First off, please use consistent indentation - don't have code on the same line after an opening brace, line up code blocks, and indent every time you enter a new block. It makes it so much more pleasant to read (and help fix your problems).

If you're linking to the libraries that came with them, then yes those are the dll's you want to distribute with your program.

There should be a setting in MSVC that allows you to change whether the program is compiled as a console program or a graphical program. Look for subsystem::windowed or something like that in your settings.

while (!key[KEY_ESC])
   {rest(5);
       if (key[KEY_1])
     {//play }
     if (key[KEY_2])
     {//load }

If you want to know whether a key is up or down, there are two ways to detect this in Allegro 5.
1) Use ALLEGRO_EVENT_KEY_DOWN and ALLEGRO_EVENT_KEY_UP to track when the keys are pressed and released (and therefore, when they are up or down).
2) Use al_get_keyboard_state and al_key_down. The problem with these is that they will never contain the substates of the keys between checks to al_get_keyboard_state. If you use method 1, you will never have this problem.

Use al_wait_for_event and check the event type for equivalence to ALLEGRO_EVENT_KEY_CHAR. It will work in A5 just fine...

Yes, in A5 you process events until there aren't any, and for each tick of the timer you process your logic and set a redraw flag. Then when you're done with all the events, you check your redraw flag and draw if necessary.

You'll probably want to look at several things from the manual :
1) Events
2) Keyboard

You should also take a look at the tutorials for A5 on the wiki, and the Porting guide from A4 to A5 on the wiki.

That should give you a basic idea of a setup for a menu. You'll have to implement hit checks and drawing yourself.

Yes, you can use al_is_event_queue_empty to check if there are any events in the queue. When you get a KEY_CHAR event, send the keycode and the unichar field to your input object to be processed. Check the keycode first to process things like left/right/backspace/delete and if the keycode wasn't used then check the unichar field.

I'm not totally sure how unicode works, but I think you can get away with checking to see if the value is greater than or equal to 32 then I think it will be a printable character. You'll want to take a look at the ALLEGRO_USTR type.

You need to send an ALLEGRO_SAMPLE_ID, not just an ALLEGRO_SAMPLE.

When you play a sample using

al_play_sample(ALLEGRO_SAMPLE *spl, float gain, float pan, float speed,
   ALLEGRO_PLAYMODE loop, ALLEGRO_SAMPLE_ID *ret_id)

you need to set an ALLEGRO_SAMPLE_ID.

ALLEGRO_SAMPLE_ID * id;
al_play_sample(spl, 1, 0, 1, 1, id);
al_stop_sample(id);

another question: why can't I draw text onto a bitmap anymore ? how could I do that ?

and: how can I pass arguments ?
like

al_draw_text( font, l_map_rgb(255,255,255), 210,-1,ALLEGRO_ALIGN_LEFT,"You are now level %d",level); }

and a bonus one: is masked_blit gone ? like, the concept of it

also what does al_clear_to_color clear ? the screen ? how can I make it clear a specified bitmap ? //done

note that I have read the A5 tutorials but they don't provide any info on this

EDIT: got the set target function.. but why complicate things ? anyway

so if I have a bmp with pink background it will automatically see the pink as transparent ?

and how exactly would I use al_convert_mask_to_alpha() ?
does it edit the picture file or the one loaded in the memory ?

and I still don't get key presses

I would have

while (!key[KEY_ESC])
{do stuff}

how is that in A5 again ? don't tell me I have to use events here too

al_get_keyboard_state(&kbdstate); 
if (al_key_down(&kbdstate, ALLEGRO_KEY_ESCAPE))

got it thanks !

Although it feels kinda complicated and seems impossible to implement as I wish without adding another loop around the original loop ...

Yea hopefully timers will work better in A5... I'll probably have some questions for those too

thanks for the help so far !

its past midnight here so might stop coding and start reading more tutorials tomorrow.

PS isn't it
while (!is_key_pressed(ALLEGRO_KEY_ESCAPE))

still can't find a work around for the menu... It's not the escape while in a fight type of menu , but more like a simple out of the game menu.

Let's say I have several options, that can be triggered by key presses like: load, options, play, shop etc.

You press let's say "4" to visit the shop (which is a separate function, with it's own .cpp file), then you have multiple sub-menus like buy/sell/back. buy has some other sub-menus and so on.
What would the basic structure of such a menu be ? It seems simple I know but I couldn't figure out a simple structure without multiple loops inside other loops and function re-calling just go back to a sub-menu ....