Hello, I've been over the passed couple of days setting up Visual Studio with Allegro 5.0.7 and have been learning about the Allegro library. I am a seasoned in c++ but don't usually create gaming codes with it; however, on a colleagues advice I've taken the plunge! While running through some tutorials I've encountered some problems...

THE ISSUE: I am having trouble loading bitmaps/resources in the MSVS 2010 IDE using Allegro 5 without using absolute paths to the directory in which they are stored.
So I did some research and found some code snippets within these forums and others that resolve these issues. These have not worked for me, unfortunately. I will post the code below. Any advice will be well received. Thanks!

I have also tried using these to no avail as well... I gotta be doing something simply wrong:-/

ALLEGRO_PATH *path = al_get_standard_path(ALLEGRO_RESOURCES_PATH);
al_append_path_component(path, "resources");
al_change_directory(al_path_cstr(path, '/'));  
al_destroy_path(path);
 
image = al_load_bitmap("pandaHill.bmp");

AND

ALLEGRO_PATH *path = al_get_standard_path(ALLEGRO_RESOURCES_PATH);
al_append_path_component(path, "resources");
 
al_set_path_filename(path, "pandaHill.bmp");
image = al_load_bitmap(al_path_cstr(path, '/'));
 
al_destroy_path(path);

Is your executable really in "C:/bitmaps/"?

One thing that strikes me is calling al_init and al_init_image_addon twice. (Shouldn't be a problem...) Also, calling al_create_display can better be done before loading.(Might be a problem?)
The code posted should work. The only thing I can think of is there might be space in the real filename?

If what the others have said doesn't help, you could run Process Monitor and see exactly what path and file your game is trying to load. It's a very useful debugging tool.

If I recall correctly, it is VERY important that you create the display first, otherwise the bitmaps will be created in memory instead of in the display, and blitting operations will be MUCH slower.

try:

char thepath[200]

sprintf(thepath,"%spandaHill.bmp",al_path_cstr(al_get_standard_path(ALLEGRO_RESOURCES_PATH), '/'));

al_load_bitmap(thepath);

If it doesn't work, try printing the directory variable and see where it is(by using fprintf(stderr, directory) or something similar). Move your image to that folder and it should work fine, even without adding all this stuff.

EDIT: Thanks, Thomas
EDIT2: Just checked that this code shouldn't work, due to the return value of al_get_standart_path() not being a char*. Forget about it
EDIT3(I'm done editing): now it should work.

current directory won't work when you run the application via windows explorer or an IDE. They all run with a current directory that is not your application's folder.

The ALLEGRO_RESOURCES_PATH path should get you the proper directory.

Given the commented code "C:/bitmaps/pandaHill.bmp", the duplicate initialize calls, blindly trying to use the "resources" directory, I would guess he is copy-pasting code without even attempting to understand what is going on.

All he probably needs to do is copy his bitmap into the same folder as the executable, and use his original code after fixing the obvious problem of calling functions in the wrong order and multiple times.