FPC 4 GameCube?

[Legolas]

Yesterday I have made a very first attempt to port our beloved fpc to GameCube. The GC is equipped with a PowerPC CPU and FPC supports PowerPC, so I have made a fast compiler port, by modifying my gba RTL and by using binutils from devkitPro for PPC. Well, it produces .dol executables, but I'm not been able to run it on the emulator. The problem is that the GC emulators does not have a decent debugger, so I'm not able to check errors in the exe. A debugger I have found works only with real hardware connected to a pc via LAN.
If someone here has a gc and wants to try to make this new fpc port, I could send the sources and all support I can :)
Otherwise, I need to buy a gc (this hobby is becoming expensive :mrgreen:)

[savage]

This is cool news, I wonder if my wife would let me buy a cheap second hand GC.

[WILL]

Oh no! We've created a monster! :o

:lol:

Very nice work, my friend. ;) An excellent example of a compiler made out of spite. I like it! :D

I wonder if this means a boom in other game console ports of FPC will be forth-coming. Maybe if we all make enough noise many users will pickup on these projects and take a major interest.

[Legolas]

Oh no! We've created a monster! :o

:lol:

Very nice work, my friend. ;) An excellent example of a compiler made out of spite. I like it! :D

I wonder if this means a boom in other game console ports of FPC will be forth-coming. Maybe if we all make enough noise many users will pickup on these projects and take a major interest.

:mrgreen:

Well, I hope so... These PowerPC and PPC64 fpc compilers could tourn out useful ;)

[WILL]

I wonder how supportive Nintendo would be of your cause should they catch wind of it. Perhaps this is an aspect that should be considered aswell.

They would be a great lift in prestige if they aswell started on the path that it looks like Sony took with opening up game consoles to amatures and independants by supporting Linux on their new PS3 system.

Nintendo, geared up to start slamming on the innovation drums, this time could be prime to put out a 'serious' campaign for Pascal on Nintendo's gaming consoles. *ahem*Wii*ahem*

[Legolas]

I'm resuming this old thread because I have started a new porting project. This time my attempt will be aimed at GameCube and Wii :)
GBA and NDS portings are very stable now and I need a new challenge, so I have decided to investigate about adding these new targets to fpc.
I'll start with gamecube, because I already made some work on it. However, as far as I can see, Wii is a vitaminized GameCube (faster cpu/gpu, more ram) so, once we'll have a working gc porting, making a Wii will be pretty straightforward.
I have started a new page (http://wiki.freepascal.org/GameCube) on fpc's wiki about GameCube. Feel free to add anything you think it could help :P

[WILL]

Excellent! Glad to hear you are still at it. ;)

[cronodragon]

Wow, that sounds really cool. One question, how do you emulate those platforms... I mean in a way that you can develop on them?

[Legolas]

I'll use an emulator (gcube) shipped with devkitPPC toolchain, that runs Wii executables too (as I already said, the Wii is a doped GameCube). AFAIK the first gamecubes, named HW2, have a serial port that could be used for debugging. It could be nice to find it for some bucks on ebay :)

Later, if the compiler grows and if I'll get some spare money, I could decide to buy a Wii :)

[Legolas]

Yesterday I have got my first working executable from fpc4gamecube. :D
Nothing amazing, only a coloured screen, but at least now I know that it will work ;)

[savage]

Legolas=Legend!

[Legolas]

:toocool:

This is only for your eyes:

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/786/fpc4gamecubefg1.th.png (http://img225.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fpc4gamecubefg1.png)

:mrgreen:

Now I need a way to debug, because I have some issues I can't figure how I could resolve :think:

[JSoftware]

Awesome :D

[savage]

Looks cool, but is amusing to see it running in an XP window :).
Yes I know it's an emulator.

[WILL]

So whats the emulator of choice for GameCube dev? Anything at the level of what you were using for the GBA/NDS testing?

[Legolas]

GCube, that's shipped with devkitPPC, seems good enough to make some quick tests, but the windows version lacks basic debugger functionalities. Seems that the best way in order to debug is a real gamecube connected(*) to pc for remote debugging.


(*)There is an adapter (USB Gecko) that allows to connect a gamecube (or a Wii) to a pc via USB

[cronodragon]

As for business curiosity, what are the legal implications of creating games for the Wii? Is Nintendo requiring a license? If so, how much does it cost? And I suppose they would only sell it to well established studios. Is Nintendo allowing non-profit games? :?

[Legolas]

As far as I can tell, it should be the same as for nds and gba (http://pascalgamedevelopment.com/viewtopic.php?p=38873#38873) development: you can create and sell your homebrew software, made with unofficial tools, putting somewhere a disclaimer stating that you and your software are not sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo. Of course your buyers need a backup enabled console, because you can't write a "genuine" cd.
About becoming an official Nintendo developer, you can check this page:
http://www.warioworld.com/apply/wii.html

The interesting part is that Nintendo sells devkits only for DS and Wii.

[Legolas]

Some news again :)
Now I'll show you a pageflip demo ported from a libogc example. Tested it on gcube emulator, the speed of the executable made with fpc is about the same as the gcc one (48 fps on gcc, 47 fps on fpc); on the other hand, the executable is bigger on fpc side, a usual. :P

http://itaprogaming.free.fr/immagini/pageflip_small.png (http://itaprogaming.free.fr/immagini/pageflip.png)

In this archive (http://itaprogaming.free.fr/download/fpc_pageflip.zip) (116 kb) you will find both fpc and gcc executables.

[savage]

I know I'm a bit late, but this was/is great news. Any further upates?

How did you get FreePascal to target the GC?

[Legolas]

Bad news (http://itaprogaming.free.fr/index.php?x=p&pag=53), sorry :(

As far as I remember, Noeska was interested in this porting and, when I stopped it, he asked for some infos about the compiler changes needed to start working on it. Somewhere in my hd I should have the sources of the examples I posted here :think:

[noeska]

More bad news then.

I did some wii dev'ing: http://code.google.com/p/gl2gx/ in c .
But as it was fun to get the basics working the wii is not able to use opengl fully as it the 3d hardware is optimized for gx and not opengl. But i put this on hold as it is to time consuming.

Although it would be nice having an pascal compiler for wii/gamecube i wont be able to support the development for it.

PS my current delphi project is an svg/xul 2d ui.

[savage]

OK I'll stick with Nintendo DS and SDL for now.

Francesco, would you do more work on the GameCube/Wii port if someone paid you?

How about for PS3, would you work on that for money?

[Legolas]

Dom, I really appreciate your offer, but I'm not so much into GC/Wii as I was into Nintendo DS and GBA, so I really don't know if I even could be able to make a working stable release. More, when I started DS and GBA porting, there was alot of documentation on the internet; on the other hand, Game Cube homebrewing wasn't so popular at all and Wii homebrewing is still in its alpha stage, so no docs are available at this time.

FPC does not support the PS3 cpu and my knowledge is too poor in order to start a new fpc architecture from scratch :/

EDIT: by the way, I have got a "Debug Error" sending this post

[Ñuño Martínez]

How sad... :(

I've just bought a Wii two weeks ago and two new games last week. I even start to think about the possibilities of creating games for it.

I hope somebody can follow it. I have no idea about how to do it.

[noeska]

For those who want to get into developing for the wii: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Main_Page