Re: [AD] Too old allegro for Windows platform !

[Michal Molhanec <michal@xxxxxxxxxx>]

    Hello,
I'm personally not Allegro developer, but anyway, few answers:

Roger Moffa napsal(a):
> Hello every Allegro devellopers ;-)
>  
> First, sorry for my bad english, i will do my best to be clear and 
> understable.
>  
>  
> :Setting the point of this e-mail and infos for understanding.
>  
> It is now a whole week that i have reading the source code of allegro.
> My platform is windows XP sp2, and my devellopment compiler is now 
> Dev-c++. I previously used Borland c++ 5.5 and builder 6.
> I have just before Dev-c++ used MS-VC 6 for compile allegro source but 
> it whas hardly to get a error free binary form of allegro.
> There whas a lot of error for compiling the source of allegro (same 
> thing with Dev-c++) but after 2 days of try to compiling allegro, i got 
> finally a good working binary Allegro (demos exes, *.libs and *.dlls).
> For security, i have downloaded the precompiled binaries (libs and dlls) 
> (thanks you a lot for this because compiling allegro is somewhat a real 
> pain sometimes).

For Dev-C++ there exists for long time Allegro devpak, available at 
http://devpaks.org/details.php?devpak=1 or using the Dev-C++'s update 
manager

> 1) For first: PLEASE test the compilation makefile before releasing new 
> Allegro release.
>    I am not a guru programmer level, just an intermediate one (self 
> learning programming of long time now), and i am null with makefile. I 
> do no understand all the dependance and cross-platform things and others 
> 'make' language. I think i am not the only one in this case.

Building Allegro is extremely simple if you _exactly_ follow the 
instruction in the docs\build directory for your platform

>  
> 2) Allegro is more easy and faster to program than DirectX. This is why 
> i used so far, but... Allegro is very TOO OLD for the Windows/DirectX 
> platform.
> - The DirectX used in Allegro is ... DirectX3 but in reality it use only 
> the DirectX2.
>   - In the file wwdraw.h = #define DIRECTDRAW_VERSION 0x0300
>  - In all DirectX call API => hr = IDirectDraw2_.... this is well 
> DirectX2 API call, dead a long time ago ! In fact, DirectDraw died with 
> DirectX8 and MS say that in future DDraw 7 API call will not supported 
> anymore (because of use DirectGraphics / Direct3D).
>  
> - The DirectInput version is = #define DIRECTINPUT_VERSION 0x0500

Will there be any advantage in using newer versions? Speed? Features?
Classic DDraw API is not developed, however it will be supported 
probably forever.

--
Regards,
    Michal

ICQ# 175762750