Shift bug in Win 98/ME

Caydr · Post by **Caydr** » 23 Aug 2006, 22:28

I was just talking to one of my old OTA:AA buddies and he reports that old versions of windows can't use the shift key to queue up things like buildings. Does anyone know why this is? Can it be fixed for the next version? That's a lot of people we're denying Spring goodness to.

clericvash · Post by **clericvash** » 23 Aug 2006, 23:00

This has been pointing out before i am pretty sure, and i think the devs at the time just like basically disregarded it.

Caydr · Post by **Caydr** » 23 Aug 2006, 23:03

Maybe it wasn't very well substantiated before. I've verified with about a dozen people now though that all say shift is screwed in Spring on these old versions of windows.

Tobi · Post by **Tobi** » 23 Aug 2006, 23:04

Good thing is that apparently spring is running fine on these old Windowses.

That used to be different (half) a year ago.

JoeCool · Post by **JoeCool** » 18 Apr 2007, 23:45

Will this get fixed sometime?
Other than this problem, Spring runs fine on my Win98 System (much faster than on WinXP)...
On WinE you have the same problem (probably because it uses Win9x API too)

more Info: when I do a /keydebug I do not even get any response for the Shift key, all other keys seem to work perfectly though (even Ctrl, Alt, Caps, Scroll)

I also tried the latest automated build. Everything perfect, except for the shift key

Cheers, Joe

P.S.: no need to tell me not to use Win98 (I won't listen :) ) You might as well tell me not to use my bicycle, just because cars have been invented... Not everything that's newer is better... In fact WinVista is the worst OS of all time, only thing worse I can remember is WinME...

AF · Post by AF » 19 Apr 2007, 02:09

And windows 98 wasnt followed immediatly by Vista nor was windows the only OS.

However why should an opensource project with a longrunning shortage of developers support a 10 year old operating system thats been disowned by its creator, for whom there are fewer users than there are users of Mac OS X in this community, to fix a bug that could simply be avoided by binding a different key to the queuing action, or could even be fixed by the users themselves via lua widgets?

Caradhras · Post by **Caradhras** » 19 Apr 2007, 06:15

comparing win98 and vista/xp is like comparing flintstone axes with railguns

AF · Post by AF » 19 Apr 2007, 06:33

Someone should start a poll, should we support the 3rd world of computing?

cmalex · Post by **cmalex** » 19 Apr 2007, 07:59

I was solved queuing problem in Win98 with replacing SDL.DLL from standart install to one from old package (071) or from http://www.osrts.info/~tvo/spring/sprin ... ibs-v5.exe
(exactly, then it was http://www.osrts.info/~tvo/spring/sprin ... ibs-v4.exe)
This file must have size 237568 and date 27.02.06
Now it work with 74b1 (nightly i dont check (i play vs AI)).
For spring SP and TAspring client need zlibwapi.dll, but I not shure (I get files for spring year (from 067) and did"n remember all. I can later give list of files that exist in my Spring folder).
Negative effect of that replacing: did"nt work SM3 map in version > 2711 nightly (or I get a mistake, dontknow): all map textures is blakc.
I did'nt try to replace in pure full package (slooow dialup).

Forboding Angel · Post by **Forboding Angel** » 19 Apr 2007, 08:36

If you're playing spring on a windows 98 machine, that tells me that you probably are running everything with all settings turned off. Dude, seriously, get a new PC.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 19 Apr 2007, 08:56

Caydr, have they tried rebinding it to another key? Is it the key or the functionality as a whole?

Tobi · Post by **Tobi** » 19 Apr 2007, 09:04

I don't mind supporting W98 if it just means applying patches by someone with access to a W98 system with development environment etc.

Though it sounds like a bug/incompatibility of SDL, not Spring, but I'm not sure about that.

In any case, I don't think any of the currently active developers use windows 98, so unless someone turns up who does the chances of it being fixes are very small.

Btw, do control & alt work fine? Are both shifts broken or only left or right?

zwzsg · Post by **zwzsg** » 19 Apr 2007, 10:30

I was being told I'm an anachronosim for running Win2000, that everybody is under XP if not Vista these days, and you guys are still running Win98? I mean, for real, on your main PC, and for gaming?

I don't even get how it can be possible to run new games in Win98, I mean, are there DirectX 9 and ForceWare 93 / Catalyst 6.2 drivers for Win98? This also makes we wonders what new OS brought us, if old OS can run such a shiny game as Spring as well. Or is because Spring is now based on OpenGL and other platform independent library? But then, why not all others, commercial, games are?

That said, if Spring is already running under Win98 and there's just that tiny point with the shift that worked before and not now to fix, sounds like it's worth keeping Win98 supported!

Erom · Post by **Erom** » 19 Apr 2007, 15:12

Tobi wrote:Btw, do control & alt work fine?

Joe seems to indicate that they do, above.

Tobi · Post by **Tobi** » 19 Apr 2007, 23:13

zwzsg wrote:That said, if Spring is already running under Win98 and there's just that tiny point with the shift that worked before and not now to fix, sounds like it's worth keeping Win98 supported!

It'd be tiny if someone actually knew why it doesn't work

Or in which exact revision it broke, if it has ever worked before (IIRC in the past Spring didn't work at all on W98, at least not on my install

).

Caydr · Post by **Caydr** » 20 Apr 2007, 03:51

Uh... some.. uh... guy... just inexplicably sent me an email... Make of it what you will...

[quote]
Good day, Caydr.

On day it was ressurect Shift bug in Win 98/ME error:

I had a problem with registering/ so write e-mail
I was solved queuing problem in Win98 with replacing SDL.DLL from standart
install to one from old package (072) or from
http://www.osrts.info/~tvo/spring/sprin ... ibs-v5.exe
(exactly, then it was
http://www.osrts.info/~tvo/spring/sprin ... ibs-v4.exe)
This file must have size 237568 and date 27.02.06
Work with all version.
For spring SP and TAspring client need zlibwapi.dll, but I not shure (I
(├âÔÇÿ

Tobi · Post by **Tobi** » 20 Apr 2007, 09:28

That confirms my point that it is probably a regression/bug in SDL. Maybe he/you can try with the SDL.dll from mingwlibs-v7 (look on UF section Misc), to test whether they have already fixed the bug between 1.2.9 (included with 0.74b3) and 1.2.11 (in mingwlibs-v7) ?

rattle · Post by **rattle** » 20 Apr 2007, 16:07

Caradhras wrote:comparing win98 and vista/xp is like comparing flintstone axes with railguns

That's bullshit... each OS has it's use. If you want a fast OS for gaming use Win98SE.

AF wrote:Someone should start a poll, should we support the 3rd world of computing?

There are more people running spring on old hardware than you think.

Caradhras · Post by **Caradhras** » 20 Apr 2007, 17:13

rattle wrote:
Caradhras wrote:comparing win98 and vista/xp is like comparing flintstone axes with railguns
That's bullshit... each OS has it's use. If you want a fast OS for gaming use Win98SE.

AF wrote:Someone should start a poll, should we support the 3rd world of computing?
There are more people running spring on old hardware than you think.

Point A:
As mentioned before, by zwzsg, there aren't any up-to-date tools and no bugfixing support for the os.
So, it will just be reasonable if you know, how to hack around these limits.
(Not to mention the horrible usability (usb for example etc....)

Point B:
I think, the people using old hardware should switch to a lightweight linux distro, because there they get a supported os, which they dont get if they use old windows versions. And modern games wont run on old hardware and old games are often ported to linux.

JoeCool · Post by **JoeCool** » 23 Apr 2007, 01:02

HI,

was away for a while but I'm catching up now...

I got an Athlon 800 with a GeForce 4600 and Spring looks quite beatiful while having a decent Framerate. (Yes there is the latest DX9.0c for Win98, AFAIK nVidia support is limited to Geforce 6 and older; don't know about ATI though)
My Win98SE is patched with the Kernel Update Project so I can run most WinXP Software without problems (here if someone's interested: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=71476 )

As I stated everything is fine EXCEPT for the shift key...
Both shift keys are completely unresponsive (I even tried setting different Keyboard Layouts, German and US)...
Rebinding the Shift key doesn't seem to work because the queueing system must be hard-coded to the shift key somehow. If I Hex-Edit a little in the executable and change the bindings around, I get a printout of 'Shift' with /keydebug when I press the Key I changed it to but it still doesn't queue.

I'll try some other SDL versions and report back...

(I also have an XP installation on my machine, but XP just doesn't make good use of computer resources, so everything is much slower. I mainly just do my Web, Database and coding stuff on XP. I also have an old Linux partition, I guess I'll update this with a newer distro, after I have saved my most important Linux stuff)

Greetings from the 3rd World of Computing (amazingly arrogant statement),

Joe, who can do everything he want's on his old PC (except playing Spring properly) :)

Spring RTS Engine

Shift bug in Win 98/ME

Shift bug in Win 98/ME