Refreshing bitmap resources in a project

[barry]

I have a project with, currently, about a dozen bitmap resources, and it'll soon have quite a few more.  As I work on it, knowing little about the ins and outs of Windows bitmaps or much else about GUI programming, I keep having to make little changes in the bitmaps for one reason or another.  Each time I do I'd like to be able to rebuild the project without having to delete all the resources and add them back in, which is a pain when I do it a bunch of times.  Is there a way to do that?

By the way, I realize that the usual way to do something like this is probably to have bitmap files and load them at run time instead of using resources but I'd like to do it with resources in this case; partly to learn about resources and also because this is a program I plan to use for myself and it'll be handier for me like this.  Also, sharing it with some friends will be easier this way.

Barry

[Steve Rusich]

What I usally do in the case I have a lot of bitmaps is to write a single sub that will load the pictures straight from the development folder I am using. Once I am done tweaking the bitmaps I change the sub to load the bitmaps as a resource.

Steve

I have a project with, currently, about a dozen bitmap resources, and it'll soon have quite a few more.  As I work on it, knowing little about the ins and outs of Windows bitmaps or much else about GUI programming, I keep having to make little changes in the bitmaps for one reason or another.  Each time I do I'd like to be able to rebuild the project without having to delete all the resources and add them back in, which is a pain when I do it a bunch of times.  Is there a way to do that?

By the way, I realize that the usual way to do something like this is probably to have bitmap files and load them at run time instead of using resources but I'd like to do it with resources in this case; partly to learn about resources and also because this is a program I plan to use for myself and it'll be handier for me like this.  Also, sharing it with some friends will be easier this way.

Barry

[LarryMc]

What I usally do in the case I have a lot of bitmaps is to write a single sub that will load the pictures straight from the development folder I am using. Once I am done tweaking the bitmaps I change the sub to load the bitmaps as a resource.

Good idea Steve

[mrainey]

If you change a bitmap but keep the original path and filename, why do you have to do anything more than just rebuild the project?

[Steve Rusich]

If you change a bitmap but keep the original path and filename, why do you have to do anything more than just rebuild the project?

When you add a bitmap as a resource to your project, any later editing to the orignal bitmap is not part of the resource bitmap.

Steve

[mrainey]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question.

If I have a resource bitmap of a horse, called horse.bmp - I see a picture of a horse when I run my program.

If I delete horse.bmp from my hard drive and copy a picture of a cow to the directory where horse.bmp had been, and I name the picture of the cow as horse.bmp - I see a picture of a cow in my program after I rebuild the project.  I haven't deleted or modified my resource definitions in any way - just changed the content of the bitmap.

[barry]

What I usally do in the case I have a lot of bitmaps is to write a single sub that will load the pictures straight from the development folder I am using. Once I am done tweaking the bitmaps I change the sub to load the bitmaps as a resource.

I want to end up with a single executable file and nothing else.  I may misunderstand your reply but if I understand it correctly it won't give me that.

Barry

[barry]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question.

If I have a resource bitmap of a horse, called horse.bmp - I see a picture of a horse when I run my program.

If I delete horse.bmp from my hard drive and copy a picture of a cow to the directory where horse.bmp had been, and I name the picture of the cow as horse.bmp - I see a picture of a cow in my program after I rebuild the project.  I haven't deleted or modified my resource definitions in any way - just changed the content of the bitmap.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong but it doesn't seem to work that way for me.  That's what I expected and I think it probably is how it should work but I don't know how to make it happen.

Barry

[mrainey]

For me it's just:

Modify and save bitmap - keep name and path the same as before

Click the Compile and Execute toolbar button - modified bitmap displays properly in my program.


Wish I could help you figure out what's wrong.

[Steve Rusich]

What I usally do in the case I have a lot of bitmaps is to write a single sub that will load the pictures straight from the development folder I am using. Once I am done tweaking the bitmaps I change the sub to load the bitmaps as a resource.

I want to end up with a single executable file and nothing else.  I may misunderstand your reply but if I understand it correctly it won't give me that.

Barry

There seems to be some confusion on what is meant by a "resource". In the Emergence BASIC IDE there is a menu option to load resources into your project. All these "resources" can be almost anytype of datafile such as bitmaps, sound files, etc. When the "project" is compiled, it is all included into a single .EXE program.

My original post stated that I would load bitmaps into the program straight from the same development folder as the program source code. I did this during the phase of the coding project when I was routinely changing the bitmap pictures. When I was done editing the bitmap pictures, I would load the bitmaps into the project as a resource then change my source code to load the pictures into my program as a resource.

Clear as mud?

[barry]

Well, it seems the problem is the guy behind the wheel; me.

I tried changing the bitmaps and rebuilding the project and sure enough it worked.  Why that didn't happen before I don't know.

Anyway, it's fine now.  Thanks for your help.

Barry