* 7.5 release? @ 2003-09-23 15:30 Charles Goodwin 2003-09-23 15:43 ` Eric McDonald 0 siblings, 1 reply; 11+ messages in thread From: Charles Goodwin @ 2003-09-23 15:30 UTC (permalink / raw) To: xconq7 It's been 'imminent' for quite some time. What's left to do before it is released? - Charlie ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 11+ messages in thread
* Re: 7.5 release? 2003-09-23 15:30 7.5 release? Charles Goodwin @ 2003-09-23 15:43 ` Eric McDonald 2003-09-23 16:00 ` Charles Goodwin 2003-09-23 19:14 ` 7.5 release? - How you can help Hans Ronne 0 siblings, 2 replies; 11+ messages in thread From: Eric McDonald @ 2003-09-23 15:43 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Charles Goodwin; +Cc: xconq7 On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Charles Goodwin wrote: > It's been 'imminent' for quite some time. What's left to do before it > is released? I'm sure Hans has his own list. But a few of things I would like to take care of before the release are: (1) Finish build system overhaul. (2) Go over the documentation with a fine tooth comb. Possibly rewrite some sections. And time permitting: (3) Finish getting rid of the X11 BadDrawable errors for the dialog windows in the Tcl/Tk interface. (4) Make sure that all unit types that a side can own (whether through production, capture, or type changing) show up in the unit type list in the Tcl/Tk (and possibly other) interfaces. I know type changing is not even fully supported yet, but might as well take care of this detail while we're thinking about it. (5) Make sure that "xconq -x" writes initialization messages to its invoking tty just like "xconq -g somegame" does. Eric P.S. I guess I'll have to make sure the Web site says "approaching" (which I thought it did) rather than "imminent". ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 11+ messages in thread
* Re: 7.5 release? 2003-09-23 15:43 ` Eric McDonald @ 2003-09-23 16:00 ` Charles Goodwin 2003-09-23 16:29 ` Eric McDonald 2003-09-23 19:14 ` 7.5 release? - How you can help Hans Ronne 1 sibling, 1 reply; 11+ messages in thread From: Charles Goodwin @ 2003-09-23 16:00 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Eric McDonald; +Cc: xconq7 Eric McDonald wrote: > P.S. I guess I'll have to make sure the Web site says > "approaching" (which I thought it did) rather than "imminent". I took the 'imminent' from a mail to the list from Hans back in January that said 'approaching' and 'in a few months'. - Charlie ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 11+ messages in thread
* Re: 7.5 release? 2003-09-23 16:00 ` Charles Goodwin @ 2003-09-23 16:29 ` Eric McDonald 0 siblings, 0 replies; 11+ messages in thread From: Eric McDonald @ 2003-09-23 16:29 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Charles Goodwin; +Cc: xconq7 On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Charles Goodwin wrote: > I took the 'imminent' from a mail to the list from Hans back in January > that said 'approaching' and 'in a few months'. I see. I guess the only thing I have to say about this is that slipped release dates are fairly common in commercial software development. And, of course, Xconq is a 100% volunteer effort by people who generally have full-time jobs. So, the fact that the date has slipped is not surprising to me. (Hans once told me that he was targeting the end of summer, but that passed a couple of days ago, and I'm not bothered in the least.) Regards, Eric ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 11+ messages in thread
* Re: 7.5 release? - How you can help 2003-09-23 15:43 ` Eric McDonald 2003-09-23 16:00 ` Charles Goodwin @ 2003-09-23 19:14 ` Hans Ronne 2003-09-25 12:13 ` Erik Jessen 2003-09-25 15:07 ` Juergen Ruehle 1 sibling, 2 replies; 11+ messages in thread From: Hans Ronne @ 2003-09-23 19:14 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Eric McDonald; +Cc: xconq7 >P.S. I guess I'll have to make sure the Web site says >"approaching" (which I thought it did) rather than "imminent". Or rather, I should abstain from optimistic forecasts on this list :-). Other things to do before a release: 1. Fix the recently discussed font problems in the tcltk interface (almost done). 2. Add several new game modules and update all the existing ones (ditto). 3. Fix the memory problems on Windows. This is the big one. Several game modules crash under Windows 98, probably due to the limit on the GDI resource memory. In fact, after I updated the game modules, adding some more images to imf.dir, every single game crashes under Windows 98 (this is one reason why I haven't checked in these updates yet). I don't think it is acceptable for a release version of Xconq to crash with 100% certainty on what is still one of the biggest installed platforms worldwide, even if it works fine everywhere else. However, I'm not sure what to do about it. I guess we could rewrite the imaging code so that it uses less memory, possibly fix some leaks, but this is quite some work. And it would probably only fix things until the next game module update adds even more images. I would therefore be very interested to hear if there are any known shortcuts or hacks to deal with the GDI resource problem. It is after all a well-known limitation in Windows 98 that many programmers must have stumbled on before. Any suggestions are welcome. Hans ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 11+ messages in thread
* RE: 7.5 release? - How you can help 2003-09-23 19:14 ` 7.5 release? - How you can help Hans Ronne @ 2003-09-25 12:13 ` Erik Jessen 2003-09-25 15:07 ` Eric McDonald 2003-09-25 15:30 ` Hans Ronne 2003-09-25 15:07 ` Juergen Ruehle 1 sibling, 2 replies; 11+ messages in thread From: Erik Jessen @ 2003-09-25 12:13 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 'Hans Ronne', 'Eric McDonald'; +Cc: xconq7 Well, just to ask, how many people on this list know anybody still running 98? Everybody I know runs ME, XP, 2000, Mac or Linux. I don't know any 98 users. That should help determine the priority. As a general question ,what OSes aren't supported? (DOS6.22, Win3.0, etc.). Maybe it's time to put Win95 and maybe Win98 on that list. What about putting counters on the downloads for the various OSes, so you can tell what OSes are going out of favor? This is only of long-term use, of course, and won't help with source-code downloads. Regards, and keep up the good work! Erik -----Original Message----- From: xconq7-owner@sources.redhat.com [mailto:xconq7-owner@sources.redhat.com] On Behalf Of Hans Ronne Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2003 9:29 AM To: Eric McDonald Cc: xconq7@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: 7.5 release? - How you can help >P.S. I guess I'll have to make sure the Web site says >"approaching" (which I thought it did) rather than "imminent". Or rather, I should abstain from optimistic forecasts on this list :-). Other things to do before a release: 1. Fix the recently discussed font problems in the tcltk interface (almost done). 2. Add several new game modules and update all the existing ones (ditto). 3. Fix the memory problems on Windows. This is the big one. Several game modules crash under Windows 98, probably due to the limit on the GDI resource memory. In fact, after I updated the game modules, adding some more images to imf.dir, every single game crashes under Windows 98 (this is one reason why I haven't checked in these updates yet). I don't think it is acceptable for a release version of Xconq to crash with 100% certainty on what is still one of the biggest installed platforms worldwide, even if it works fine everywhere else. However, I'm not sure what to do about it. I guess we could rewrite the imaging code so that it uses less memory, possibly fix some leaks, but this is quite some work. And it would probably only fix things until the next game module update adds even more images. I would therefore be very interested to hear if there are any known shortcuts or hacks to deal with the GDI resource problem. It is after all a well-known limitation in Windows 98 that many programmers must have stumbled on before. Any suggestions are welcome. Hans ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 11+ messages in thread
* RE: 7.5 release? - How you can help 2003-09-25 12:13 ` Erik Jessen @ 2003-09-25 15:07 ` Eric McDonald 2003-09-26 10:07 ` Erik Jessen 2003-09-25 15:30 ` Hans Ronne 1 sibling, 1 reply; 11+ messages in thread From: Eric McDonald @ 2003-09-25 15:07 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Erik Jessen; +Cc: 'Hans Ronne', xconq7 Hi Erik, On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Erik Jessen wrote: > Well, just to ask, how many people on this list know anybody still > running 98? I know some who still do. I think that is primarily used on laptops nowadays. 98 (including 98SE) enjoyed a somewhat extended lifetime because Me wasn't exactly Microsoft's best release (to put it nicely). And a lot of organizations I have dealt with run on a 4 to 5 year upgrade cycle, which means 98 is still out there, and, yes, people do install games on their organizations' computers. > What about putting counters on the downloads for the various OSes, so > you can tell what OSes are going out of favor? This is only of > long-term use, of course, and won't help with source-code downloads. Well, actually browsers usually do provide not only their name, but also the OS they are running on. If one assumes that the browser OS is the same one which Xconq is going to be compiled on, then one can get a fairly decent picture about what platforms are being used for Xconq. But since Xconq seems to be a fairly low volume download, one would need to have an extended sampling period to create accurate statistics. And the sampling period would likely have to be longer than the time it would take to fix issues on the platform(s) in question. Regards, Eric ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 11+ messages in thread
* RE: 7.5 release? - How you can help 2003-09-25 15:07 ` Eric McDonald @ 2003-09-26 10:07 ` Erik Jessen 0 siblings, 0 replies; 11+ messages in thread From: Erik Jessen @ 2003-09-26 10:07 UTC (permalink / raw) To: 'Eric McDonald'; +Cc: 'Hans Ronne', xconq7 I'm used to look at this from a marketing point of view: 1) how many customers will we lose if we drop support for X (in this case, Win95, Win98, WinME, since it is my understanding that all of them suffer from the memory problem). 2) how many new customers will we get if we put the same effort to support X, into adding new/cool features for all the other OSes? My thought is that in a year or two, given HW replacement cycle times, that few will be running the old windows OSes, and that the same work into upgrading Xconq would get more people interested. The key to getting more new users, is make it easy to build a simple game. By the time they climb that learning curve, they're going to start learning how to write more complicated stuff. If the intitial curve is too high, they'll just walk away. I have a couple of friends who want to do a railroading game, and Xconq wuild be ideal, but the map-drawing GUI is less than clear on how to use it. I figured it out, but they will just give up after a while. Regards, Erik -----Original Message----- From: Eric McDonald [mailto:mcdonald@phy.cmich.edu] Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2003 8:07 AM To: Erik Jessen Cc: 'Hans Ronne'; xconq7@sources.redhat.com Subject: RE: 7.5 release? - How you can help Hi Erik, On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Erik Jessen wrote: > Well, just to ask, how many people on this list know anybody still > running 98? I know some who still do. I think that is primarily used on laptops nowadays. 98 (including 98SE) enjoyed a somewhat extended lifetime because Me wasn't exactly Microsoft's best release (to put it nicely). And a lot of organizations I have dealt with run on a 4 to 5 year upgrade cycle, which means 98 is still out there, and, yes, people do install games on their organizations' computers. > What about putting counters on the downloads for the various OSes, so > you can tell what OSes are going out of favor? This is only of > long-term use, of course, and won't help with source-code downloads. Well, actually browsers usually do provide not only their name, but also the OS they are running on. If one assumes that the browser OS is the same one which Xconq is going to be compiled on, then one can get a fairly decent picture about what platforms are being used for Xconq. But since Xconq seems to be a fairly low volume download, one would need to have an extended sampling period to create accurate statistics. And the sampling period would likely have to be longer than the time it would take to fix issues on the platform(s) in question. Regards, Eric ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 11+ messages in thread
* RE: 7.5 release? - How you can help 2003-09-25 12:13 ` Erik Jessen 2003-09-25 15:07 ` Eric McDonald @ 2003-09-25 15:30 ` Hans Ronne 1 sibling, 0 replies; 11+ messages in thread From: Hans Ronne @ 2003-09-25 15:30 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Erik Jessen; +Cc: xconq7 >Well, just to ask, how many people on this list know anybody still >running 98? >Everybody I know runs ME, XP, 2000, Mac or Linux. >I don't know any 98 users. > >That should help determine the priority. Maybe. Unfortunately, ME also suffers from this problem. it is only the NT variants (2000 and beyond) that have unlimited GDI resource memory. Hans ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 11+ messages in thread
* Re: 7.5 release? - How you can help 2003-09-23 19:14 ` 7.5 release? - How you can help Hans Ronne 2003-09-25 12:13 ` Erik Jessen @ 2003-09-25 15:07 ` Juergen Ruehle 2003-09-26 3:29 ` Hans Ronne 1 sibling, 1 reply; 11+ messages in thread From: Juergen Ruehle @ 2003-09-25 15:07 UTC (permalink / raw) To: xconq7 Hans Ronne writes: > 3. Fix the memory problems on Windows. This is the big one. Several game > modules crash under Windows 98, probably due to the limit on the GDI > resource memory. In fact, after I updated the game modules, adding some > more images to imf.dir, every single game crashes under Windows 98 (this is > one reason why I haven't checked in these updates yet). > > I don't think it is acceptable for a release version of Xconq to crash with > 100% certainty on what is still one of the biggest installed platforms > worldwide, even if it works fine everywhere else. However, I'm not sure > what to do about it. I guess we could rewrite the imaging code so that it > uses less memory, possibly fix some leaks, but this is quite some work. And > it would probably only fix things until the next game module update adds > even more images. > > I would therefore be very interested to hear if there are any known > shortcuts or hacks to deal with the GDI resource problem. It is after all a > well-known limitation in Windows 98 that many programmers must have > stumbled on before. AFAICT (from some debugging sessions on the Win95 installation I use to play games) the situation is as follows: - Tk (and/or xconq win32 glue code?) grabs GDI resources on image creation (and the GDI heap is restricted to 64k or something in Win9x because of Win3.1 compatability; this restriction does not exist in NT) - when the resources are exhausted image creation fails (i.e produces a warning and returns null) - when this null image is used somewhere xconq crashes Unfortunately I'm not familiar with neither Tk images on windows, xconq image handling, nor the xconq image drawing code. But it seems like fixing the resource requirements altogether would require changes to Tk. That leaves fixing the crashes on null images as a first step which will probably result in a seriously degraded display on Win9x, but is a good idea anyway, because one can probably create the same crash by some other means. In a further phase it could be evaluated whether it is actually neccessary to have all the images instantiated all the time and what kind of performance impact there is to instantiating the images on demand. But I'm completely out of my depth here, so this might be complete ****. jr ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 11+ messages in thread
* Re: 7.5 release? - How you can help 2003-09-25 15:07 ` Juergen Ruehle @ 2003-09-26 3:29 ` Hans Ronne 0 siblings, 0 replies; 11+ messages in thread From: Hans Ronne @ 2003-09-26 3:29 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Juergen Ruehle; +Cc: xconq7 >AFAICT (from some debugging sessions on the Win95 installation I use >to play games) the situation is as follows: > > - Tk (and/or xconq win32 glue code?) grabs GDI resources on image > creation (and the GDI heap is restricted to 64k or something in > Win9x because of Win3.1 compatability; this restriction does not > exist in NT) > > - when the resources are exhausted image creation fails (i.e produces > a warning and returns null) > > - when this null image is used somewhere xconq crashes > >Unfortunately I'm not familiar with neither Tk images on windows, >xconq image handling, nor the xconq image drawing code. But it seems >like fixing the resource requirements altogether would require changes >to Tk. That leaves fixing the crashes on null images as a first step >which will probably result in a seriously degraded display on Win9x, >but is a good idea anyway, because one can probably create the same >crash by some other means. In a further phase it could be evaluated >whether it is actually neccessary to have all the images instantiated >all the time and what kind of performance impact there is to >instantiating the images on demand. Thanks for the feedback! We should definitely fix the null image crashes. I thought a generic image (black box) was used if image creation failed, but this may be specific to the Mac PPC interface. I will look into this. As for hacking Tk, I already did that to enable various graphics features in the Mac Tk interface, but I would rather avoid doing it again. Lots of work. What I have done instead is to get the Windows version through GetVersionEx at launch time, and set a flag that disables various graphics features if you are running 98/ME. By disabling terrain transitions and unseen fuzz, enough GDI memory is left to run most modules under 98 or ME. I agree that in the long run we should check what images are really needed and when. One obvious fix would be to instantiate only those terrain images that are used in the current resolution. That would save a lot of memory. Hans P.S. It was interesting to hear that xconq also runs under Win95. I have not been able to test that myself. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 11+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2003-09-26 3:29 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 11+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2003-09-23 15:30 7.5 release? Charles Goodwin 2003-09-23 15:43 ` Eric McDonald 2003-09-23 16:00 ` Charles Goodwin 2003-09-23 16:29 ` Eric McDonald 2003-09-23 19:14 ` 7.5 release? - How you can help Hans Ronne 2003-09-25 12:13 ` Erik Jessen 2003-09-25 15:07 ` Eric McDonald 2003-09-26 10:07 ` Erik Jessen 2003-09-25 15:30 ` Hans Ronne 2003-09-25 15:07 ` Juergen Ruehle 2003-09-26 3:29 ` Hans Ronne
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