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WILL
12-09-2004, 11:56 AM
Hey, I'm just currious if there are any Free Pascal projects out there worth mentioning in this forum?

Lazarus is looking better by the release and Free Pascal is getting beefier and more feature filled it's self. There has to be someone making use of this fine multi-platform compiler somewhere.

Clootie
12-09-2004, 03:59 PM
AFAIK (Dominique can correct me) SDL is compiling under FreePascal - pure multiplatform project.

GLScene is in process of trying to compile "itself" under FreePascal.

About half of Direc3D samples for Summer 2003 DirectX SDK on mine site can be compiled and run just fine under FreePascal. But during testing of new framework for 2004 release of DirectX SDK I've found that althrow I can compile it under FreePascal - projects fail to run correctly. Bugs were discovered in UNICODE support of FreePascal.

MikeS
12-09-2004, 04:52 PM
I'm using the bloodshed free pascal compiler/ide combination and I love it. Rather than spending $100 on a Delphi compiler, I think I'll take free pascal for free. ;)

No doubt, Delphi is much more feature packed then FF, though FF is just easier for me to navigate around as a beginner.

8)

tux
12-09-2004, 05:34 PM
im waiting for Lazarus to be released on OSX then i can use it on my ibook :)

WILL
12-09-2004, 09:33 PM
Clootie: Excellent news! I hope you already reported those issues to the Free Pascal team, as it'll help it to become much better in the near future.



I'm using the bloodshed free pascal compiler/ide combination and I love it. Rather than spending $100 on a Delphi compiler, I think I'll take free pascal for free. ;)
That sounds like forward-thinking logic to me 8)

I'm sure that when it comes to game programming, all the nice bells and whistles are nice, but down to the bottom of it all, it's all about the code man. But I admit it's nice to have a good IDE any day.


tux: I'm with you on that one. More support for Mac OS X and other platforms like Playstation 2(PS3 in the near future), X-Box(X-Box 2 soon), and whatever Nintendo has up it's sleaves is the utimate aim for any game developer.



For those of you wondering where you can find all of this stuff; You can find them at the following sites:

:arrow: Free Pascal Compiler is @ http://www.freepascal.org/

:arrow: Bloodshed Software's Dev-Pascal(IDE w/ Packaged version of Free Pascal or GNU Pascal Suite) is @ http://www.bloodshed.net/devpascal.html

:arrow: Free Pascal Lazarus Project is @ http://lazarus.freepascal.org/

tux
12-09-2004, 09:40 PM
is there much speed difference in the compiled code between free pascal and object pascal /delphi

Anonymous
26-09-2004, 07:49 AM
FreePascal is a bit slower than Delphi I think.

WILL
26-09-2004, 08:49 AM
I seriously doubt it's anything that can't be sped up by it's inline asm functions. :)

tux
26-09-2004, 01:33 PM
but mear mortals dont know asm :P

Paulius
26-09-2004, 03:47 PM
Those who have chosen pascal over C will probably want to keep their code more maintainable than asm.

WILL
26-09-2004, 05:59 PM
in pascal asm is super maintainable! :) just stick it in a function. Besides even in C you'll need to use asm to bump out the speed for almost any type of optimization.

{MSX}
03-11-2004, 08:08 PM
Hey, I'm just currious if there are any Free Pascal projects out there worth mentioning in this forum?

I'm working on a project that builds with freepascal and delphi on both linux and windows., but i'm using mainly Kylix as a platform. I've tryed lazarus some times ago but it looked not so good to me. Kylix looks quite old too.. Indeed i'm searching for something else (hence my thread on IDEs :P ), but i don't think there are so much cross platform pascal IDE out there.

BTW freepascal gives me some problems in windows, for example when loading DLLs.. Instead in linux it works nicely

cairnswm
04-11-2004, 05:06 AM
I've just started looking at FreePascal as an option. I've basically decided on JEDI-SDL as the graphics library. I havn't started anything proper yet but I am expecting my next game release (due July 2005 :) ) to be done in FreePascal.

At the moment I'm making my own set of Screen, image and drawing controls. I was thinking of using them in a tutorial but haven't had time yet.

noeska
04-11-2004, 11:25 AM
@TUX: Lazarus already runs under osx


http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/modules/Screenshots/screenshot/mini-mac_shot1.png
http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Screenshots&file=index&req=showsc&id=32

savage
04-11-2004, 01:41 PM
Very cool Indeed. FreePascal may one day replace Delphi in terms of Pascal popularity, if they can just iron out a few more of the bugs they have.

It would probably also help if more of the Delphi/Pascal community actually helped out. If only we all had more time.

cairnswm
04-11-2004, 02:47 PM
Savage - what are the main problems they are having - what bugs should we be watching out for? I've seen this sort of thing (free pascal has bugs/problems) but havn't been able to get a feel for what sort of problems they are having.

Looking at the freepascal bug list it seems pretty specific issues that are causing problems. If we just do our normal sort of basic games with simple screen manipulation - will we have problems?

Anonymous
04-11-2004, 09:23 PM
Hi William,
The bugs I was referering to are specifically to do with the Lazarus IDE. It is functional but has a few things that need polishing, so stick to command line or Delphi/Kylix for now or help them fix the bugs.

Though I have not used the FreePascal compiler extensively, in the couple of years I have used it, it has done well with the JEDI-SDL stuff. Just remember to set Delphi mode when compiling and it should be fine as long as you tend to use Delphi 5 or 6 syntax. My command line always starts with...
fpc -Sd -B <project name>.dpr
The -Sd sets Delphi compatability mode.
The -B does a build all so is optional.

Other things to watch out for are things like the fact that FPC does not have TCollection class as far as I can tell. But then I tend to use TList or TObjectList as my base classes for lists. The other thing to note is that if you are making use of RTTI, the underlying structure is slightly different to Delphi. This became particularly evident with Igor's SDL Controls ( http://sdlcontrols.sourceforge.net ), and that is why his controls can only be used with Delphi/Kylix for now. Eventually SDLControls will also work with FPC once we iron out the RTTI issue.

Keep these simple things in mind when writing your JEDI-SDL FPC code and it will compile and run on Win32, Linux, FreeBSD and MacOS X, and maybe oneday even PS2 or XBox :)

Anonymous
31-12-2004, 12:47 PM
Hi William,
The bugs I was referering to are specifically to do with the Lazarus IDE. It is functional but has a few things that need polishing, so stick to command line or Delphi/Kylix for now or help them fix the bugs.


There are some general problems:
- DLL support is immature, no packages
- COM support etc on Windows is skimpy.
- tthread.synchronize is only implemented since a few days.
- No delegation uses "implents"
- Unicode basis done, however most string routines unchecked.
- class wrappers for variant types are not complete.
- db support is much less evolved.



Other things to watch out for are things like the fact that FPC does not have TCollection class as far as I can tell.


Better, it has two. The Delphi one in classes, just like Delphi, and the TP one in (which is more TList like) in objects.



Keep these simple things in mind when writing your JEDI-SDL FPC code and it will compile and run on Win32, Linux, FreeBSD and MacOS X, and maybe oneday even PS2 or XBox :)

1.9.6 is imminent and AMD64, Sparc32/64 are amongst them.

Almindor
31-12-2004, 08:11 PM
I'm working on a game called Lentilwars for a year now(i'm heck lazy).
I use FPC for it lazarus as an editor. I use SDL and my own net code + I just finished the 1st part of a Game Abstraction Layer for the blitter so I can swap between SDL and openGL. I think fpc is good for games programming specialy because it's so cross-platform(unlike even C which has "issues").

As for those unfinished parts of FPC, apart from the DLL (for big multi-language projects) I don't see any problems.
FPC also supports a few things which delphi doesn't have that might come in handy.

savage
01-01-2005, 02:24 AM
Just so you know, in a future release ( maybe 1.2.9 ) of SDL, they will be hooking in an OpenGL backend which will work transparently with 2D applications/games. In theory, you won't even have to recompile your app and it will make use of OpenGL calls and give you HW acceleration ( if available ) just by installing the updated libraries.