A: Use GetPixelAddress() to get the address of bitmap data in any position on the screen. Vertically adjacent pairs of lines on the screen are shared in the same memory locations. GetPixelAddress() returns a non-word-aligned value for pixels on odd-numbered lines in a bitmap. Bitmap memory is directly accessible to the application program. Once you have the addresses for sections of the screen, you can use any ordinary mechanism (such as memcpy or CopyVRAMPages()) to save and restore the memory.
Image Compression Format
Q: I'm working on an application that uses many still pictures. Will 3DO offer any still picture compression subroutine?
A: The 3DO image tools support the compression that is implicit in any use of 3DO cel imagery. In addition, 3DO has licensed the Cinepak (TM) compression technology. Cinepak is a lossy compression that is typically used for moving images. It can also be used on static images, but requires compressing more than one image at a time.