Crash in ROLLER, when run on WinXPSP3 x86

[JoachimHenze]

First: Let me thank you for this awesome project.

Build

• Version: roller-windows-x86_64-0.1.1-dev.20260815.zip

What Happened

I tried to run it on Windows XP SP3 x86 (non-x64).
Unfortunately that is not a supported target. When checking with msdepends we can see, that it imports functions from some Windows dlls that are not exported there.

It would be great if there was an option to build for WinXPSP3 x86 as well.

If I run it, it says "is not a valid Win32 application".

[schlangz]

Currently we don't have 32bit builds.

@Zizin13 is this something you would be interested in? Probably comes with a long tail of other stuff not working out of the box in XP.

[Zizin13]

Yep, no 32-bit builds, at least not yet. I hadn't really considered that someone might want that haha. I think all the hardware rendering would probably have to be stripped out as well for it to work on XP.

[Zizin13]

Took a look, this would be a moderately sized project in itself.

1. The zig build system currently used for ci/cd won't be able to support it at all as zig's windows libc is mingw-w64 so it would have to be CMake. All the 3rd party libraries would have to be built using a 32-bit XP-compatible tool set as well.
2. As I suspected, SDL_GPU backends are D3D12 (Win10) and Vulkan (Win7-era drivers at the oldest), we could probably use the same software rendering only path as the web asm build though
3. As part of the porting from DOS I used some Vista-at-minimum win32 imports in the game code itself, not a huge deal but would have to change those for an XP build

An XP port is certainly doable but it might make more sense as a fork of the main ROLLER project rather than adding it to the existing CI/CD pipeline.

[schlangz]

I'm not really sure it that's worth it. Maybe OP's XP machine isn't even fast enough for the SDL port

[JoachimHenze]

Many thanks for your prompt replies.
I can totally understand, that expanding the number of targets may currently not be a priority for you.
I do agree: For now make it work on your currently supported targets and get it at least to a state, where it covers the functionality of the ancient DOS-release. I would nevertheless appreciate if you could keep this ticket open for the more distant future, maybe the goal of porting it to NT5.1-x86 will become even easier over the years (considering AI's progress).

Maybe OP's XP machine isn't even fast enough for the SDL port

Trust me, it definitely is fast enough. I am working on a Pentium E5200 2x2500MHz here from the year 2009. Stoneage tech by todays standards. And on this:
-I can play the SVGA DOS version in plain (ProtectedMode DOS4GW) DOS (with unstable SBEMU sound-emulation) and SW-rendering for graphics, and it is by orders of magnitude faster than necessary in that cfg.
-I can play the VGA DOS version in DosBOX0.74.3 through a full layer of HW virtualization even in SW-rendering for graphics, and it is still fast enough even on my ancient machine. SVGA is too much for my machine though in this cfg. I assume that would require something around 6GHz single-core to run that fluently in SW-rendering (HW which doesn't even exist yet). But don't forget that we are emulating an entire x86 core here by full virtualization.
-I can play the SVGA DOS version in "DosBOX-0.74.0.0-Daum mod" with 3dfx (SW)-emulation (glide2x_emu), fluently in SVGA. Unfortunately the DOS-3dfx-version restricts the games on-screen controls a bit, so the game feels a bit crippled like that. That is 2 levels of emulation, and still fast enough.

Therefore I am absolutely confident that some native SDL2 implementation, even if it would pack most of the graphics rendering on the CPU would run totally fine here in SVGA, at least if it wouldn't have to emulate a whole x86 CPU in DOS4GW-Protected-Mode at the same time, as the poor DosBOX has to. :-)

Your list of supported platforms is already impressive. Even at todays state. Cudos!
Your goal of riviving that absolute gem of a game would match well with having also a Win32 x86 NT5.1 port in the long run.

Yes, that would require changes in the toolchain, and it might also require using some downgraded libraries like SDL2.0.5 or SDL2.30, and replacing a few exported functions with alternatives. I checked and the count of missing exports was surprisingly low. Maybe something like 10 functions. Should be doable.

But yes, I can understand if it is not a priority for you today. Please keep the ticket existing for the distant future though.

Good luck with your project! Awesome work! Awesome game!

[JoachimHenze]

Hail to the king, baby! :-D

[schlangz]

We are running SDL3, we can check how that would work with XP

[JoachimHenze]

I am pretty sure, that the SDL version would need a downgrade for XP.
Just a tip: I would assume, that an x86(non-x64) build for Win7/10/11 would be a lower hanging fruit as a first step, before diving all the way in towards XP. That would allow the SDL to remain unaltered.