2.2 beta notes
==============

1.  I've made some changes to the way the parser uses the stack.  In
particular, the parser doesn't put nearly so much on the stack any
more, in order to make it more scalable on machines with restrictions
on the total size of the stack (in other words, DOS).  If you see any
strange problems involving the parser, especially anything that looks
like a command is getting corrupted somehow, they might be related to
these parser changes - let me know about anything you find.


2.  This version has lots of changes to the way parsing works.  As
usual, I've tried to make it compatible with existing games.  Let me
know if you encounter any apparent compatibility problems related to
the new functions (such as preparseCmd) or properties (such as
multisdesc).  Ideally, .GAM files produced with past versions should
continue to work, even without recompilation and even without the new
adv.t.


3.  Likewise, there have been some small .GAM format changes, but
.GAM files from 2.1 should continue to load under the new system.  If
you have any old .GAM files, you might want to give them a try.


4.  DOS users: the executables included are 16-bit protected-mode
executables.  This means that they won't run on 8086 processors --
they require at least a 286 to run.  The protected-mode versions are
built using Borland's new DPMI-compatible protected-mode system, so
they'll run under DOS alone or under a Windows DOS box.  In order for
these to work, the files RTM.EXE and DPMI16BI.OVL must be present in
one of the directories in your PATH string.

So far, I haven't had any problems with the protected-mode versions,
and they have the huge advantage of making up to 16 MB of memory
available, which makes compiles considerably faster and enables the
debugger to load even very large games without any trouble.  However,
I've noticed some strange behavior under plain DOS -- the Windows
DPMI server seems much more robust than the one supplied by Borland.
If you're running Windows 3.1, you should have no problems; if you're
running DOS, you may encounter some incompatibilities with your other
software that uses extended memory.

I'm planning to make the standard 16-bit real-mode versions of the
executables available as well in the official 2.2 release.  If you
need these immediately, let me know; the only reason I'm not
providing them is to keep the .ZIP file a little smaller on the
assumption that none of the beta users need the real-mode version.