DX Caverot test version

[Andy Waddington on Survey stuff]

Once I found that you needed:

both      Caverot.exe    (from wincvrot.zip)
AND       en.msg         (from the 0.96 source tree)

both in the same directory, I was able to test it on these configs:

Windows ME on 700 MHz Athlon thunderbird / 128 Mb / Matrox G400 32Mb
==========
  (recent clean install, but a few games installed which might have
  tried to update DirectX drivers, though they are all older than WME
  itself, so probably won't have succeeded. OS started by LILO)

  start it in a DOS box with "Caverot all.3d" and it works fine with one
  minor problem (1).

Windows 2000 on 400 MHz K6-3 / 128 Mb / ATI All-in-Wonder 128 Pro 32Mb
============
  (recent clean install, Service Pack 1 added but not much else. OS
  started by LILO)

  from command prompt: "caverot.exe generated errors and will be
  closed by windows."

  but dragging all.3d onto caverot.exe in NT explorer (I didn't
  previously know you could do this !) works fine - looks nice on
  a 21" monitor, but I'm not convinced it is using the 1600x1200
  mode that it was started from - ah, indeed, the OSD on the monitor
  says it is running 800x600, and only at 75 Hz...

Windows NT 4 on 400 MHz K6-3 / 128 Mb / ATI All-in-Wonder 128 Pro 32Mb
============
  (not a recent install, service pack 6, lots of software, started by
  the Windows 2000 loader, not the NT4 one (and the W2000 loader was
  started by LILO...) same hardware as W2000)

  Starting it from the command line in a command prompt window gives
  "an application error has occurred ... Exception: access violation
  (0xc0000005), Address 0x780264b5"

  but dragging all.3d onto caverot.exe in NT explorer works just as
  in W2000.

Windows 98 SE on 433 MHz celeron / 32 Mb ram / Neomagic graphics
=============    (HP Omnibook XE2 laptop)
  (relatively recently reinstalled clean but squished down to a much
  smaller partition by Partition Magic, and not much used since. OS
  started by Boot Magic)

  Works fine whether started from the DOS box or by dragging. Not
  especially smooth on an 800x600 HPA screen - need to run it quite
  slowly, but that's a function of the speed of the display, not the
  program :-) Two minor problems (2) and (3)

Windows 95 on Cyrix P200+ (166 MHz) / 96 Mb / ATI XPert@Work 8Mb
==========
  (ancient install and becoming flaky when running DOS stuff,
  especially since adding more memory recently. Various children's
  games have definitely fucked with DirectX, "Lego Island" was a
  graphics shambles ...)

  Works fine whether started from the DOS box or by dragging. Minor
  problem (3)

Non show-stopping problems:

1) I left the W ME machine spinning Loser round whilst I went to collect
from school the offspring for whom this machine is intended (the relentless
march of technology means that my six-year-old gets the fastest computer in
the household for Christmas )-: When I came back, power management had shut
the screen down. This seemed to have killed Caverot, and when the screen
came back up, it was in 256-colour VGA - I had to enter display properties
to get back to the 1280x1024 true colour mode I'd started from. One
consequence of this is that I didn't notice if there was a CaveRot icon on
the bar...

2) On the laptop, either standby or suspend both have the effect that,
upon waking up, you get the windows screen with the DOS box. There is an
icon on the iconbar (or whatever Gatesland calls it) which you can click
to get back the CaveRot display taking over the whole screen.

3) on neither W98 nor W95 (didn't try on WME, and command line doesn't work
at all on WNT/2000) did caverot --help (or -h --h -help ...) produce any
help. And --mode-chooser didn't do anything (nor was it ignored - I just
got the command line back with no error message and the all.3d file wasn't
run).

Since NT and W2000 prevent me starting caverot from the command line, how
would I set about passing parameters to choose a 1600x1200 (or 1800x1440)
display ? It seems a shame to have a nice monitor and not use its ability...
Alternatively, if its going to use 800x600, it could usefully do that in
a window ... or maybe as my backdrop :-) [or wallpaper, in Windowspeak]

Mark said

> no, [Windows ME] is the next one up from W 98

You mean down, surely ? You lose the ability to boot to DOS for very
little real advantage...

Incidentally, if you need SP6 for NT 4 or SP1 for W 2000, its probably a lot
less hassle to go out and buy a UKP 2.99 copy of PC Pro [or no doubt some
similar rag in the US] and use the ones on the Cover CD than to download the
Service Packs from the MS web site [unless you have silly amounts of free
bandwidth]. Stops MS from knowing you want a copy, too, which always seems a
good idea, even if your Windows are fully paid for and legitimate :-)

Andy