The Dink Network

Hello, I recently got interested in playing Dink Smallwood after watching Vinesauce's LP of it and the game will not boot on my Windows 7 cause it says its missing certain .dll files and can't execute "GetSystemTimeAsFileTime" in a .dll downloaded off the web.

Is there a patch or other components I need to download in order to get this game to work and boot properly?

which version are you trying to run?

I was trying to run Dink HD, but FreeDink works on my OS.

I downloaded it and ran it just now and ran into the same problem where it asks for Xinput1_4.dll and refuses to run. I found the relevant Xinput1.4 DLL and installed it but then it refers to a ton of Windows 10-only DLLs in Dependency Walker . The most recent build, RTDink 1.93, is only a few weeks old and I'm guessing that when it was compiled, Seth decided to build it against the Windows 10 SDK rather than an older one that supports Windows 7. If you opt to download and install the previous version (1.91) instead it should work fine for you (the versions button on the left) if you really want instant save states, the pop-ups at the start, or the slightly smoother graphics rendering that it provides. Freedink has just about every other feature otherwise.

so another dinkhd issue. i'm like a seer.

You do realize that Windows 7 is EOL right?

equestria online?

It is TRULY TERRIFIC that we have people around the Dink Network who are knowledgeable and want to help others run whatever version of Dink on whatever version of Windoze, Linux or MacOS that someone is trying to run.

But this stuff needs to work "out of the box". We need to have people just be able to use something that is stable and works with the vast majority of our dmods without all this effort.

I assume that there are many that try to use Dink, fail in some minor or major way, and then give up, never to come here again. I also assume that this kind of user-experience is getting to be more and more common for any Dink Network newcomers.

The wonderful instructions that yeoldetoast provided today (and any other instructions or help for any other OS-version/Dink-version combination) need to be in one place, where all the available versions of Dink are ready for download, with comments about their compatibility and stability, features, etc. The exception may be that those highly functional versions of Dink already "built in" to various Linux distros will be just fine "as is" without much in the way of help required from the Dink Network.

We want dmods and Dink in general to be as painless and as fun as possible, not something that only the most persistent (and/or the most technically inclined) get to appreciate.

That it may be, but it still has a 12% usage out of all Windows versions, I'd say that's still very much relevant, regardless of what Microsoft might think.

Edit: Source: https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide/

When Dink Solutions was still a wiki, I had a page all about installing various versions of Dink. I'm tempted to rewrite it again, but these days the steps are pretty straightforward:

1. If you want to play the main game for 10 minutes and never again, use WebDink.
2. If you're wanting to play it for longer than that, and are a Windows user, install Dink "HD" from the RTSoft site.
3. If you're attempting to run D-mods beyond Mystery Island, download the Freedink exe and DFarc3 for Windows and drop them alongside your existing install of the above and run DFarc.
4. If you're a Lunix user, install Freedink from your package manager along with freedink-data and dfarc3 if they don't automatically.
5. If you're a Lunix user and that doesn't work for some reason, download the source tarball and compile it yourself using the build instructions within.
6. If you're on macOS, install freedink using Homebrew unless you're still on 10.14 or earlier in which case see 2.

Is there anything i've left out?

@yeoldetoast:
I'd say that is getting pretty close to exactly the kind of information we need.

Good work!

@everyone:
Perhaps we can have that text from yeoldetoast "pop-up" when some clearly labeled button (like [Which version of the Dink Engine should I use?]) is pressed. That button should be a brightly contrasting color and could be placed in a couple of relevant places on the DN website. I'm hoping that such changes would not be too burdensome for Redink1. I'm thinking that this button should be near the green "Play HD" and "Play Freedink" buttons scattered throughout the site and on the https://www.dinknetwork.com/files/category_official/ page.

Can anyone think of any other places where this button should be placed on this website?

Oh ... and I'd say that some areas of yeoldetoast's notes that are missing are listed below.

#1 We need instructions and comments for IOS and Android. (These may need to be updated soon based on what I just read from Seth on the "RTDink 1.93 for Windows 7" topic.)
#2 I think we would benefit from warnings like "This xx version may not be compatible with all the dmods" and/or "This yy version is the most compatible one for your platform".
#3 Apparently we may need specific instructions and comments for each of the versions of windoze that are still being used?

@Robj:
Perhaps you would like to add your expertise on versions of the Dink Engine that yeoldetoast started with?

All we need now is for someone to make an automatic DinkC regression testing system for all known variants of the Dink engine