Message-Id:	<199812192249.RAA03402@delorie.com>
Date:	Sat, 19 Dec 1998 21:36:05 +0000
To:	djgpp-announce AT delorie DOT com, allegro AT mail DOT canvaslink DOT com
From:	Shawn Hargreaves <Shawn AT talula DOT demon DOT co DOT uk>
Subject:	Announce: Allegro 3.1 beta
Reply-To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com

A beta release of Allegro 3.1 is now available from any of the sites:

   ftp://ftp.canvaslink.com/pub/allegro/al31beta.zip
   http://www.canvaslink.com/allegro/al31beta.zip
   http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Peaks/7599/al31beta.zip

This is a 1.4 meg download. If you still have a virgin copy of Allegro
3.0, the upgrade is alternatively available as a 490k diff file from:

   ftp://ftp.canvaslink.com/pub/allegro/al31diff.zip
   http://www.canvaslink.com/allegro/al31diff.zip
   http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Peaks/7599/al31diff.zip

If you choose to download the diff version, this does not include the
latest copy of demo.dat, which can be obtained separately (337k) from:

   ftp://ftp.canvaslink.com/pub/allegro/al31data.zip
   http://www.canvaslink.com/allegro/al31data.zip
   http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Peaks/7599/al31data.zip

----------------------------------------------------------------

The complete ChangeLog is far too long to post here: see 
http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/changes.html. To summarise:

Full support for VBE/AF hardware accelerated graphics.
Can take advantage of VBE 3.0 features (triple buffering).
Video bitmap functions for organising offscreen vram.
Supports stereo samples.
Sound input routines (MIDI and sampled sound).
True 16 bit interpolated sample mixing, with up to 64 channels.
Driver for ESS AudioDrive soundcards.
New joystick driver system and more flexible API.
Drivers for Sidewinder, Gravis GamePad Pro, and SNES joypad.
Better polygon routines (hicolor, truecolor, MMX optimisation).
Improved localisation support (keyboard mappings and translation).
Plugin architecture makes it easy to customise the grabber tools.
Added RTF docs, a new help.txt file, cross-references in the Info docs.
Five new example programs.
Many other portability improvements and bug fixes.

----------------------------------------------------------------

This code has been in widespread use as part of the various WIP releases 
over the last few months, so it is hopefully quite stable, and will be 
moving to official release status sometime in the middle of January
1999. Any problems should be reported directly to me or on the Allegro
mailing list (see http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/maillist.html).
Please do _not_ reply directly to this message, as it is being cross
posted to both the Allegro and djgpp announcement lists!

Note: I'm obviously going to be taking some time off during the next
couple of weeks, so you may not get an instant response to any problem
reports. Be patient, and enjoy the holiday...

Happy Christmas, and a bug-free New Year to you all!


--
Shawn Hargreaves - shawn AT talula DOT demon DOT co DOT uk - http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/
"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid." - Frank Zappa

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