pouët.net

At first thanks for so many reactions here... :-)

This surely shows that all of us are thinking about such (future) problems already.

@chock:
Thanks for that hint, pal !! Indeed works on many of those 4k's giving an error before. Cool! :-) At least for the crinkler releases that might be a certain workaround for the moment. (Didn't know about this option before. Well, I'm no pc-coder yet. Mainly c64 though. ;-) So I haven't had to deal with such coder-tools too much! ;-) )

But I also had some other 4k's or better 1k's which don't use crinkler and can't be fixed this way. (e.g. untraceable from tbc !!) Those still won't run yet. That's pretty sad of course as well though! :-/


@wysiwtf:
Thanks for your thoughts here. Surely sounds interesting. And who know...maybe there's someone here being able to form a more specific idea out of this and there'll be something in the (near) future... ;-)
Would be cool for sure. I also had thoughts about such a solution where some 'code/tool' could function similar to a 'wrapper' for such 4k's or other demos when run on a x64 base (and/or win7 specific)...
Some kind of a 'dosbox' for windows-intros/demos... ;-)))
Well, why not!?


@doom:
I already tried running some non-working 4k's with that WinXP mode in Win7. But - as it was already said here - this doesn't really work as the emulation or better the VM isn't performant enough or even supports most of the things such scenecode-pieces want to use! ;-)
Talking about WOW64 you are right of course. This should provide the 'workaround' for such prg's. But obviously some releases do certain different things which lead to a prg-crash instead of a proper execution with win7-x64.
As I said above already, I'm no pc-coder. So can't get anymore closer into any possible details and reasons here. But I'm certain there are enough guys out there, like you, who can examine such problems way better and easier than me to find a proper solution... :-))

Thanks at least for joining the thread with constructive comments as well, mate !! :-)


I'm just very glad that most demos I tried with win7-x64 yet work without any real problems. So I hope there won't occure too many unseen ones from the past days to stop running. But I guess we all will have to try and see what will happen to all those good old gems. :-)

There's just one fact for sure:
Sooner or later all the machines (no matter if windows, linux and the like) we use will be x64 only and then we might lose all those old prods (again) from the past if we hadn't reacted in time. (like it happened with many prods when the scene switched from DOS to windows.... :-/ )

Looking forward to some further useful discussions and ideas here now... :-)

Bye,
Weasel

thanks chock! at least one useful and working answer.
people have other things to do than to check crinklerupdates every day.. so this wasn't as obvious as many seem to claim here..

Reading his first post i think Weasel is already aware of the /RECOMPRESS option. Sure it takes two seconds for anybody to update the intros, but it also takes two seconds only to the intro coders to do it in their prods. Not a problem if they don't, but it would be a very kind thing to do from their side.

I'm with Weasel, The process to watch an 4k intro for me goes like this: remove the security protection in the browser, then in windows, then download an zip, decompressing it, and finally apply the crinkler recompress.

As discussed in the other thread about security/virus and intros, I'm more and more in favour of this ixalance-like intro launcher and an standard .4ki format, accepted in compos. Ideally with our own opcodes so it is 32, 64 and 128 bit compatible, and can even be interpreted from a javascript virtualmachine so we can use the same .4ki in the web? Dreeeaaaaming!

+1

iq is with me on this one.
i feel elevated.

Now, wait a minute. What you're saying, iq, is to reinvent the entire genre. What's not to say that a .4ki even has to have windows startup code? Sure this is nice for coders but it takes all the fun out of it.

If .4ki comes around, it'd be decent to see. However, without .exe versions, the genre is pointless and dead. Compo's should include both formats, if .4ki is even a viable option.

@iq:
I was aware of the possibility that there is a way to fix that crinkler 'bug', indeed. But I wasn't aware of the latest update of crinkler where you can apply this 'fix' by your own via such a recompress option! ;-)))
That's pretty cool though. :-D


And on your .4ki topic (although I'd prefer it to be .4kb then ;-) ):
IF it might be able to establish a kind of "universal launcher" for <=4kb intros to make sure it will run on any (or at least any windows) platform that would surely be a cool thought in general. Most, if not all, of various startup and compatibility problems could be gone with something like that as the 'launcher' simply would be providing the same environment all over the place and you would just supply a kinda ".4kb data-file" for it to boot/start/run...

But could such a launcher thing be possible when looking at all those variations seen in today's 4kb intros? (various soft-synths, pre-rendering/calculation engines and routines etc.etc.etc...)

Might be a pretty hard task to cover all these routines with "one universal launcher tool", wouldn't it!!? ;-)

Bye,
Weasel

Actually, it might be simpler than you'd think. As long as it can parse the .exe header and find the entry point (just a simplified version of the windows pe loader), couldn't one just load the image into memory with the right alignment etc.? Someone who knows more about this please verify, but that's the main issue with 4k incompatibility, I think.

I'm not so much into the .4ki thing but I'd definitely be game for a universal launcher.

ffs. is this going to be a trend every time a new upgrade is available to your favorite os?

the problem of running ancient releases on present hardware is old and can be handled by emulation or finding the old hardware :)

my dos/gus intros doesn't run on my windows vista - heck, they don't even run on my winxp machines :)

Why not create a new thread with



that would pretty muchs solve the problems root cause ;-)

yeah, I have no idea where the incompatibilities come from anyway.

Speaking of launchers and stuff, I remember to be seriously impressed when I saw those windows demo launchers for some of the old DOS demos like Tribes and 303. Random thought of the day.

Anyway, I don't really know the deep reason 4k intros are incompatible really. Anybody can explain?

I'm quite convinced that it's because different PE loaders for different versions of Windows use different sanity checks and/or require different data to be present in the PE header to execute. Crinkler (and the like) use as much data as necessary in the unused fields of the header, but which fields are used/unused changes from OS to OS, which is the problem here.

Right now I'm coding a launcher that emulates the PE loader to the simplest degree: load the .exe image into the correct spot in memory, locate its entry point, and execute it. Currently I have a program which frees up the base address that Crinkler uses for .exe's and writes a test 4k to it. I'm writing the code that finds the entry point now, and I expect to have a test launcher within a couple hours.

@Ferris:
If I may suggest a test-intro for your launcher you might want to have a look and trial with the intro I mentioned above already once: Untraceable by tbc !

I can assure that this doesn't run with win7 as well and also doesn't use crinkler. So it can't be recompressed to become fixed after all! ;-)

Wonder if you might be able to get it starting with your tool then maybe?

Also, if you might need any beta-testing feel free to give a sign.
I'd gladly like to help out here as far as possible. :-)

Bye,
Weasel

löl, I was just about to suggest that Tracie would become Win7 x64 compatible ...

The problem with older crinkler exes is not fields in the PE header, but the initial import code (as described by blueberry here), so I'm not sure the loader would help.
I don't like the idea of 4ks not being real executables, but some "script that requires a a real program to run". (on the other hand I would vote for 5k with the new api's but that's another story ;)
But doing a loader tool like ferris, that can take .exe (or scrambled .exe for the antivirus problem) and maybe fix known problems would be nice of course.

untraceable is using crinkler-1k, which is why it's not-quite-crinkler, but probably has the same problem as above. Maybe mentor can be arsed to rebuild it with the current version.

Ah yeah, thanks Psycho for the refresher. But I'm quite sure it's both issues: the header fields (I've played with my own PE header and it's inconsistent on different OS'), and the PEB import trick.

In that case, it would seem that the launcher I'm working on now will only work with either /RECOMPRESSED or Crinkler 1K .exe's (which seem to be inconsistent with different versions of Windows 7). However, it could still solve the antivirus problems and it might be possible to do Crinkler's PEB replacement procedure in memory, though that would make this tool Crinkler-specific.

...So, I'm calling it quits for now.

Then again, with the right memory write permissions, might it be possible to inject kernel32 where it used to be in the program's local address space? In terms of a general launcher I think that could work.

Runtime Error 200

isnt this why the *filename*-uncompressed.exe is always nice to be present in a 4k .zip?

It puts the code in the .exe that works on all PCs, or it gets the "only subset of platform supported" error again.

;)

What about getting Win7 (and x64 and nVidia and...) scene-release compatible? And fixing all that antivirus shit?

Ultimate solution: Get a C64 - insane satisfaction guaranteed!

TS: no :( not in North America :( Our poor NTSC machines have hardly any good demos...

How are the DOS productions lost? Were all the C64 productions lost when people switched to Amiga/PC?