In this release there is a slight fix to the AudioMixer class and also new port of the Bob Pendleton's FastEvents methods ( thanks Mason ).

Get it while it's Hot!

I've just checked in the latest changes that adds better Mac OS X frameworks support ( tested on Intel ) and now SKYOS support, all using FreePascal. I have also improved the sdl_audiomixer class that makes playing music on all these platforms super easy.

New Win32 Installers and Zip files are available on from the JEDI-SDL homepage.

The JEDI-SDL installers now come in 3 flavours :

FULL - http://jedi-sdl.pascalgamedevelopment.com/files/JEDI-SDLFullSetup.exe and it's about a 4.5MB download.

HEADERS ONLY - http://jedi-sdl.pascalgamedevelopment.com/files/JEDI-SDLHeadersSetup.exe and it only about 1MB.

DEMOS ONLY - http://jedi-sdl.pascalgamedevelopment.com/files/JEDI-SDLDemosSetup.exe and it only about 2MB.

It should install the files to the specified directory, but should also update your particular version of Delphi's Libaray path automagically. It should also update FreePascal's fpc.cfg if you used the FreePascal installer in the first place.

So it's not the official v1.0 release, but I am getting ever closer.

Please give it a test and let me know if there are any problems.

The Latest Beta Win32 installer can now be downloaded from...

http://jedi-sdl.pascalgamedevelopment.com/files/JEDI-SDLFullSetup.exe

NOTE : These are haemorrhaging edge builds, taken directly from my development machine so be aware that they are volatile.

The Latest Beta builds will now be available as a zip file from... http://jedi-sdl.pascalgamedevelopment.com/files/JEDI-SDLv1.0.zip

NOTE : These are haemorrhaging edge builds, taken directly from my development machine so be aware that they are volatile.

We've just added support for Nintendo Game Boy Advance/DS as well as GP2X ( http://gp2x.co.uk/ ) game consoles. We are definatley getting closer to a v1.0 release. Stay tuned.

I have finally managed to iron out all the bugs involved putting together an XCode 2.4.x compatible project template that works with JEDI-SDL and FreePascal on MacOS X. A big thank-you goes out to Jonas Maebe for pointing me in the right direction. Ok the basic instructions are as follows...

-= START TUTORIAL =-

1. Need 1 cup of MacOS X

2. An installation of XCode 2.4 which ships with Tiger, but can the latest version can be downloaded by registering here - http://developer.apple.com/tools/download/ . Note the current version of 2.4.1 and weighs in at 924MB, so I hope you have broadband. This will give you a DMG ( Disk Image ) that will self mount. Follow the installation instructions.

3. Download and install the SDL disk image for MacOS X from - http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-1.2.11.dmg. Once this disk image has mounted you will find yourself in a folder with a Readme.txt a SDL.framework directory and a few other files.

To Install SDL:

Copy the SDL.framework to /Library/Frameworks

You can do the same thing for SDL_image, SDL_mixer, SDL_ttf and SDL_net.

/Library/Frameworks/ is the location for all private frameworks.

The standard OS frameworks are located in...

/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks

4. Download and install FreePascal for MacOS X from - http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/Lazarus_Snapshots_Downloads I downloaded a 2.1.1 snapshot about a week ago, but note that this branch is under heavy development so is not considered stable. You can try using the more stable 2.0.4 release, but I cannot vouch for that. Again this should give you a *.dmg files that will mount instelf and in this case launch an installation. Follow the instructions and you should have a working FreePascal compiler for MasOS X at the end of it.

5. If the installation above went well you should now have some FreePascal project templates located at...

/Library/Application Support/Apple/Developer Tools/Project Templates/Pascal/

under which will be "FPC Standard Tool" and "FPC Carbon Application" project templates. Now download the JEDI-SDL 2D project template from

http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/jedi-sdl/files/FPC%20JEDI-SDL%202D.zip

or the 3D project template from

http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/jedi-sdl/files/FPC%20JEDI-SDL%203D.zip

Unzip the archived "FPC JEDI-SDL 2D" or "FPC JEDI-SDL 3D" folder at the same level as the previous FPC project templates.

6. Now start up XCode. Select "File->New Project". A New Project wizard should appear listing all the project templates available. Scroll down the list until you get to "Pascal". Under this node you should see the 2 FPC Project Templates and the JEDI-SDL 2D project template. Select "FPC JEDI-SDL 2D" and click "Next". Now enter a Project Name and Directory. Note : If the directory does not exist, it will be created. When you happy click finish the newly created project will be opened and ready for editing within XCode.

7. Click the "Build and Go" icon and the compilation process will begin. Once completed ( it's a bit slower that Delphi ), you should see the JEDI-SDL logo ( thanks Jason ) bouncing around a native MacOS X window.

8. Hack this project around to get your baby working on MacOS X.

-= END TUTORIAL =-

This is the simplest way to get JEDI-SDL and XCode working together. A more indepth tutorial of how to create the project from scratch would include a lot of arcane magic and work arounds which Jonas has already had the misfortune of experiencing, hence why project templates are provided as a starting point when using XCode.

Any feedback or corrections welcome.

It is with much pleasure that I finally announce the official beta release of JEDI-SDL v1.0 on SourceForge @

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/jedi-sdl/JEDI-SDLv1.zip?download

These should work on Win32, Linux, FreeBSD and MacOS X ( with some tweaking ).

I think the headers are feature complete, unless someone spots something. The only thing left to add are more demos, which will probably end up being a separate download anyway. Oh and we also need to pick an offical logo for the project as well.

Just a quick note to say that I have just checked into CVS the last JEDI-SDL changes ( for now ) that has added compatability for the Gnu Pascal and TMT Pascal compilers.

Thanks to Alexey "Clootie" Barkovoy for his help with TMT support.

Thanks to Prof. Abimbola "The Chief" Olowofoyeku for his help with Gnu Pascal support.

These latest changes have been tested under Windows and the newly modified JEDISDLAliens demo ( the benchmark for cross-compiler compatability ) has also been checked into CVS.

These Pascal bindings now compile flawlessly under Delphi, FreePascal ( FPC ) 1.0.4, Gnu Pascal ( GPC ) Latest Alpha & TMT Pascal.

The Aliens Demo runs flawlessly with Music and FX under Delphi, FPC and TMT. The GPC version has a screen refresh problem, while sound collision detection etc work flawlessly. The GPC issue may be due to the Alpha status of the compiler because all compilers are essentially using the same code.

Looking ahead, testing and bug fixing is under way to make sure the headers support Gnu Pascal on Linux and MacOS X and FreePascal under Linux.

I hope this widens the appeal of JEDI-SDL.

Go on, write a game instead!!

I am pleased to announce that JEDI-SDL v0.5 has been released and will

be shipping with Kylix 3 and Delphi 7 out of the box! Which I think makes it one of the few products that will ship with both versions of Borland's latest Object Pascal compilers.

JEDI-SDL are the Object Pascal headers for SDL ( http://www.libsdl.org

), and has been converted, comments and all, to the Delphi unit called

SDL.pas.

Other conversions that have also been done are SDL_Mixer.h, SDL_Net.h,

SDL_Image.h, SMPEG.h, SDL_sound and the SFont library,

which are all included in this distribution.

It allows you to access all the functions within the SDL libraries under

both Windows and Linux, so you can write cross-platform games or

multimedia applications.

The latest release for Windows can be downloaded from

http://codecentral.borland.com/codecentral/ccweb.exe/listing?id=18581

and the latest release for Linux can be downloaded from

http://codecentral.borland.com/codecentral/ccweb.exe/listing?id=18333

The JEDI-SDL Home page ( http://www.delphi-jedi.org/Jedi:TEAM_SDL_HOME )

and the SourceForge page ( http://www.sf.net/projects/jedi-sdl ), will

be updated with the latest release over the next few days.

Things of note in this release are...

* The JEDI-SDL project is now also set up on Sourceforge (

http://sf.net/projects/jedi-sdl/ ) so the latest code is available from

there.

* Improved FreePascal support has been added.

* Various bug fixes as pointed out on the JEDI-SDL mailing list.

* SDL_Mixer has been updated to version 1.2.1 and includes an Effects API.

* Demo directories are now split into 2D and 3D related sub-directories.

* There are now both Kylix ( K prefix ) and Delphi ( D prefix ) project

groups for all the demos.

* They can be found in Demos and the 2D and 3D directories.

New Units

---------

* SDLStreams.pas - Chris Bruner has created a wrapper that uses Streams

to load BMPs

* SDLUtils.pas - Pascal only version of some Utility functions

* SDLi386Utils.pas - Intel Assembler versions of the SDLUtils.pas functions.

* SDL_ttf.pas - Port of the SDL True Type font support unit.

* SDL_Sound.pas - Port of the SDL Sound library ( untested ).

New 2D Demos :

--------------

* Pan and Zoom Demo - How to Pan and Zoom an SDL surface.

* Isometric Demo - I ported my old DelphiX isometric demo over to SDL.

* TestTimer demo - Shows hows how to use AddTimer and RemoveTimer.

* MpegPlayer - I have updated and improved Anders Ohlsson's CLX

MPegPlayer and component and it now works and installs into D4, D5, D6,

D7, K1, K2 & K3.

* Showfont - Demo to show how to us SDL_ttf.dll

* SmpegPlayer - is a console MPEG player that use smpeg and SDL_Mixer

New 3D Demos :

--------------

* DeathTruckTion 1.1 - A slightly updated version of this fully

functional 3D network game.

* TerrainDemo - Terrain demo ported from the book "OpenGL Game

programming" by Hawkins and Astle.

* TestGL - the standard SDL/OpenGL Test demo. Shows how to mix 2D and 3D

rendering using OpenGL.

* glfont - Demo to show how to us SDL_ttf with OpenGL.

* Particle Engine - Ariel's OpenGL Particle Engine.

* Picking - Phil Freeman's Picking Demo

* Motion Blur - Phil Freeman's Motion Blur Demo

* Dynamic Light - Phil Freeman's Dynamic Light Demo

* Environment Map - Phil Freeman's Environment Map Demo

* GLMovie - is an MPEG Player that uses OpenGL to render the movie.

* NeHe - Quite a few more NeHe demos are now included.

New Network Demos :

-------------------

* There are now 3 SDL_Net Server demos and 4 SDL_Client demos as

submitted by Dean Ellis.

I hope your experience with JEDI-SDL proves to be a positive one, as

cross-platform game development has never been easier.

Thank-you to everyone who helped make this release the biggest to date

and also helped to make it more stable.

Sincerely,

Dominique Louis

JEDI-SDL Project Leader

--

http://www.DelphiGamer.com := for all your Object Pascal game

development needs;

http://www.delphi-jedi.org/Jedi:TEAM_SDL_HOME := Home of JEDI-SDL;

Cross-platform game development with Pascal, has never been easier.