FPC 4 GBA Update!

[WILL]

Its seems that the FPC 4 GBA Team's efforts have paid off! Florian Klaempfl has commited a GBA RTL to the Free Pascal Compiler source repository with the complete rewrite done by Francesco Lombardi aka Legolas. A binary will soon become available!

Free Pascal now officially supports the GameBoy Advance platform! :)

Also, the FPC 4 GBA page has recently been updated: FPC4GBA.PascalGameDevelopment.com (http://fpc4gba.pascalgamedevelopment.com/)


More information on Free Pascal and the new GameBoy Advance targetting can be found at www.FreePascal.org (http://www.freepascal.org/)!

[savage]

Great News. Now if we could just get it working on the PlayStation Portable and the upcoming PS3 as well :).

[WILL]

That a MIPS world thing my friend. ;)

We're banking on ARM7 and ARM9 sets here. The next biggest issue is implimenting specific features of these sets.

But for now... word of mouth and sending the word out everywhere. :D

[Legolas]

That a MIPS world thing my friend. ;)

We're banking on ARM7 and ARM9 sets here. The next biggest issue is implimenting specific features of these sets.

But for now... word of mouth and sending the word out everywhere. :D

ARM7 for sure. About ARM9: yesterday I have made an attempt to compile something for nintendo ds, but the executable crashes the emulator. Really I don't know if is something wrong in my port (though I followed same steps I done for gba). Because the NDS have two CPU (arm7 and arm9), I'll try to make an hybrid executable, with the arm7 part built with fpc and the arm9 one built with gcc. If it will work, then we will need an arm9-aimed compiler :)

[savage]

When will the guys at FPC announce this on freepascal.org. I wonder if there is anyone at Sony we could contact to talk about PS3 and FreePascal. When the PS3 comes out, since it will be running a Linux OS I will look at seeing if I can get FreePascal working on there.

[cairnswm]

Whats needed to make it work for the GP2X?

http://gp2x.co.uk/devx2.html

it has 2 ARM processors:
http://www.gp2x.com/product/specification.asp?part=02

[Legolas]

Whats needed to make it work for the GP2X?

http://gp2x.co.uk/devx2.html

it has 2 ARM processors:
http://www.gp2x.com/product/specification.asp?part=02

Maybe lack of ARM9 support. Apart that, porting it to gp2x should be easy enough :)

[savage]

There's even an SDL port for it - http://sdl-gp32.sourceforge.net/

[Legolas]

There's even an SDL port for it - http://sdl-gp32.sourceforge.net/
There is for nds and gba (http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/ndsSDL.shtml) too :wink:
I'm wondering about the possibility to mix sdl for gba and sdl for fpc :think:

[savage]

It would be nice to know if the JEDI-SDL libraries work on GBA as well.

Though I strangely suspect the only way to use SDL on these platforms is via statically linking to the *.lib file rather dynamically linking to a *.so file.

[WILL]

There's even an SDL port for it - http://sdl-gp32.sourceforge.net/
There is for nds and gba (http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/ndsSDL.shtml) too :wink:
It only specifies NDS, though. :?


WRT Porting FPC to different platoforms: (Though belonging to it's own topic altogether,) the first things to have to look at before anything else when considering a port to a new platform is 1) Is the CPU and instruction set (model, chipset, etc) supported, then 2) you have to look at the OS (if it has one) inner-workings which probably will mean writting a new RTL (--a process that Legolas painstakingly went through to get FPC4GBA off the ground and 'completed') and after all that 3) if there is stuff like hardware support and/or base units to support basic stuff, much like support for a Win API, X-Windows, etc, etc... it starts to get specific from here.

This is from my experience and what I've seen throughout this whole process. Legolas, could probably walk you through it all himself a bit better as I only dug into the code at the beginning, made a successful first compile of a port then he really took over from there. :) I just kept pushing Florian and his FPC buddies to include us into the compiler's development. In short, I bcame the gopher and cheerleader. :lol:

NO, I'm not posing with a 'Mario hat' for any PGD-themed demos! So stop asking even before you do. :P


SDL would be cool on the GBA and the NDS (I could write my Subject 33 and Cyber Crisis games for 2 more platforms! yay! :D) and it would allow a TON of game source to be VERY easily portable to-and-from consoles to PC. A very juicey proposition for Ninendo who is currently trying to push innovation and new cutting edge gaming ideas from both developers and game purchasers alike.

In fact it's this sort of thing that could open a new kind of staple market for Nintendo all the while bring Object Pascal to the comercial gaming markets finally.

[Legolas]

There's even an SDL port for it - http://sdl-gp32.sourceforge.net/
There is for nds and gba (http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/ndsSDL.shtml) too :wink:
It only specifies NDS, though. :?


Not really. Look at the very end of the page and you should find a couple of packages:
gbaSDL.rar (http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/files/nds/gbaSDL.rar) and libSDLgba.rar (http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/files/nds/libSDLgba.rar), that is precompiled lib and headers for gba and source code. :D

[WILL]

Yeah sorry, noticed it after replying. forgot to EDIT. ;)

Very awesome! Have you tried making use of it yet? I imagine that it's a trimmed-down staticly linkable version of SDL?

I mean it would have to be otherwise the ROM sizes would be huge and take up too much space on the cartrage.