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Release Notes — Alone In The Dark: Re-Haunted

Version 1.0.1 — Initial Release

✨ Remaster Features

HD Background System

• High-definition pre-rendered backgrounds replacing the original 320×200 artwork
• Animated backgrounds with multi-frame playback (e.g., flickering lights, water ripples)
• Configurable resolution scale (default 2×: 640×400)
• Progressive frame loading with minimum-frame-for-playback threshold
• HD Background Archive (backgrounds_hd.hda) — all 1,941 background images packed into a single file for clean distribution
• Filesystem fallback: loose files in backgrounds_hd/ are supported if no archive is present
• Memory-mapped file loading on Windows for maximum I/O throughput
• HD frame border overlays for cinematic letterboxing

Modern Rendering Pipeline

• bgfx hardware-accelerated rendering with backend support for:
  • DirectX 11
  • OpenGL 3.2+
  • Vulkan
  • Metal (macOS)
• Background texture management with proper GPU resource lifecycle

Post-Processing Effects

• Bloom — HDR bright-pass extraction with configurable threshold and intensity
• Film Grain — cinematic noise overlay for atmospheric effect
• Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) — depth-based contact shadows
• All effects independently toggleable with per-parameter tuning

TrueType Font Rendering

• Optional TTF font overlay for all in-game text (menus, dialogue, inventory)
• Ships with BLKCHCRY.TTF (Blackadder-style gothic font) by default
• Configurable font size with proper glyph spacing
• Option to hide original bitmap text when TTF is active

Full Gamepad Support

• SDL3-based controller input with analog stick and D-pad support
• Analog movement with configurable deadzone and sensitivity
• Fully remappable keyboard and gamepad bindings through in-game menu
• Default mappings for standard Xbox/PlayStation-style gamepads

Remastered Audio

• External music playback — MP3, OGG, and WAV music tracks replace the original AdLib/MIDI
• Audio Archive (audio.hda) — all music tracks and UI sound effects packed into a single file
• SoLoud audio engine with streaming playback for music
• UI sound effects (navigation, selection, back, expand) for menu interactions
• Filesystem fallback for loose audio files if no archive is present

Menu System

• Startup menu with new game / load game / quit options
• In-game pause menu with save/load, options, and controls configuration
• Controls configuration menu for remapping keyboard and gamepad bindings
• Menu navigation sounds
• Blurred background option during menus

🛠 Engine Improvements

Embedded Game Data

• Critical PAK and ITD game data files embedded directly as C++ byte arrays
• 37 data files compiled into the executable — eliminates dependency on loose ITD/PAK files for core engine initialization
• Automatic fallback: embedded data is tried first, then filesystem

Stability & Crash Protection

• Vectored Exception Handler (VEH) — catches access violations, stack overflows, heap corruption, and illegal instructions
• SEH wrappers on game thread entry points for belt-and-suspenders crash protection
• Minidump generation on crash for post-mortem debugging
• PROTECTED_CALL macro — wraps critical operations (stb_image decoding, bgfx resource creation) in structured exception handling
• Crash log file output with timestamps and stack context

Memory Management

• MemoryManager — allocation tracker with canary-based corruption detection
• SAFE_MALLOC / SAFE_FREE — tracked allocation wrappers with file/line tagging
• TRACK_ALLOCATION / UNTRACK_ALLOCATION — monitors stb_image and third-party allocations
• Debug memory log (memory_debug.log) with leak detection on shutdown

Resource Lifecycle

• ResourceGC — deferred garbage collector for large HD background assets
• Prevents out-of-memory during camera transitions by scheduling old background cleanup
• Frame-based tick with configurable delay before final free
• Flush-on-demand before loading new large assets
• Clean shutdown with onShutdown() to prevent heap corruption at exit

Bug Fixes

• Sound never stops bug — previous sound effects are now properly stopped before playing new ones, preventing overlapping/stuck audio
• Player stuck after cellar→caves transition — added NULL checks in animation code to prevent crashes on missing animation data
• Door shadow rendering — conditional rendering with INFO_ANIM check in both AllRedraw() and drawSceneObjects() to prevent visual artifacts
• Player stuck in walls — fixPlayerStuckInWall() recovery function
• Stale file cleanup — removed orphaned source files that caused build issues
• Double-free crashes — explicit pointer nullification after free in HD background cleanup
• Frame timing — delta time capping prevents animation speed-up after loading pauses

Configuration System

• INI-style configuration file (aitd_remaster.cfg) with sections for graphics, post-processing, audio, controller, font, and controls
• Persistent save/load of all settings
• Sensible defaults initialized on first run

Version Detection

• version.txt support — version string displayed in the window title bar
• Automatic game detection from data files with per-game CVar table initialization

📦 Distribution

Archive Format (.hda)

Both backgrounds_hd.hda and audio.hda use the HDBG binary archive format:

• Single-file container with table-of-contents header
• 64-bit offsets for archives up to 16 EB
• Case-insensitive entry lookup
• Prefix-based directory listing for animated background frame enumeration
• No re-compression — raw file data stored as-is for maximum loading speed
• PowerShell packing scripts included (pack_backgrounds.ps1, pack_audio.ps1)

Asset Summary

Executable

• Tatou.exe — single Windows executable with custom application icon
• Embedded PAK/ITD data for core initialization (no loose files needed for engine bootstrap)
• All third-party libraries statically linked

🔧 Build Information

Known Limitations

• HD backgrounds require original game data files to determine camera indices
• Post-processing effects require a GPU with shader model 4.0+ support
• Audio archive does not support streaming from archive (music is loaded fully into memory before playback)
• AdLib/OPL music emulation is available but external MP3/OGG tracks are recommended for best quality
• Time Gate: Knight's Chase CVar table support is provisional

Alone In The Dark: Re-Haunted — Because some mansions deserve to be revisited.