Good find Only I have to ask because it's little unclear to me. Did you mean when you said, `the compile worked without SP1 installed´ That the RakGS dll was compiled correctly, and this build runs on PC without VC/SP1 installed!?

In other words. Any programmer working on plugins for Lite-C could run into the same problem. In the case they have SP1 installed, compile a dll. And then have it distribute to end-user(s) who doesn't have VC/SP1 installed?

Also about those two missing files especially EFSADU.DLL (File Encryption is used by the Encrypted File System EFS. This is used for encrypting files or directories in Windows 2000 and above). You said they are belong to Windows XP Professional. Does this mean that encryption feature from RakGS is only available when the end-user is running Windows XP Pro? Sorry if I misunderstood.

Yes you understand correctly. When you compile the plugin with VC++ Express SP1, it will not run on systems that don't have VC++ (SP1 or not) installed. If you compile with VC++ without SP1, it will work on every system.

This probably doesn't happen for every kind of program compiled with VC++ Express, or this would have been solved long ago. However, it might be that gamestudio plugins (which must have a certain compiler/linker configuration) all suffer from this problem.

More testing is required to see if a simple plugin (the sample dll that comes with the SDK for example) also has this problem when compiled with VC++ SP1.. If it does, this should make it into some FAQ.

BTW, could you confirm that it now works for you on a system without VC++ installed?

Yes sure i'm going to try again on a clean computer today and post the results.

Just saw you edited your post, so here is my answer.

Quote:

---

Also about those two missing files especially EFSADU.DLL (File Encryption is used by the Encrypted File System EFS. This is used for encrypting files or directories in Windows 2000 and above). You said they are belong to Windows XP Professional. Does this mean that encryption feature from RakGS is only available when the end-user is running Windows XP Pro? Sorry if I misunderstood.

---

No, the encryption doesn't rely on EFSADU.dll. It got in the dependency list through ws2_32.dll. My project depends on winsock (ws2_32.dll), and winsock depends on many other dlls. Winsock or one of the dlls winsock depends on may have a line in them that loads a dll. But this line may be in a function that is never called, or inside an if like "if(running vista) dll_load(dwmapi.dll); else dll_load(whatever.dll);". This is enough for depends.exe to list it as a dependency but this is not an actual dependency and turned out to have nothing to do with the problem.

Test from cleanslate:

XP Home SP2 NL + current security patches (excluding: IE7, .NET)
DirectX 9.0c June 2007 update
Nvidia Geforce7 International WHQL drivers May 2007
GameStudio A7.03 + SED 7.02.4
RakGS DLL <-- only inside RakGS directories (current build june 17th)
Dependency Walker

In the first test with the above installed. RakGS DLL isn't loading. Server crashed like before.

Acklog
Log of A7 Engine 7.03 run at Sun Jun 17 20:54:28 2007
Someone on Windows NT/2000/XP version 5.1 Build 2600
Options Server.c -diag

App C:\Program Files\GStudio7\acknex.exe in C:\MyGame\RakGS\Example\Server\
MM mixer opened
DSOUND device opened
DI interface opened
Start Window opened
© Conitec . Dieburg . San Diego . www.conitec.net
A7 Engine - Commercial Edition V7.03 - May 24 2007
Development version

Mouse found
SB Live!-waveapparaat opened
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT pure T&L device 1ff9 detected
D3D device NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 1ff9 selected..
Compiling SERVER.C... .... .
Running SERVER.C
2 objects
Main started
<--- server crashed --->

Dependecy Walker
Error: The Side-by-Side configuration information for "c:\mygame\rakgs\RAKGS.DLL" contains errors. De toepassing kan niet worden gestart omdat de configuratie van de toepassing onjuist is. Het opnieuw installeren van de toepassing kan dit probleem oplossen (14001).
Warning: At least one delay-load dependency module was not found.
Warning: At least one module has an unresolved import due to a missing export function in a delay-load dependent module.

EFSADU.DLL error opening file
MSJAVA.DLL error opening file

Okay I found the solution to this problem on wireshark forums. The end-user who doesn't have VC++ 2005 EE/STD/PRO on his/her computer, must have installed the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86) or x64 in case they have 64bit platform. Link to latest files here.

Yea I had found that as well. But this means that an installation is required not only for the developer system, but also for every system the final application is deployed on. I'd rather have a copy-and-go solution.. To be honest, I think it's silly that microsoft has chosen to change their deployment policy. As far as I know, none of this trouble is needed for a VC++ .NET 2003 project. Just copy the plugin and you're done.

I'm looking into deployment using a private assembly right now but I believe this can't be done with VC++ Express..

BTW, did you test installing the vcredist package and using the plugin? I actually dismissed this solution because I don't like to require the user to install anything just for using a plugin.

Yes, I installed it on the PC and RakGS worked again without problems. Maybe you can use another compiler or somehow silently install the vcredist on the end-user system? Needed to allow access to the registry a few times from firewall during the vcredist installation though.

@Excessus,

I tried to download the RakGS RAR file, but get an error message (404 file not found).

Cheers,
Andreas

Yes I removed the download because it did not run on systems without VC++ installed. I've now uploaded a new version with the VC++ redistributable libraries included. The same download link applies.

Before using RakGS, you should instal the redistributable libraries included in the archive. This does not install visual C++, just the libraries. Any application built with the latest visual C++ must have that package installed.