What are the chances of dropping Allegro now?

[Raichu86]

I remember a little while back that Dark Nation was polling whether or not to drop the Allegro interface (due to Allegro making adding things to the interface difficult or something) and go with a Windows interface, resulting in DOS no longer being supported. What ever happened to that plan? Also, now that we have a Mac port that also relies upon the Allegro libraries, is there even still any chance that it might happen?

[Cloral]

Support for DOS does seem rather pointless now, especially since it seems that XP doesn't like it. I don't know how much of the code would have to be changed though. One nice thing about Allegro is it makes using these lower-color resolutions easy, and ZC would take a huge rewrite to work with a higher color mode.

[Blonde799]

Originally posted by Raichu86
What ever happened to that plan?
I think DN stated he was planning on it after 2.0.

[idontknow]

what does Allegro do? what's the difference btwn having allegro window interface? will having window interface just make things easier or run more smoothly? if its windows, perhaps we can make zquest in an actually window, where you can pull the edges to manually adjust the size (cuz sometimes having it full screen is annoying), also a max, min, & exit buttons on the top right of the screen--if it were a true window, it'd be easier to read help files & such while working a quest

[Cloral]

Allegro is the game library currently being used. It's pretty good, but it was designed for DOS, meaning that it doesn't support a lot of newer features (like joysticks with many buttons, or today's sound capabilities).

If ZQuest was done in a windows format, we could actually have it MDI. MDI is Multiple Document Interface, and it means that you have the main window which is empty except that it has a bunch of sub windows in it. These windows have the different tools and such, and because they're all seperate windows you can move them around and set them up in the way that works best for you. Paint programs, such as Photoshop or Painer, are a good example of this interface.

[KJAZZ]

If he drops DOS now, lots of users won't be able to use ZC. Such as myself. :O

[idontknow]

no, you could still use DOS, but with the older versions of zquest, so those people would not be able to use the new features that would be in the window version, nor play games that use the newer versions in that format, however they'd still be able to use the older versions, i'm guessing--right? if we have the newer versions done in MDI but kept the older versions in the same format, i don't see a problem--i'm sure there'd be just as many people that would still create good quests using some older versions as there would be that would create quests using the newer versions with the newer format--i don't think we'll have to worry about neglecting a lot of zc players :)

[Raichu86]

I'm betting most Windows users wouldn't have a problem if the DOS version was dropped in favor of a Windows interface. After all, there's no doubt that you run dozens of programs that use Windows' interface. I used to not be able to run the Windows ZC because something had been messed up with my installation. After reinstalling, I have no trouble using Windows ZC except for the occasional annoyance with the interface (mouse getting stuck outside the window, it doesn't focus correctly on start up, etc). If the interface relies upon different libraries, there's no way to guarantee that it won't work just because the current Windows ZC doesn't work for you.

[Cloral]

If it were to use DirectX, it would be almost guaranteed to work for everyone that has any recent version of Windows - all anyone would have to do is download the DirectX end-user runtime from Microsoft. This might eliminate the annoying flickering I get whenever I start ZC (sometimes to get it to show up properly I have to alt-tab to another program and then back to force it to try to set the video mode again).

Splitting the versions though (i.e. keeping the old DOS versions) would not be a good idea. This would just serve to confuse people.