PC Gamer 3.9/1997-12_Disc_3.9_No._1.bin/ZGI_DEMO/TXTGAMES/ZTUUWin.zip/WinFrotzRevision.txt

Text File | 1997-08-27 | 24KB | 393 lines

2.22 R4.45    Released
 * Added AutoLoad feature in conjunction with Zork:  The Undiscovered Underground.
2.22 R4.4    Released
 * Using larger/smaller than normal values for your Windows menus/caption bars
   will now no longer confuse graphics (V6) games. For those of you that got
   "squished" graphics in V6, the problem is fixed. Honest, it's gone this
   time (I think).
 * Nothing like fixing one thing to create another problem: fixing "no story
   file" resulted in WinFrotz no longer being able to start another game after
   you quit from within the game itself. This is fixed ("static" that was not
   being re-initialized).
 * The Sound dialog box will no longer incorrectly miss the sound hardware
   after a sound has already been played (wave out device was already open).
 * Added Tandy Bit to debug options dialog. Make sure you set this BEFORE you
   load the game, it cannot be switched on once the game is loaded.
 * Having a game end within the Z-machine (i.e., solved) will not clear the
   screen until a key is pressed. Closing via Windows (Alt-F4, Window/close)
   will still result in immediate exit, as per the Windows standard.
 * The WinFrotz window now accepts file-manager style drag and drop; that is,
   you can drag the story file you want over the window and release and it
   will be opened automatically.
 * The time-in-adventure timer is zero until a story file is loaded now.
 * Various help file changes.

2.22 R4.3    Released 6/4/97
 * Fixed "no story file" when switching from game to game directly via
   File/Open
 * All message boxes now properly centered.
 * Believe I have corrected for conditions that could cause bad screen
   geometry for graphics games.
 * Time box on status bar now shows time elapsed, not time of day (kept
   forgetting to do that...)
 * Julian Eggebrecht wins the persistence award for making me investigate
   color allocation problems, which I believe are solved now (bad colors
   in the columns of Zork Zero for instance).
 * Font dialog no longer displays potential silver-on-silver colors making
   it impossible to see the example font
 * Various twiddles to the code in preparation for two things: re-releasing
   the console version (so I can make a WinCE version), and releasing the
   source itself.

2.22 R4.2    Released 4/23/97
 * Open file dialog lists "Open" instead of "save"
 * Fixed first-time startup causing V6 graphics mode to be incorrect, so V6
   games wouldn't work until the Graphics Options menu was accessed.
 * Finally found and corrected the problem under VisC 5.0 vs. 4.2. It
   appears that the _first_ call to the expression
   HWND foo = AfxGetMainWnd()->hWnd would work fine (and you could post
   messages to that HWND) but _subsequent_ calls would fail when a message
   actually posted to that HWND (and not directly, they would fail somewhere
   in the bowels of MFC after the message pump). Doesn't happen in MFC 4.2
   with VisC 4.2. Never complains (no assertions) under VisC 5.0 in Debug
   mode. Just Release, which craps out mysteriously with  no dialog even,
   isn't that special. The solution? Override the message in
   PreTranslateMessage of the mainframe. Isn't that the same thing as if you
   were just writing a C program, you ask? Why yes, yes it is. Note that I am
   not an OLE container so AfxGetMainWnd should just return m_pMainWnd, but
   apparently something else mysterious happens.
 * 960x600 graphics mode should work much better now. I had forgotten that
   transparent overlays would sometimes be uneven in width, and the scalar
   multiplier I was using to place them correctly on the large screen would
   end up transferring a rounding error to the Z-Machine. Zork Zero works now
   in CGA for instance (I know everybody was dying for that).
 * Using a safer display method that should fix graphics on those people that
   are having problems (?). I'll check this with somebody who actually had it
   reproduceable.
 * Weird naming conventions for your story files (e.g., no extension) should
   no longer confuse the automatic loading of alias files from the story file
   directory. Remember the automatic alias file should be the same name as the
   story with an .frc extension (i.e., zork.dat becomes zork.frc).
 * Changed input line so it will accept return regardless of position of
   input cursor. The original Frotz code only likes return at end of line,
   somebody correctly pointed out that the Windows behavoir is to accept
   returns anywhere (which will terminate the entire visible input line).
 * Somebody send me Hitchhiker's Guide so I can test it. Two people have
   reported problems with this game and I don't have it. E-mail me first so
   I don't get a bazillion copies. Yes, I'll delete it afterwards.

2.22 R4.1    Released 3/29/97
 * Y-axis font metrics fixed...I think. This was one of those "why did this
   ever work to begin with?" type of discoveries. It involved a piece of code
   I had changed long ago for WinFrotz R3 which was lost in the translation
   to the 2.22 Frotz code base. I'm very interested in hearing about font
   spacing problems now...anyway this fixes Inform help menus, for instance.
 * Fixed aliases not working (duh)
 * Sound dialog now displays diagnostic to show whether the current story
   file has even attempted to load a sound. This should help with people who
   are having problems getting sound working in Lurking Horror or Sherlock.
 * Corrected for condition that could cause incorrect background colors
   when flipping from dual-color to full then resizing immediately.
 * Choosing colors from within the font dialogs now works as well as using
   the regular color menus. However font dialogs only display primary colors
   (and I'm not about to completely rewrite the standard Windows font dialog).
   So use the color menu if you want a color that isn't one of the primaries.
   (Except for black, which I can't accept because it's the default and you
   might have OKed the dialog box without MEANING to accept black as a color).
 * Fixed Alt-A lockup (Stefan gets me again with function jump tables :-) )
   I heavily recommend using the dialog box, it's got paranoid level error
   checking. But Alt-A works like Frotz under OS/2 now.
 * Yes yes finally remembered File/Open filters for opening the games
   appropriately (*.dat, *.zip, *.z?, etc)
 * Built with VisC 5.0; slightly smaller, but not really faster despite 5.0s
   better code generation - speed problems here aren't the code, it's GDI.
 * Silly feature additions to the about dialog box. Will show the icon of the
   current game (if it's in the same directory and same base name as the story
   file) and will show another icon indicating which Z-machine rev it is.
   Also a couple of other ho-hum gee whiz things.
 * Silly feature 2: The frame icon (top left of window) will change to reflect
   the Z-Machine level of the story you are currently playing.
 * Version numbers agree between about dialog/executable file
 * Fixed potential race condition between threads
 * If you know how to use icons for shortcuts/file types, there are now icons
   in the WinFrotz executable for the various Z-Machine levels and "Infocom"
   as well as the WinFrotz icon about this. Please don't e-mail me asking how
   to use icons in Win95,there are a multitude of help sources on that subject
 * Spent hours and hours trying to debug a bizarre problem that came up: on
   restarting a story, WinFrotz would GPF after the second story was loaded.
   This only happened in full release form, even when all optimizations were
   turned off. To make a long story short:hosed by Microsoft. To be precise,
   it appears the oh-so-helpful MFC libraries have bugs under 5.0 that did not
   exist in 4.2. People have asked me why I do not dynamically link with MFC,
   now you know. What does it mean when a debug build finds nothing wrong,
   when you change not a lick of your code and it works perfectly with the
   previously build of the libraries? You figure it out. I don't believe this
   would occur if WinFrotz were an OLE container. Too bad I have absolutely no
   use for that here (just about everything _Microsoft_ makes does, so guess
   how predisposed MFC is to that?).

2.22 R4    Released 02/26/97     ---Major Version change---
   So much is new in this release I won't go into the small stuff. Doing this
particular build was much more work than I had planned for, and involved a few
hideous bugs causing me grief. Barring something major wrong with it, I will
probably be taking my time to deal with the last few things to correct/add.
Major points follow:
 * Converted to the DOS Frotz 2.22 code base. This was painful. However many
   more things that didn't work before work now; as far as I know everything
   that DID work correctly before still works as well.
 * As a result of above, many screen geometry issues have been completely
   redone. Cross your fingers.
 * Added a scrollback review buffer (Ctrl-L). This is a read only dialog
   box that has the last 32K or so of output to window 0 in it. You can cut
   from this using Ctrl-C and the standard windows selection methods (mouse,
   keyboard etc). Do no write me about what a crufty hack this is. I am not
   satisified with it and will be changing it in a later release. Patience.
 * Created a Sound dialog box, controlling volume and whether it is played.
 * Created a Debugging options dialog box.
 * Changed Alias menu to "Options" to also contain above two settings boxes.
 * Reorganized code itself to roughly mirror Stefan's modules in the 2.22
   distribution. Where possible I retro'd my code to more closely fit what
   Stefan was doing in the various os_ functions.
 * WinFrotz now correctly allocates the extra three fonts required for style
   variants of FIXED fonts (as far as I know, the only game that used this
   was Bureaucracy for the "registration" screen - which now works right).
 * Improved stability of switching back and forth between regular mode and
   V6 mode - also switching to full color while a V6 game is loaded will no
   longer cause a lockup.
 * Various interface frobs.
 * Alt-D no longer deletes words since the Frotz source uses this as the
   debugging menu. I like to keep the Alt functions as they are in Frotz for
   people that are used to the DOS version. Deleting words is accomplished
   with the standard windows ctrl-delete (which now behaves exactly like
   a windows edit control)
 * The long standing "restart sometime results in a text buffer overflow"
   bug was corrected. statics declared within functions are globalized by
   VisualC, yipee. Anyway, fixed.
 * Real time mode works in BorderZone
 * Tab completion as per Frotz 2.22 (I think, not sure how this works)
 * Help file revisions
2.01 R3.4    Released 02/19/97
 * Fixed last character in an italic string being clipped by the following
   space (i.e., AMFV). The Z-machine prints the intervening spaces in normal
   (non-italic) style, sigh. I'm sure somewhere this will break something in
   a very small but annoying way.
 * Fixed Shogun printing past end of current line into the border (incorrect
   char widths were being returned for special codes 9 and 11 ).
 * Fixed long file name folders causing erroneous "Cannot open story file"
   upon invoking - this pretty much did in any semblance of command line
   parsing, but it was largely meaningless in WinFrotz anyway.
 * Found work-around for SBAWE drivers under NT, I believe these work fine
   now (even volume, apparently). It involves resetting the sound every time
   volume changes. Can't be helped.
 * Changing background colors takes effect instantly in dual-color screen
   mode again. Background color changing is smarter in multicolor modes as
   well (changes rest of input line and everything after).
 * Added a Paste operation (don't get too excited, still no cut and copy).
   This was always really easy to do; the hard part is going to be coming up
   with a good cut/copy method. Ctrl-V works, or Edit/Paste.
 * Added mouse button double-click processing (fixes mouse use of Hint menu
   in Arthur, possibly other places)
 * Implemented a pretty long input buffer, so keystrokes will not get lost
   when other tasks are consuming heavy CPU (this worked perfectly the first
   time, therefore it must have bugs I haven't discovered yet).
 * Created a buffered TextOut mode, and a hybrid update system. Update
   performance is substantially better in hicolor (most noticeable in
   "Frequent Update" mode), and is still improved in dual color.
 * Corrected some harmless but visually annoying behavoir when quitting a V6
   game (bad colors, etc). Also after any type of game is completely quit
   WinFrotz will not leave a bitmap allocated now (it was cleaned up, but not
   until final exit).
 * Very Frequent updates will show each graphic as it is being drawn; slower
   but interesting at times (I use Infrequent for graphical games myself).
 * Corrected time spent in an open file dialog being counted against the
   Z-machine cycle rate (for the about box).

2.01 R3.3    Released 02/10/97
 * A subtle background erase bug that caused inverted erasing under certain
   conditions was fixed. This corrects Arthur when an incorrect command was
   typed and (maybe, I can't test it) Shogun.
 * Resizing should be less sluggish under all modes
 * A variety of small optimizations have increased display speed, even with
   frequent updates on.
 * Reports of font size back to the Z-machine are better; this should fix
   the last of the font metric problems (as well as they can be, bugs in the
   Z-machine code could still exist).
 * Changing graphics options won't bring up a "you must restart" dialog when
   the current game isn't V6 anyway.
 * Fixed the Z-Machine refresh flag getting set incorrectly at entry into a
   story (WinFrotz never has to refresh in this sense), which was causing
   the first description of Merlin to disappear in Arthur and Journey needed
   to be clicked twice to start.
 * Added "Very Frequent" updates setting for smooth scrolling (but slow in
   all but dual-color mode)
 * Changed exit dialog to Yes/No/Cancel
 * The no graphics file error appears in a MessageBox to prevent it from being
   lost when foreground/background colors are the same.
 * Removed the V5 status line warning. WinFrotz pretty much forces you to do
   things the right way here; so it seemed redundant.
 * Changing from dual-color to full-color mode will no longer leave a dangling
   cursor on the screen.
 * Fixed some errors/obselete stuff in the help file.

2.01 R3.2    Released 02/03/97
 * Certain combinations of color options could result in the dreaded polka
   dot display (the result of blitting a color bitmap into a mono surface
   under GDI). This is now dealt with by some special case code.

2.01 R3.1    Released 02/02/97
 * Argh. Fixed control key bit being stuck and transparent display of the
   input line when using ctrl-D.

2.01 R3    Released 02/01/97
 * Added V6 support. I have not tested Shogun (I don't have it). Somebody
   please do so. This was even more of a pain than I anticipated it would be.
   All because I've never played Journey all the way through.....all graphics
   modes are supported, even CGA. Resolutions supported up to 1280 x 800.
 * Added palette support for 8-bit color screens, so V6 games work on them.
 * Fixed occasional transparent versus opaque printing problem (most evident
   in Freefall).
 * Fixed the occasional garbling of the status area when changing fonts in V5
   games (notably AMFV).
 * Corrected mouse clicks being entered into text line.
 * Found what appears to be memory leak in Frotz code for undo slots; set up
   guards against it. Hasn't happened to me in a long time so I think it's
   fixed (this would sometimes cause a GPF on exit).
 * Fixed some special key type handling that was still crusty.
 * Made the help file more helpful by including links from the major dialog
   boxes (duh).

2.01 R2    Released 01/21/97
 * Fixed reported problems with certain valid Z-machine chars not working as
   input (notably ' and "). At the same time, since I basically reworked the
   keyboard handler in a much more intelligent manner, fixed European
   keyboards which would print the wrong shift-values sometimes.
 * Flipping between underline/not in Emphasis font no longer causes strange
   values (underline plus color, etc).
 * Finally remembered something that had been nagging me about GetTextExtent,
   so now text metrics on mixed font type screens will be better (text at the
   MORE prompt won't scroll under the status area, for instance)
 * Fixed a 2K memory leak that could occur
 * Added mouse-click support (useless until V6 games work, but at least it's
   there)
 * Played around with sound problems NT with new SBAWE drivers, _Creative has
   really screwed these up_. See the readme.txt file

2.01 R1    Released 01/20/97
 * Renumbered version to coincide with Frotz base code version and release
   status
 * X and Y coordinates of screen are saved in registry
 * Couple of small scrolling issues dealt with
 * Attempt to load a graphic puts up a text message saying WinFrotz doesn't
   support that in this version
 * Fixed beginning "inventory" scroll bug in Curses.
 * Fixed sounds in several ways: detects and avoids calling waveOutSetVolume
   on cards that don't support it (like the recently broken AWE32 under WinNT).
   Also fixed continous loop sounds (the chanting in Lurking Horror) and cured
   the illegal parameter on the second invocation of an identical sound with a
   restart in between.
 * Ignored out of bounds attribute bit for games that appear to violate this
   (ie Sherlock). This is broken in the Frotz code, guess Stefan will have to
   look at it.
 * Fixed an input condition that would cause an illegal opcode in Journey (it
   still doesn't work, but the condition might have affected some other game).
 * Wrote the beginnings of a help file.

1.00 B10    Released 01/08/97
 * Playback of recordings works (Alt-P just like in Frotz). Recording them
   always did. There is some kind of cruft that causes an unreadable character
   sometimes as the last input command. I'll look into it.
 * File Open/Recording and File Save/Recording work. Like Save/Restore they
   can only be executed from an input prompt
 * Garbage in custom filters for file dialogs fixed
 * File save dialogs prompt for overwrite with dialogs, not text prompts.
 * You can specify your own bold color style now
 * Custom Colors saved in registry (first 6 cust colors are your text color
   selections)
 * The color you are editing is pre-selected when a color dialog box comes up
 * Moved "Lock" option into Display Options dialog box
 * Changed a few other menu layouts somewhat
 * FINALLY fixed a highly annoying bug that was eating the status line in V3
   games after a (text-typed only!) RESTART
 * Faster refreshes, resizes
 * Deleting a non-existent alias no longer GPFs
 * File/Exit will prompt for a save (if you're at an input prompt in a game)
   before closing. Alt-F4 instantly closes with no prompt. This is by design.
   If I want to close a window I damn well should be able to without being
   prompted (it's a religious thing).

1.00 B9     Released 01/08/97
 * Resizing to a larger, then again to a smaller status font won't cause
   garbage in the status bar for version 4 & 5 games
 * Resizing the status font in a version 3 game won't affect horizontal window
   size (still needs to for 4 & 5, no getting around it)
 * Cursor is moved correctly when status sizing results in different actual
   window size
 * File options are context sensitive; most are greyed out when no story is
   loaded
 * Color updates to the status bar (reverse text) always work and don't leave
   any strange pixel affects
 * [MORE] prompts won't result in full screen width carets
 * Switching to 2-color mode with either emphasis or bold set as "color" will
   automatically set them to "font" - other settings are left along
 * Switching from 2-color to full color won't cause the next few lines of text
   to be output with the wrong color

1.00 B8     Released 01/07/97
 * Corrects bone head one byte mistake on B7. Never change something at the
   last second. Never change something at the last second. Never...

1.00 B7     Released 01/07/97
 * This version is smoking out of the compiler. I have not tested it beyond
   "hey, it didn't explode when I tried that". Be aware of this when trying New
   Things, particularly the alias stuff.
 * New menu option "Aliases". Note that all the old Frotz alt-key combos for
   hotkeys and aliases still work if you prefer them
 * Better consistency in the tool bar, which is now load/save games only.
   Loading a story has to be done with File/Open
 * Load/Save game and aliases implemented. Load and save game are cheesy. Hint:
   You have to be at a text input prompt. SAVE/RESTORE still work of course.
 * Various bugs from the console WinFrotz file selector box fixed
 * No more white background when switching to a new story

1.00 B6     Released     01/06/97
 * Minimize/Maximize work when Lock Size option is set
 * No dangling noise on last display line
 * Lots of metrics improvements that should make WinFrotz very stable when
   changing font sizes (except in certain pathological cases)
 * Inverse colors settings, locked flag now saved in Registry
 * I've been working on graphics. Not there yet but making progress. I will
   probably end up pixel doubling everything to get reasonable window sizes.
   Still haven't implemented the save/load menus correctly. Still no list box
   for aliases. Don't write about stuff I haven't implented yet but announced;
   it will get in there. Do write with something you think of that I haven't
   or any bugs of course.

1.00 B5     Released 12/30/96
 * Well, hell. It appears Win95 is very picky about a particular Registry
   function I was using. I had problems with it on my Win95 machine, so I'm
   assuming others did. B5 fixed that problem - if your fonts are messed up or
   colors are all black after running B4 you should probably delete the
   WinFrotz registry entry. You can find it by running RegEdit and looking in
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinFrotz. Just highlight the "WinFrotz" entry
   and hit delete; WinFrotz will recreate it automatically when run next with
   the default settings. Sorry about that; yet another incompatibility to add
   to the pile between NT and 95.

1.00 B4     Released 12/30/96
 * Only notable change is persistent settings (fonts, colors, etc). Please try
   this out and tell me how it goes. I wrote it in a major hurry today and
   only had two hours of sleep last night....however it won't eat your
   Registry, that I can promise.

1.00 B3     Released 12/20/96
 * Filenames with spaces understood from command line
 * Memory leak that had crept in eradicated
 * Missing icon on About box
 * More efficient memory libraries (SmartHeap) for compilation
 * Small speed improvements

1.00 B2     Released 12/19/96
 * Fixes corrupted status line on first MORE prompt
 * "Could not load story file" no longer appears when simple launch performed

1.00 B1     Released 12/18/96