Winamp is Closing Down by Sir-Sabin at 4:18 PM EST on November 20, 2013
Winamp.com and associated web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version before that date. See release notes for latest improvements to this last release. Thanks for supporting the Winamp community for over 15 years.
by dissident93 at 7:21 PM EST on November 20, 2013
also, it seems like vgmstream wont allow the newest version to open after install. i removed vgmstream.dll from the plugin folder and all is well. not sure why it's doing this, since it worked with 5.55
Sooo, is this final release the best ever or do I finally need to take the plunge into... whatever that other player was that could use Winamp plugins. Foobar?
...On second thought I tried installing the external DLL's. Seems they need updating to cope with the final version; they don't even have metadata! o.o
Also, Hotcakes, forgive the UBER-facepalm, but it's XMPlay. :/
edited 11:15 PM EST November 20, 2013
by dissident93 at 11:34 PM EST on November 20, 2013
I redownloaded and put the external DLLs back in the Winamp folder just in case, but Winamp still will not start as long as in_vgmstream.dll is in the Plugins folder. On all the other updates to Winamp, vgmstream simply wouldn't show up in the plugin's list.
@Hotcakes: depends, if you're already using Winamp then I don't see why you wouldn't update to the latest version (save for this apparent issue). also, Foobar doesn't use Winamp plugins technically, but it has support for basically every game plugin Winamp does (loads of them were ported over and improved upon by kode54). it's also very lightweight and easy to update.
No idea what the root cause is, seems to be an issue on the Winamp side. There is a very memory-layout-dependent effect of how many extensions I try to register. Doesn't seem to be related to the size of the string (working_extension_list), just the extension count, though the limit that causes disaster seems to differ as I change the size of the string. Very frustrating.
Typical of a corporation like AOL to shut down something that alot of people are still using to date...
Hell why not just GPL Winamp at that point?
... also why the hell does AOL even own Winamp? Fuck capitalism...
by dissident93 at 8:11 AM EST on November 22, 2013
@RukarioGyiyg996: nothing forced the orignal developers in 1999 to sell it to AOL (well, except making major $$$). it's actually kind of surprising they supported Winamp up until this point anyway.
The Winamp installer hasn't done what was causing non-MSVC dlls to fail to load since the v5.64 release (as re-basing the dlls which did help to speed up loading was causing intermittent failures with even Winamp's own dlls on Windows 8.x - got to love the OSes only API's breaking things).
I'm looking into what's going on (franpa reported it already) from Winamp's side - whether i can determine the cause and provide a patch i don't know but will see what i can do with the time i have left.
Quick update after having a look comparing r1015 vs r1016...
The changes in r1016 vs r1015 do seem to help but is correct that there was something funky going on within Winamp with the extension list handling (which was overhauled with the 5.66 release to resolve a number of other long standing issues). I've got a patch for that though no idea if it'll see the light of day or not.
Though i suspect most of the issues with the plug-in not loading would be resolved if it could delay-load the external dlls it needs as i see it's statically linked to them (and does it really need them to play back most of the formats it supports?)
Well Winamp 5.0 was released in December 2003, and 10 years later, we've only got to 5.66. Looks like development was too slow. I'm sure we'd be up to like 6.0 or 7.0 by now.
I can't get Winamp to load properly with vgmstream in the plug-ins directory.
I either get no window, a set-up window (which hangs and looks half loaded) or once I got an old skin of Winamp and an error reporting box pop-up which said it couldn't connect to the server.
r1016 doesn't make any difference to this it seems.
Let's hope DrO's patch will be released before the plug is pulled.
Thanks for your efforts, DrO. All that r1016 did, effectively, is post half as many extensions. If you already have a whole lot of other plugins that might still be too many, vgmstream normally offers something like 256 extensions.
TheUltimateKoopa: If you're concerned about version numbers in such a manner than you're sadly disillusioned by a lot of things. Version numbers mean nothing much nowadays - the 5.66 release could have been versioned as 6.66 or something like that if really wanted so you get a major version bump and a funny number.
Elven Spellmaker: That is related to what i was able to patch as vgmstream's massive extension list is mangling the stack due to a bug in Winamp's handling (which is why it's doing all of that weird stuff).
hcs: Ideally you shouldn't need to have to do that sort of thing (and i'll probably re-check the changes with older builds without that change). But if the plug-in is sending back that many extensions, it's probably no wonder people have been having issues loading it with pre 5.66 releases as well.
As much as it disappoints me to hear this, I can't say I contributed to its continued success. When my "next on stop" (thanks DrO!) plugin stopped working, I reverted to an older version of Winamp. I then downloaded the newest installer, and manually updated all the plugins (making sure Winamp still worked each time). So, I'm using an older version, with all the newest (at the time) plugins. I'll probably do that again with this final update.
Winamp, thanks. You were my first real music player (I started using it around 1999-2000). You will be missed.
(to be fair, I use Rockbox a lot more than Winamp these days)
Elven: i really do not know what will happen with it.
Mouser: that plug-in is known not to work 100% with newer Winamp releases - is one of the few i never updated when i was last out of work in 2010 though seems like i've free time coming up, so may finally get around to it...
that's because i removed everything back in february and only started bringing things back in september but a Winamp release got in the way so only a few things are restored at the moment (as per the home page note ;o) ).
Thanks DrO for getting the patch in on time! (Love the version number by the way) Also one question if you don't mind, the website still shows a Pro version but doesn't allow anyone to buy it as "the store is closed". Does this mean Pro is never available ever again and only those who had it at the time can ever have it?
And Thanks to hcs for updating VGMStream again to remove the workaround. @hcs: Will you be still maintaining the Winamp plug-in for VGMStream or are you planning on starting it in another plug-in format?
afaik the pro version is permanently dead (just like Winamp seems to be).
if you had an existing pro key then it'll keep working as long as you've still got it. if you didn't get one, then it's not like it's hard to get an illegal copy anyway.