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 Subject: Allegro 3.0 beta MIME-Version: 1.0 Precedence: bulk Precedence: bulk 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