[Ohrrpgce] Problem starting gfx_directx

[Mike Caron]

Ralph Versteegen wrote:
> 2009/12/23 Jay Tennant <hierandel8 at crazyleafgames.com>:
>>> From: Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
>>> Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 10:35 PM
>>> 2009/12/23 James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com>:
>>>> I was just testing out a windows build with gfx_directx gfx_sdl on a
>>>> computer with directx 9.0c installed (according to dxdiag). When I run
>>>> game.exe it says:
>>>>
>>>> "This application has failed to start because d3dx9_41.dll was not
>>>> found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem."
>>>>
>>>> When I click okay on it, then game.exe starts up okay falling back on
>>>> gfx_sdl
>>>>
>>>> Any idea why this might happen?
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>> James Paige
>> d3dx9_41.dll is one of many dll's that microsoft has released to patch the d3dx library. A solution to this would be obtaining the latest dx runtime on your computer, available at:
>> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&displaylang=en
>>
>> An alternative would be compiling the backend with static linking the d3dx library, which was available in the december 2004 dx sdk. This will remove dependencies, but will increase the dll size by about 500kb.
>>
>>> That's interesting, I was under the impression that loading
>>> gfx_directx.dll would silently fail if its dependencies weren't
>>> available. Luckily, it's quite simple to check in backends.bas whether
>>> d3dx9_41.dll (the august 2009, I think, release of the Direct3D 9
>>> utility library) is present before attempting to load gfx_direct.dll,
>>> and I was originally planning to do.
>> It's present in March 2009. I was trying to manually remove all dependencies, but got stuck with the screenshot and font algorithms.
>>
>> I'll upload a version of gfx_directx that has no dependencies in a few minutes, though 500kb larger.
> 
> We ought to have some way to detect whether or not the dll has been
> statically linked to d3dx9 or not. Would it be possible to set the
> version number (the one seen in a the file browser) and read it
> somehow?

I haven't looked at this backend at all, so I don't know if this is 
already done, but the standard way of doing this (on Windows, at least) 
is something like this:

hModule = DyLibLoad("gfx_directx.dll")
hFunction = DyLibSymbol(hModule, 
"some_function_that_exists_in_d3dx9_41_dll")

if hFunction != 0 then
   'd3dx9_41.dll is statically linked
end if

DyLibFree(hModule)

-- 
Mike