Two corrections from the project owner.
1. dgVoodoo2 must NEVER be added to the repo or the deploy script.
The pod fleet is mixed. XP pods use native DirectDraw and need nothing extra --
installing dgVoodoo2 on them BREAKS them. Only Windows 10/11 pods need it, and
only for the MFD modes. It is therefore an installed-per-machine, OS-dependent
prerequisite that the pod owner sets up, not a build artifact.
This reverses the recommendation added in the previous commit, which suggested
versioning the working dgVoodoo.conf and having deploy-mw4.ps1 place it. That
advice was wrong: it would have pushed a Win10-only dependency onto every XP
machine. dgVoodoo.conf and dgVoodooCpl.exe were removed in 0ceba9c7 deliberately
and must stay out.
- CLAUDE.md STEP 10: the "TODO: commit it" note is replaced with the reasoning,
flagged so nobody re-adds the files later thinking it was an oversight.
- CLAUDE.md Next steps: that TODO is removed. The borderless-windowed item now
notes it is the only route that removes the dgVoodoo2 prerequisite WITHOUT
breaking the XP pods, since it needs no external DLL on either OS.
- Release notes gain an explicit warning callout: dgVoodoo2 is not part of the
build and must not be installed on XP pods, with the advice to configure it per
machine rather than inside the game folder that gets copied around. Without this
an owner with a mixed fleet could reasonably have copied a working Win10 install
onto an XP pod and broken it.
2. Version numbering is intentional, not a mismatch.
V5.1.0b<n> denotes beta build n; these are handed out as release candidates for
testing. The "b" is dropped and it becomes 5.1.0 when the release is final. So the
console string V5.1.0b1 alongside a release named V5.1.0b_RC1 is expected, and the
earlier suggestion to reconcile them is withdrawn.
Both release-notes formats regenerated; the XP warning renders as a warning
callout in the HTML. Both remain plain ASCII with CRLF.
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (Anthropic) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: GitHub Copilot <copilot@github.com>
Release notes covering the 58 commits since dbcf4052 (-tbaud), written for pod
owners rather than developers: what changed, what the defaults are if they touch
nothing, and how to switch on anything new.
Two formats. The HTML is generated from the markdown so the two cannot drift, and
carries the same inline styling as BTFrstrm/autoconfig-file-spec.html -- no external
files, opens in any browser, prints cleanly. Both are plain ASCII with CRLF so they
open correctly in Notepad on a pod.
Structure leads with the two things that will otherwise generate support traffic:
running set-appcompat.bat after install (the AppCompat layer is keyed on the install
path, and its absence produces the misleading "Another application is preventing use
of full screen mode"), and the dgVoodoo2 scaling mode, which fails silently when set
wrong. Every command line switch is listed with an explicit "if you leave it off"
column.
Facts checked against the source while writing, and corrected:
- [RookieMission] key names. The first draft documented RookieMission=, RookieGameType=
and so on -- the internal variable names. The game actually reads MissionName,
GameType, TimeLimit, Visibility, Weather, TimeOfDay, Radar, HeatOn, FriendlyFire,
SplashDamage, UnlimitedAmmo, WeaponJam, AdvanceMode, ArmorMode. Anyone following the
draft would have edited options.ini and seen no effect with nothing to explain why.
The section now carries the full annotated block verbatim from options.ini, and all
14 documented keys are machine-verified against MW4Shell.cpp.
- [automaticmode] needs TWO keys, not one. automaticmode=1 shows the Load File button;
automaticfile=<path> tells it what to load. Without the second, CTCL_LoadAutoFile
returns immediately -- the button appears and silently does nothing. Both are now
documented in a table, with the path rules (bare filename resolves next to MW4.exe,
or give a full path).
- dgVoodoo2 is required on Windows 10/11 for EVERY MFD mode, including the original
spanned display (-tmfds 1 and 3), not only the new split mode (-tmfds 4). The first
draft implied it was specific to the new feature, which would have led owners running
the span to skip it.
- The mw4print MySQL export is flagged as included but not yet tested against a live
server. Everything else in the notes is confirmed working by the project owner.
libmysql.dll ships in the deployment (Gameleap/mw4, kept by the deploy's root *.dll
rule and not on the skip list), so there is nothing for owners to download.
Also repaired 23 em dashes that had been written as literal '?' characters, including
in headings -- a side effect of the workspace saving new files as CP949, which cannot
represent them. Both files are now pure ASCII.
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (Anthropic) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: GitHub Copilot <copilot@github.com>
