DieHard Wolfers

[kary]

This is more of an open question to anyone that has been compiling the SDL code lately....
So a few days ago I decided to make an improved SDL version of my two year old TC (BDDA3D). Using code::blocks/mingw i had no issues with implementing the few changes i needed and with building the executable, however when i launched it on a Windows PC (that happend to have avast "anti"virus installed) avast behavior shield reported false positive on the executable (IDP.generic). I get a false positive even when i build the unmodified wolf4SDL, so its not the changes that are causing it.

Long story short anytime i try to run wolf4SDL executable that I build the behavior shield gets triggered, but when i run any random SDL executable from a mod (tried quite a few) avast stays quiet, so there must be a way to build it so it doesnt trigger these "anti"virus programs. I tried messing with the compiler settings and I tried using older version of mingw and using dev-c++ instead of codeblocks, but nothing helped...

Of course ppl can just disable the behavior shield or make an exception for the executable, but since wolf3D mods/TCs are released as standalone games i would prefer if a virus alert isnt the first thing a potential new player sees. I realize that this might be a bit off topic in these forums, I just wanted to ask if someone had similar experience. I dont want to go down the rabbit hole researching ativirus programs i dont use for an OS i dont use... I have zero experience in sw development for Windows and im not interested in it either, all i want is to get this thing build so i doesnt trigger the most widely used "anti"virus programs out there (one time event for me).

[AlumiuN]

I can't say I've had this happen with my own builds, but I do know some of the SDL rereleases of old mods that Andy_Nonymous made caused similar problems with some AV programs. You could try a different version of MinGW to see if it stops causing it (I use MinGW-W64), but ultimately the fault lies with the AV software. These days I never bother to run anything more than MSE/Windows Defender anyway, as it'll catch most, if not all, of the stuff that exercising some internet sense doesn't.

[kary]

Used MinGW-w64 with codeblocks on a clean new win 10 installation, same issue. Seems like the problem is not with my setup, i guess the other SDL builds are not being detected just because they are older files and avast recognizes them... I think everyone will have this issue if they execute a freshly build wolf4sdl on a PC with avast/avg, but to be sure someone else needs to try.

I give up, guess I will just release the mod as it is and hope ppl don't use "anti"virus with one of these cancerous behavior shields and/or read readme files. :/

[AlumiuN]

Something that might be worth testing is seeing if someone else's compiled mod does the same; the Mapping League EXE was compiled with MinGW-W64, so that should cause the same symptom.

[Tricob]

AlumiuN - is there anything we need to know about installing the MinGW-W64 compiler and compiling the code? I might be able to try the source code out on my laptop ... as long as none of the programs require me to be online.

If there are any special steps required, I encourage you to post about it in the main Wolf4SDL thread. Alternatives to Code Blocks are always welcome in my book.

[AlumiuN]

Tricob wrote:

AlumiuN - is there anything we need to know about installing the MinGW-W64 compiler and compiling the code? I might be able to try the source code out on my laptop ... as long as none of the programs require me to be online.

If there are any special steps required, I encourage you to post about it in the main Wolf4SDL thread. Alternatives to Code Blocks are always welcome in my book.

It's not an alternative to Codeblocks; Codeblocks is used to edit the code and run the compiler and linker, which are what MinGW provides. I believe the version of Codeblocks recommended in said thread comes with a fairly old but functional version of MinGW, but there's not a lot of reason why you'd need a newer version of MinGW for making Wolf3D mods. The only reason I use a newer version is because I use some C++11 and C++14 features in other projects.

[kary]

AlumiuN wrote:

Something that might be worth testing is seeing if someone else's compiled mod does the same; the Mapping League EXE was compiled with MinGW-W64, so that should cause the same symptom.

Yes, that is why i made this toppic, pretty much to ask some1 to try and report if he has the same issue. All that needs to be done to test this is to build wolf4sdl (doesnt matter if mod or just vanilla sources) and then run it on PC with avast/avg. Note that the problem is only with the behavior shield function of avast, so in order to reproduce this it has to be on (which it is by default), scannig the file for viruses reports nothing.
Im on a phone so I can't test this right now, but i think that if the behavior shield is off when u first launch the executable avast will just scan it for viruses and when it finds nothing it might start to trust the app and the behavior shield might not even trigger on the next run even when it is on.

Doing a bit of googleing it seems that this might not really be a big issue since it seems ppl are getting this IDP.Generic crap with all kinds of software, sometimes even with parts of windows... The conspiracy theorist in me sences a scheme to extort money from developers for digital signatures in order for the stupid behavior shield to let there software alone - since all this behavior shield of theirs seems to do is reporting false positives on legit software...

[kary]

just to clarify, version of mingw has nothing to do with this, i tried three different versions already and the same thing happened every time. The only difference between the mingw versions i tried was the size of the executable (files build with mingw-w64 were larger than the ones build with older mingw versions - with the same compile flags set in codeblocks of course). This seems to be really just a case of the damn behavior shield not liking what the program does at startup.

[Chris]

kary wrote:

The conspiracy theorist in me sences a scheme to extort money from developers for digital signatures in order for the stupid behavior shield to let there software alone - since all this behavior shield of theirs seems to do is reporting false positives on legit software...

I was thinking the same, like how you have to pay MS $99 so they will sign your Linux to be able to unlock it to use UEFI/Secure Boot or something like that.

Windows 10 uses something even worse than an AV called "SmartScan" that basically tells you every exe is bad, and the only option is "Don't run" (you need to click on the tiny "More info" to find a hidden button called "Run anyway"). The caption is hilarious, Windows 10 protected your PC



The first time I saw this was when I tried to run Palemoon (Firefox-like web browser) because their included Microsoft Edge had issues loading some sites.

[kary]

Alright so I went down the rabbit hole and through the mighty trial and error method I actually found a workaround for this.
The behavior shield for whatever reason does not detect a threat if the executable is launched in windowed mode and the behavior shield also only seems to trigger only on the first launch, so on subsequent launches the game can be launched in fullscreen without an issue...

So the workaround is:
A) make a .bat file with --windowed param and let ppl know that if they use this behavior shield crap they need to launch it with the .bat file when they launch it for the first time...
B) make the executable launch in a window by default and use --fullscreen param for launching it fullscreen instead of --windowed for windowed mode. This is what I decided to go for. It is very simple to do, for archiving purposes I'll write the needed changes here.

In ID_VL.CPP:

change "boolean fullscreen = true;" to "boolean fullscreen;"

If you want the mouse to be grabbed by default than also change in ID_IN.CPP:

"boolean forcegrabmouse;" to "boolean forcegrabmouse = true;"

In WL_MAIN.CPP:

In the CheckParameters function:
change this:

::: CODE :::

        else IFARG("--windowed")
            fullscreen = false;
        else IFARG("--windowed-mouse")
        {
            fullscreen = false;
            forcegrabmouse = true;
        }

to this:

::: CODE :::

        else IFARG("--fullscreen")
            fullscreen = true;
        else IFARG("--grabmouse")
            forcegrabmouse = true;

If you want the mouse to be grabbed by default than change it to this instead:

::: CODE :::

        IFARG("--fullscreen")
            fullscreen = true;
        IFARG("--nograb")
            forcegrabmouse = false;

Finally in the main function, above "CheckParameters(argc, argv);" add:

::: CODE :::

    screenWidth = 1280;
    screenHeight = 800;

And change the screenWidth and Height to your desired default resolution (must be a multiple of 320x200 or 320x240), i think 1280x800 is best for windowed mode...

Now the game will launch in a window by default...
If you want to launch it in fullscreen mode than use --fullscrean
If you want it to grab mouse than launch it with --grabmouse
If you have it set so it grabs the mouse by default and want to launch it without mousegrab than use --nograb

If both --fullscreen and --mousegrab/nograb are used than the mousegrab/nograb won't have any effect since in IN_Startup function in ID_IN.CPP the grab input function is called here:

::: CODE :::

    if(fullscreen || forcegrabmouse)
    {
        GrabInput = true;
        SDL_WM_GrabInput(SDL_GRAB_ON);
    }

[Atina]

kary wrote:

i think 1280x800 is best for windowed mode...

Not everyone has a 4k monitor or laptop =p

Another option would be to just delete Avast/AV. My old pc had AVG and it lived long enough to become the villain.
It didn't do anything except making the whole system lag terribly and unusable for any program or game. So i put it in quarantine.
Avast/AVG/AV also have collected and/or sold information of their users. Really good adware.
Anitvirus software generally seems to hate homemade programming. It ate my study homework several times ><

[kary]

Atina wrote:

kary wrote:

i think 1280x800 is best for windowed mode...

Not everyone has a 4k monitor or laptop =p

Another option would be to just delete Avast/AV. My old pc had AVG and it lived long enough to become the villain.
It didn't do anything except making the whole system lag terribly and unusable for any program or game. So i put it in quarantine.
Avast/AVG/AV also have collected and/or sold information of their users. Really good adware.
Anitvirus software generally seems to hate homemade programming. It ate my study homework several times ><

I completely agree with u on the "usefulness" of these AV programs, and I haven't used any of them for myself for like 10 years, hell i don't even use windows except for maybe once a monh... But you are missing the point, the issue is not with me/experienced wolfers/computer savvy individuals not being able to run mods because of some stupid AV. The issue is when a random newcomer sees a free game on moddb or somewhere (since wolf3d mods are standalone i consider them free games...), decides to try it out and then is greeted by AV alert and never tries to do smth like it again. The unfortunate reality is that these adware extortionists AVs have huge market share and you will find them in every other pc (if not more).

I do not make mods for games so I could just play them myself, I mean I do enjoy the process of making them, but ultimately i want other ppl to play them as well and the wider the audience you are able to reach the better.

As far as the resolution goes... yea i guess 960x600 is safer option for default resolution, since there are still some laptops with 1366x768 screens

[Atina]

I understand the problem of getting newcomers for the game. There are people that don't even find the download button on sites like moddb. I'm not joking about that one. Sometimes there is only so much help you can offer. More options are always nice and i think everyone here would be happy about more newcomers.

You also might have to include default WASD + mouse controls which seems to be one of the most frequent complaints i see and explain them how to change resolutions or add button option for that.
Add aspect ratio option for better 16:9 resolution support.
In the end you might end up explaining the person that ECWolf is not compatible with that mod and that the mod author won't make it a ECWolf mod =p

It should be scan proof for several popular antivirus programs at least. Different antivirus could be also triggered by windowed mode. On one laptop i had once AV that deleted the exe files of my own mods without even trying to run them. Was enough to open the folder ><
Mod makers could put a big disclaimer directly next to the download button saying "this is not a virus even if it says so" cause even in a readme the note likely will be skipped.

[Tricob]

Atina wrote:

You also might have to include default WASD + mouse controls which seems to be one of the most frequent complaints i see and explain them how to change resolutions or add button option for that.

As far as WASD complaints are concerned, I only remember two or three different users posting about this, but they did so quite a lot.

A far more common complaint is the raycaster, which I admit is nowhere near as problem-free as the Doom raycaster and other more modern open-source releases.

As for the Anti-virus warnings, I've been told a huge bulk of 32-bit code will do this. There's probably something extremely specific that triggers it, but I have no idea what it is. I see plenty of posts from people who know more about the modern Windows OSs than I do, and I encourage them to take a dig on this. But it takes me far too many years to catch up. By the time I learn anything useful, the WIndows OS is changed again, and everything I've learned has become obsolete. That's what happens when you're always broke.

[kary]

Atina wrote:

.You also might have to include default WASD + mouse controls which seems to be one of the most frequent complaints i see and explain them how to change resolutions or add button option for that.
Add aspect ratio option for better 16:9 resolution support.
In the end you might end up explaining the person that ECWolf is not compatible with that mod and that the mod author won't make it a ECWolf mod =p

My mod is actually using wsad with disabled y axis of the mouse, it simply is far superior and precise method of controling an FPS game, as far as nonWolf themed TCs go i would go for it every time. Tho I don't bother to put more options in the menu, that just seems too painful for lazy me to do . Just making wsad hardcoded is fine i think, In the past 15 years or so of occasionall gaming i have never met anyone who didnt use wsad to control 3d games anyway.

[Atina]

If you hardcode WSAD + x-axis mouse you might scare away the wolf community or some oldschool fps players.
If you don't add it you might scare away people outside of the community or possible newcomers.

Tricob wrote:

A far more common complaint is the raycaster, which I admit is nowhere near as problem-free as the Doom raycaster and other more modern open-source releases

What exactly are the complaints about it except missing aspect ratio option =p
If you look outside the community you can often (every now and then at least) see the WSAD problem on moddb, youtube comments or places like steam.

[kary]

Atina wrote:

If you hardcode WSAD + x-axis mouse you might scare away the wolf community or some oldschool fps players.
If you don't add it you might scare away people outside of the community or possible newcomers.

I will just hardcode A D to strafe left/right and add an option in the menu to enable/disable y axis movement - two birds, one stone, not that much effort

Anyway, this is getting a bit off topic, any1 got an idea of how to keep aggressive AVs of your back besides launching the game windowed?

[Tricob]

OT -

Atina wrote:

Tricob wrote:

A far more common complaint is the raycaster, which I admit is nowhere near as problem-free as the Doom raycaster and other more modern open-source releases

What exactly are the complaints about it except missing aspect ratio option =p

Let's see - "cracks" in between the walls, floors, and ceilings, lack of 256x256 image support, lack of diagonal walls, a limited number of colors that can be used at one time, EXEs that crash when the complexity of the sprite's graphics are too great (though that's actually due to the way the graphics are stored in the files), and an overall lack of speed compared to Doom and other more modern FPS engines.

[AlumiuN]

You could implement 256x256 images pretty easily engine-wise (pretty much just change all the USE_HIRES stuff again); the main problem is that I don't think any of the current editors support it. The rest of the problems could probably be solved with an OpenGL renderer (in particular the speed issue at high resolutions is writing a massive buffer of pixels and then transferring it to the graphics card more than it is anything else). If I had better knowledge of graphics math I'd probably write one to integrate with Wolf4SDL.

[Atina]

Well, now that you mention. Biggest issues is rather the simple maze-block geometry for any newcomer.
Then you got lot people who prefer Doom controls/physics/non-hitscan.
Aspect ratio isn't far behind for a 4:3 game in times of 16:9 monitors.

Other big issue could be the cartoonish WW2 themes. Lack of themes in (high quality) mods. Maybe the "next wolf3d dome mod database" could have the themes (scifi, horror, pirates, ww2, etc) listed for each mod. Giving people choice to find mods by themes/genres would be nice.

Dunno if 256x256 is needed so far. I also didn't really see it mentioned much. Doom, Duke3D, Quake 1 use a lot graphics that are smaller than that. At some point if the resolution is way higher than the shapes/geometry it's also not blending well together imo but lot of people seem to like that (HD remakes, hires texture mods,...).

I'm not sure if Doom ports are much faster. Some got hardware support but mods like BoA need good gaming pc to run well. The speed in wolf4sdl goes drastically down if you combine floor/ceil textures with other stuff. I didn't really see any notable complaints about limited colors, especially outside of the community.

Lack of editor support for those features is one of the biggest issues.


About AV, if they detect something, likely gonna got nuts when they find the folder and not when you start the game fullscreen. Only real solution is probably to contact each big antivirus company and tell them to whitelist this and that. Other option would be to become a famous company or make an average wolf3d mod famous so it's getting automatically accepted by them over time. You could also try to compress or unpack the exe and hope for the best or bundle multiple mods under 1 exe like ECWolf. Best solution would be to make people smarter about AV.

[kary]

Atina wrote:

.
About AV, if they detect something, likely gonna got nuts when they find the folder and not when you start the game fullscreen. Only real solution is probably to contact each big antivirus company and tell them to whitelist this and that. Other option would be to become a famous company or make an average wolf3d mod famous so it's getting automatically accepted by them over time. You could also try to compress or unpack the exe and hope for the best or bundle multiple mods under 1 exe like ECWolf. Best solution would be to make people smarter about AV.

None of the AVs detect anything with a simple virus scan i checked that on virustotal, even when i scan the file on the PC it reports it clean. So no AVs dont give a crap when they find the folder. The problem really seems to be specifically with the behavior shield which triggers on a first run o af "suspicious" app and suspicious might simply mean unknown to the big brother AV company. The behavior scanner seems to intensively scan what exactly the program does when you first run it, it stalls the loadout as if it was debbuging it or some shit. It might as well just have an issue with SDL and there might be nothing we can do to prevent this false positive within the wolf4SDLsources... But it does seem that there is something extremely specific that it doesnt like the program doing.

[Atina]

Hmm hard to say. If it's for sure only triggered by fullscreen you could research VL_SetVGAPlaneMode and check if AV reports while the game is executing that.
Maybe memory or doesn't like the fullscreen with palette mode.

If it reports on VL_SetVGAPlaneMode it's maybe related to.
SDL_CreateRGBSurface
SDL_SetVideoMode
SDL_SetColors
CHECKMALLOCRESULT

You could try different colordepth mode in fullscreen or that SDL2 version by Matthew.

[kary]

Atina wrote:

Hmm hard to say. If it's for sure only triggered by fullscreen you could research VL_SetVGAPlaneMode and check if AV reports while the game is executing that.
Maybe memory or doesn't like the fullscreen with palette mode.

If it reports on VL_SetVGAPlaneMode it's maybe related to.
SDL_CreateRGBSurface
SDL_SetVideoMode
SDL_SetColors
CHECKMALLOCRESULT

You could try different colordepth mode in fullscreen or that SDL2 version by Matthew.

Just to clarify, the behavior shield triggers every first launch of a new build, its just that wihout fullscreen it doesn't detect athreat and with it it does. Also I just found out that just launching fullscreen is not enough to cause the problem, if I use the param to skip intro screens than it doesn't detect a threat either, so another workaround is to skip intro screens by default... Maybe a problem with signon being fullscreen?
Tbh I'm fine with the "solution" of just launching the game windowed by default, its my prefered way of playing anyway and I think it may be for a lot of other ppl as well, it just never occurred to me making it windowed by default until this came up.
I might try SDL2 sometime next week as im out for the weekend, is there any other actual advantage with using SDL2? I mean besides the offchance that crazy AVs might be happier with it. I have pretty much final windows and linux executables, I think i made some pretty cool changes to the original BDDA and that it plays much better now, honestly im eager to get it out and don't want to start digging a hole when I'm nkt even sure there is a bottom... thanks for the suggestions.

[Atina]

Do you also skip the signon screen cause if not then i'm confused how it could be signon. Is it reporting threat each time at the exact same moment or does it have some delays?
I don't think you would gain anything from SDL2 when you are about to be done with your mod. Maybe some performance depending on platform and mod features.
Maybe a happy AV. Maybe more future proof and could run still flawless on Windows 11 ><

[Tricob]

OT -

AlumiuN wrote:

You could implement 256x256 images pretty easily engine-wise (pretty much just change all the USE_HIRES stuff again); the main problem is that I don't think any of the current editors support it.

Yes, that's exactly what the problem is.

Atina wrote:

Other big issue could be the cartoonish WW2 themes.

Well, that's a simple matter of changing the palette of the game. I did try porting the palette over to more life-like colors, but then it got to the graphics of the Well With Water sprite ... and now that well looked like it had blue ink in it. You're better off using a better, more life-like palette and using graphics developed from stock photos and films. I've developed a 256-color palette that should get the job done pretty well; it will be my base for developing YouTube videos whenever it is I get around to it. In today's 32-bit picture file world, the palette file is useless as a business investment (expect perhaps for 3DS development), so I simply plan to submit it to the Public Domain for people to do as they like with it.

[kary]

Atina wrote:

Do you also skip the signon screen cause if not then i'm confused how it could be signon. Is it reporting threat each time at the exact same moment or does it have some delays?
I don't think you would gain anything from SDL2 when you are about to be done with your mod. Maybe some performance depending on platform and mod features.
Maybe a happy AV. Maybe more future proof and could run still flawless on Windows 11 ><

Just checked again and starting up has nothing to do with it, I just tried a fresh unmodified wolf4sdl build with --nowait and avast detected it. The only way to reliably get around the behavior shield seems to be launching wolf4sdl windowed. Of course signon runs even with --nowait, I have no idea what I was thinking there, I must have gotten confused with too many different executables run too many different ways on that day xD. Anyway, you were confused because what i wrote made no sense whatsoever, so just disregard that. I also tried it with different color depths, right now I'm confident that the issue has been narrowed down to only be caused by fullscreen mode.

Oh and btw, the last time i heard there is not supposed to be a windows 11, plan seems to be to just upgrade win 10 indefinitely - basically Windows is supposed to be rolling release like Arch Linux and some other Linux distributions

[kary]

Atina wrote:

You could try different colordepth mode in fullscreen or that SDL2 version by Matthew.

Using SDL2 IS THE SOLUTION, no such issue with a build from github.com/ksv1986/wolf4sdl. Well I guess I'm moving my mod to SDL2 then... damn, I sure wish i knew there was SDL2 version out there before i started digging into the code xD.
Thanks for advice everyone.