# Introduction

In article 9, you where introduced to the noble art of bitmagic. Here's a quick refresher: multiplying an integer value by (a power of) 2 can be done by shifting its (binary) bits to the left. Division is similar, except this time you shift to the right. So, a * 6 is: (a << 2) + (a << 1). Being aware of the bits in a number is especially important if more than one number is stored in a 32 bit integer. This happens for colors: red, green, and blue take 8 bits each, with 'alpha' completing the 32 bits used for a single pixel.

# Scaling

To introduce some new concepts, I will start with a brief snippet that slowly zooms in on an image:

Surface* img = new Surface( "assets/aagun.tga" );
float dx = 2.0f;
void Game::Tick( float a_DT )
{
Pixel* screen = m_Screen->GetBuffer(), *image = img->GetBuffer();
for ( int x = 0; x < SCRWIDTH; x++ )
for ( int y = 0; y < img->GetHeight(); y++ )
{
int readxpos = (int)(dx * x);
Pixel sample = image[readxpos + y * img->GetPitch()];
screen[x + y * m_Screen->GetPitch()] = sample;
}

dx *= 0.999f;
Sleep( 10 );
}


The code works like this:

First, we copy pixels from img to m_Screen (by accessing the pixels in the Surface, via GetBuffer() ). Variable dx is 2, so when x is 10, dx * x is 20: we read pixel 20 from the original image.

For the next frame however, dx is no longer 2.0: it slowly gets smaller. After a few frames, dx is much smaller than 2, and so we read far less pixels from img, but we still plot the same amount of pixels. This causes the stretching effect.

• If you do not add 'f' to 2.0, you will get a warning. This is because C++ assumes that 2.0 is a double precision floating point number, and you are storing it in a single precision float variable. Don't worry about it, just add the f to prevent the warning.
• To make this code one line shorter, I initialized two variables on a single line: screen and image are merely separated by a comma. While this is perfectly correct in C++, it's not the prettiest way to write code.
• Pointers are used as arrays in this code. This works, because an array is a pointer in C++. And the other way round: Pixel* screen is an array, and therefore you can access the tenth pixel as screen[10].

There's something else going on in this code, something that is not immediately obvious. And that's the bit that I want to talk about.

# Conversions

Have a look at this line again:

    int readxpos = (int)(dx * x);

We need an integer to read from the image pixel array. But, dx * x is not an integer. Actually, x is an integer, but as soon as you multiply an integer by a float, the result is a float too. Or, to be precise: the integer is converted to a floating point value, and then the multiplication is done. So, there are actually two conversions on that line:

    int readxpos = (int)(dx * (float)x);

Is that a problem? Yes it is. Conversions take time, and even if it's not a lot, in this case it can easily be prevented.

Before you proceed, get yourself a larger image, preferrably one that is 480 pixels high (don't exceed 480, it will crash the application). I got this one from the internet:

When you try the larger image in the application, you'll see that the speed went down (quite) a bit. Getting rid of the conversions will improve that.

# Fixed point math

So how do you get rid of conversions, if you need integers for the array, and a float to store 0.999f? The answer is: fixed point math. The concept is pretty simple. Suppose you 'forget' the dot in 0.999f. Instead, you write: 999, and you remember that this number is a thousand times too large. Next, you do all your calculations as usual. So: readxpos = dx * x. Once you're done calculating, you get the correct answer by dividing by 1000. What you just did is exchanging an int-to-float conversion and a float-to-int conversion for a division. This in itself is not a big improvement (if at all), but it does become a big improvement when you realize that '1000' is an arbitray factor. For a computer, a power of 2 is much better: 1024 would do just fine.

There's just one thing you need to be aware of. When you multiply two numbers that are both 1000 times too large, the result is 1000000 tims too large. You can see how this is countered in the modified code snippet:

Surface* img = new Surface( "assets/aagun.tga" );
int dx = (int)(2.0f * 1024.0f);
void Game::Tick( float a_DT )
{
Pixel* screen = m_Screen->GetBuffer(), *image = img->GetBuffer();
for ( int x = 0; x < SCRWIDTH; x++ )
for ( int y = 0; y < img->GetHeight(); y++ )
{
int readxpos = (dx * x) >> 10;
Pixel sample = image[readxpos + y * img->GetPitch()];
screen[x + y * m_Screen->GetPitch()] = sample;
}

dx = (dx * 999) >> 10;
Sleep( 10 );
}


In other words: when you multiply two numbers that are both 1024 times too large, the result is 1024 * 1024 too large. You can fix this by dividing by 1024. In the code above, this is done by shifting 10 bits to the right.

The code is now a lot faster. We now have a bitshift instead of the two conversions. Apparently, this is a lot faster in C++.