Message-Id:	<199711240117.UAA15340@delorie.com>
Date:	Sun, 23 Nov 1997 21:39:56 +0000
To:	djgpp-announce AT delorie DOT com
From:	Shawn Hargreaves <Shawn AT talula DOT demon DOT co DOT uk>
Subject:	Allegro 3.0 beta
MIME-Version:	1.0

A beta version of Allegro 3.0 is now available from:

    http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Peaks/7599/

and:

    http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/

The second version may take a few hours to become externally visible.


IMPORTANT: the directory structure has changed significantly since
Allegro 2.2. In particular there is now a wrapper allegro/ dir at the
top of the zip file, so people can safely unzip it into the root of
their djgpp tree. This means that you should not try to install this
over the top of an existing copy of Allegro 2.2. Rename or delete your
old Allegro directory before you unzip this package.


I've been releasing work-in-progress versions of Allegro every few weeks
for several months now, so most of this code has already had a great
deal of real world testing. That means it is (touch wood) quite stable,
and probably won't stay in beta for very long. If all goes according to
plan I will make an official release about three weeks from now...



------------------------ new since v2.2 ------------------------


Full support for truecolor video modes with 15, 16, 24, and 32 bits per 
pixel.

Vastly improved sound code. There are new MIDI drivers for the AWE32 and
DIGMID (a software wavetable synth), plus better instrument definitions
for the OPL synth driver, a much more flexible set of sample playing
functions, reversed or bidirectional sample looping,
volume/pan/frequency sweep effects, digital audio streaming, arbitrary
MIDI loop points, direct output of raw MIDI commands, MIDI event
callbacks, and a couple of new test programs. There are some problems
with getting a sample set to use with the DIGMID driver: see my web site
for details.

Better grabber and datafile utilities. Datafiles can now be encrypted
with a password, appended onto the end of your program executable, and
read directly by any of the packfile functions.

Added a mouse movement callback, mickey reading function, and I _think_
I fixed the speed problem with Logitech mouse drivers.

Added a proper configuration system, with a better setup program and
support for different keyboard layouts.

The joystick code now supports dual sticks, 6 button joysticks, and the 
Logitech Wingman Extreme.

Added some more GUI objects, and changed various things to make the GUI
more flexible.

Better CPU and operating system detection: Allegro now knows about
DOSEMU, OpenDOS, OS/2, etc...

Assorted additional functions: rotate_scaled_sprite(), draw_character(), 
masked_blit(), textprintf(), ellipse(), save_bmp(), load_voc(), 
get_align_matrix(), qtranslate_matrix(), qscale_matrix(), and probably
some others that I can't remember.

Added a TexInfo version of the documentation.

Made some things faster, and fixed some things that didn't work. See the 
ChangeLog for details...



--
Shawn Hargreaves - shawn AT talula DOT demon DOT co DOT uk - http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/
"Pigs use it for a tambourine" - Frank Zappa

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