 format is 32bit. except it requests texture formats from DirectDraw Surfaces as 24bit RGB with 8 bit alpha and the intel driver likes that. Dx9 does not support Alpha with a "24 bit" format.
I think big issue is this is cheapo Dx7 chip that barely cut it when it was released. Six years later well it still stinks.
This chip is going to have trouble with pretty much any Max2d implemenation OpenGL/Dx7/Dx9 if you start pushing heavy Graphics at it as it barely qualifies as a 3d card. It would probably be ok for a puzzle game with low FPS rendering but nothing more, in which case DX7 driver is best for this case.
Sorry
Doug Stastny
Issue surrounds lack of 32bit texture support for card and BlitzMaxs lack of 16bit support for Pixmaps.
They way MAX works with images/pixmaps all of them are internally in 32 bit format. To get them to this card would require sampling down to 16 bits. The problem is best format I can get would be a A4R4G4B4. The image quality would be stinko and runtime image conversion is not something I really want to code. 16->32 is easy 32->16 not so easy.
If and thats a big if MAX supported 16bit pixmaps it might be better since the image can be preprocessed before loading.
Very weird how DX7 seems to handle this but DX9 doesnt. As the Dx7 format is 32bit. except it requests texture formats from DirectDraw Surfaces as 24bit RGB with 8 bit alpha and the intel driver likes that. Dx9 does not support Alpha with a "24 bit" format.
I think big issue is this is cheapo Dx7 chip that barely cut it when it was released. Six years later well it still stinks.
This chip is going to have trouble with pretty much any Max2d implemenation OpenGL/Dx7/Dx9 if you start pushing heavy Graphics at it as it barely qualifies as a 3d card. It would probably be ok for a puzzle game with low FPS rendering but nothing more, in which case DX7 driver is best for this case.
Sorry
Doug Stastny