Allegro 4.4 and GME 0.6 Thread

[ZoriaRPG]

Maybe they changed the config file to use the global packfile password (if set)?

EDIT: This does seem to be the case. flush_config uses pack_fopen to do its file IO, which inherits the current global packfile password at the time the file is opened.

So I managed to get ZC to compile against Allegro 4.4 and run (https://github.com/ArmageddonGames/Z...ree/DD/alleg44). The good news is that ZoriaRPG is correct; the fullscreen crash is gone, though there is screen corruption once you alt-tab back. The fixes he lists also are indeed all that is needed to get the existing code to compile, though unfortuantely getting Allegro 4.4 to compile out of the box is a somewhat painful process (some of the stdint fixes had to be put back into the Allegro headers, etc). Allegro 4.4 also requires DirectX, which has to be installed before you can compile the library, and is incorrectly configured to try to use the DirectDraw, which has been removed from DirectX.

I'll grabthat package and the binaries and do some further tests. Just saw that the bins are in fact, there.

I'm wondering if the distortion is an artefact of stuff that has been plugged in to 'fix' 'bugs'. There was a lot of ag42 workaround silliness in the past, rather than lib udating, and no-one wanted to believe me when I said (over a year ago now) that many of the allegro issues were sorted on the library side.

I need to know what in ZC/ZQ is used to try to remedy the other keypress issues, loss of focus, and such; as I suspect those issues are likely also resolved, but that our 'fixes' will prevent noticing this.

[DarkDragon]

They should already be in the DD/alleg44 branch of the repository. Libs are in /libs/win32* and dlls in /bin/win32.

[ZoriaRPG]

They should already be in the DD/alleg44 branch of the repository. Libs are in /libs/win32* and dlls in /bin/win32.

Aye, I saw them about 10 seconds after I posted, so I went in and edited the post while you ninja'd me.

[Gleeok]

I'm guessing the underlying fullscreen issue never got fixed before they dropped allegro4 support in lieu of allegro5; they just patched the crash.

I honestly don't remember how the keyboard bugs got fixed. That was a very, very long time ago, and there were more than one of them. What is the specific issue?

[ZoriaRPG]

I'm guessing the underlying fullscreen issue never got fixed before they dropped allegro4 support in lieu of allegro5; they just patched the crash.

I honestly don't remember how the keyboard bugs got fixed. That was a very, very long time ago, and there were more than one of them. What is the specific issue?

When ZC has been running for a while, it ignores keypresses that are not bound to buttons. For example, if you press F6, the Yes/No dialogue requires mouse input... Pressing 'Y' fails to work. Likewise ZQuest has had similar issues with hotkeys when it runs for a while.

[DarkDragon]

In 2.50.2 I noticed a separate issues, where keys become "stuck": the left key keeps repeating, for instance, after I've let go of the key. This happens rarely (once per hour, maybe). Has anyone else noticed this? Is it related to Allegro's key bug, or is it internal to our code?

[DarkDragon]

I'm guessing the underlying fullscreen issue never got fixed before they dropped allegro4 support in lieu of allegro5; they just patched the crash.

Looking into things more, it seems that when fullscreen programs are sent to the background, all video memory is purged; it wouldn't surprise me at all if the problem is on our end, where we're not properly reallocating and populating the video buffers when we get focus back.

I'll look into the problem in detail once I've got the Allegro 4.4 transition squared away.

[DarkDragon]

I looked more into the full screen crash bug, and there are two separate issues:
- a race condition inside Allegro that can it to crash outright;
- Allegro does not restore the screen buffer to the proper color depth, for reasons I don't fully understand.

I tried replacing the system direct draw library with the version at https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat/issues, but while it fixed the alt-tab issue, it garbles NSF playback. Go figure.

One possible fix is to switch to windowed mode before alt-tabbing on windows, and the restore full screen mode when switching back. I will test if this works.

[DarkDragon]

@Gleeok , does the code in branch DD/alleg44 compile for you, and in particular, does it link against the precompiled Allegro 4.4 libraries?

I'm wondering if it will Just Work, or if your compiler will complain since the libraries were compiled on my newer version of Windows and MSVC.

[ZoriaRPG]

I looked more into the full screen crash bug, and there are two separate issues:
- a race condition inside Allegro that can it to crash outright;
- Allegro does not restore the screen buffer to the proper color depth, for reasons I don't fully understand.

I tried replacing the system direct draw library with the version at https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat/issues, but while it fixed the alt-tab issue, it garbles NSF playback. Go figure.

One possible fix is to switch to windowed mode before alt-tabbing on windows, and the restore full screen mode when switching back. I will test if this works.

Ooooh. So DirectDraw caused audio issues for you with NSFs, did it? That seems rather similar to what I ran into, which is a reason that I had advised upping our GME libs in the process, however I did not relate it to DX8--I related it to ag 4.4. Did the updated DirectX8 SDK fix both of the above graphical issues?

Have you looked into GME 0.6 yet? I'm uncertain how 'drop-in' friendly it will be, but I think it's something that we essentially need to do. I'm not so keen on shifting to another sound lib, as GME supports so many formats, and is rather accurate at replicating the system sounds for its supported platforms. The sad fact is that ZC is running on libs that are out of date, not only in perspective of modern programmes, but also heavily out-of-date within their own branches.

I can only imagine how many issues we could have resolved by fixing that long ago.