...is now going to be via e-mail. This is ease the bandwidth on modem users, or cell-phone-web users.

See here for how to subscribe: http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alleg-bigfive

Oh yeah, if you don't want to post, but just read what's going on, you can always visit the archive:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=11854

Why in the Allegro 5 version

DOS port removed?

can you give me instructions how to create my

own makefile for compilation in DJGPP and DOS

DOS is very usefull why you removed it?

And how to make a DOS port version? by myselft?

where can i download the Version 5 of Allegro?

Thanx

Or just keep using Allegro 4.x if you insist on DOS support.

I think (not sure) the DOS port is being dropped from 5.0 because the new rewrite has features DOS doesn't support easily, or at all. Someone else can come up with a list, but I believe it includes things like dual-monitor support. So you really can't port it. That's, y'know, why it's being dropped

Stick with 4.x.

That's what lwithers said the last time this came up. If it's not being dropped, then where on Earth are people getting this from? It's very confusing

And I've been working on the C64 port. Although currently, it requires the 256K ram expansion card.

C64? Dang it, how long will I have to wait for VIC-20 support?

I mean, you Allegro gods should be able to do plenty inside of 4k. (Though I hear you can gain another 384 bytes by using the cassette IO buffer.)

Yes, Chris. I'm sure that Allegro is being ported to 20-yer-old computers. While we're at it, why don't we do a UNIVAC port too?

Sorry, I never said the DOS support would be dropped. In fact I made it explicitly clear that I was not saying whether there would or would not be DOS support. Please read more carefully.

Wow! C64 had a 256K ram upgrade? Was there any games that took advantage of it? I still remember the disk drive I bought. Best hardware upgrade ever!!! :-) No more half-hours waiting for Gauntlet to crash just before it finished loading. :-)

This new mailing list got me thinking. If it can be set up so easily, why isn't the Allegro conductors list moved to Sourceforge so it can be archived? Would be nice...

I propose.. the future:

Spectrum Allegro v1.0
---------------------

A complete graphic library for the popular Spectrum Computer! Amazing basic style commands and a wide range of features. It's now possible for ordinary people to create amazing games with a simple knowledge of basic/machine code.

Check out the included examples on tapes 33-38 of the 63 tape set by some famous allegro coders:

• Johan Peitz contributed a port of his icy tower to the Spectrum. Featuring highly detailed 2 colour graphics and a special theme song in 3 warbly chip sound channels based on the original ingame music. How high can you flip the screen up the tower?

  
  

• Richard Phipps contributed SpeccyPaint, a 2 colour masterpiece of a paint program. Featuring an internal buffer of 1 bit graphics shown on an entirely different 1 bit buffer. Amazing contrast control, choose from black and white with a full 1 bit range. Richard also contributed to the core routines with some important hacks, patches and bug fixes to get around his original bugs and mistakes.

  
  

• Bob contributed his powerful SBlend routines. Amazing alpha blend effects in full 1 bit colour. All at incredibly fast speeds for a 1MHZ machine. Frame rate for full screen blends is now approaching 2FPM in the latest version!

  
  

• Thomas Fjellstrom created the special linux speccy setup, CrashHat. (Warning, most versions will require a special tape player capable of playing tapes bigger than 128k).

  
  

• 23yrdold3yrold created the demo game. A flip screen Monty Mole on the run platform game with special curved platforms. Chris is also the author of the Spectrum demo A Brief History of Spam. Featuring the worlds longest ever spamming scrolltext. Weighing in at a massive 96 hours due to very clever compression and random repeating sections.

  
  

• Thomas Harte contributed to the special DirectS overlay functions, enabling the spectrum version of Allegro to work on normal TV's!

  
  

• Shawn Hargreaves wrote most of the core routines in specially optimised Z80 machine code. He was helpfully assisted by Spellcaster and Thomas Harte for the final core library, after they decided to rewrite 5 earlier versions of the core routines due to 'internal disagreements' of a DirectS nature.

  
  

• Matt Smith generously provided the fast and creative sprite routines. As well as the palette control routines. See Example 5, "Scrolling Dot Rope" for a special routine created by Matt.

Try Spectrum Allegro now!

Allegro 5 will have an entierly new API. And some of the new features won't be supported under DOS..

Richard> ROFLMAO.

btw. whats a 'special linux speccy setup'?

Alot of the code will not be rewritten, like the drivers for hardware etc... The reason for the new API is so that features can be added in a non-hackish way, like having multiple 'screen's.

I think you undersell the Spectrum a bit. Remember also that it had a CPU that was substantially faster (not just in cycle terms, in terms of what you could calculate in the real world) and more flexible than that of the Atari/Apple. This, coupled with the fact that it had a genuine frame buffer made it much nicer for most types of graphics above the simple sprite/background sort - see the way that isometric games were pioneered on the Spectrum, and some popular 3d titles such as Virus have their only 8bit incarnation on the Spectrum. Even if the Spectrum version is rubbish!

People who are still making ZX Spectrum demos seem to be able to match anything I could do on a 486 PC, including voxel landscapes, fast filled polygon worlds with environment mapping, and so on.

If you really want to make things unbearable for yourself, you can see it all via my Allegro powered Spectrum emulator, long dead and never allegro.cc listed, but kept for no apparent reason at http://www.btinternet.com/~t.harte/SoftySoft/prevproj.htm.