Oh nice... I've been looking into those archos tablets. If I buy, it will probably be the 10 inch one. Let me know what your experiences are. Especially concerning pascal gamedev. I know some of us have fiddled with android, but it seems that some extra work needs to be done to make it easier.
Did you try this?
And merry christmas!
Last edited by chronozphere; 25-12-2010 at 10:27 AM.
Coders rule nr 1: Face ur bugz.. dont cage them with code, kill'em with ur cursor.
To be honest, I don't think trying to develop for android with pascal is worth the effort yet, but I'm sure I'll fiddle with it in the future.
As for the android device itself, it has some problems. The main issue is the screen; it's hilariously small and it's resistive, so very hard to work with. (The pricier models should list if they're capacitive) I actually ended up installing a third party keyboard similar to swipe to aid in usability. With it, I don't really get that many typos, but I'm still slower at using it than with a qwerty keyboard and stylus (at least for the moment, but dragging a stylus around with you everywhere too isn't too fun). I actually wrote up a nice long post from it to reply to this topic, but I took so long the forum logged me out and lost all progress. The devices also aren't recognized by google, so to get the google market and most of the apps, you have to do some workarounds. Archos has instructions for setting up debug mode, and I'll get around to that tomorrow.
The low memory is also turning out to be a slight problem; while the OS itself allows multitasking, it kills the apps that I wanted to multitask with because it needed more ram to run the active program. It's really no surprise to me, how much multi tasking are you going to do on a device this small? It's not what it's made for
ZenGL is amazing!
Do you have planned to make it arm compatible? I noticed that trying to compile for arm-linux (under Ubuntu) there is an asm part that stops the compilation; maybe translating these few asm lines in pascal would make it arm-compatible
(so it could be also used for maemo/meego)
ThanksOriginally Posted by Kjow
The only function that use ASM-code is m_SinCos, but it must ignore ASM-code and use pure Pascal if CPU architecture is not x86 32-bit... But another problem in the latest version of ZenGL from svn is using object files from original libjpeg8b and zlib(for faster jpeg and png decoding).
I think this OS's based on Linux will use OpenGL ES instead of OpenGL, so there is a lot of work must be done for ZenGL...(so it could be also used for maemo/meego)
If I remember well there is a wrapper from OpenGL to OpenGL ES for maemo, and from what I can remember it works. So developing in OpenGL and compiling for arm-linux should be enough... but I can't be sure
The only function that use ASM-code is m_SinCos, but it must ignore ASM-code and use pure Pascal if CPU architecture is not x86 32-bit... But another problem in the latest version of ZenGL from svn is using object files from original libjpeg8b and zlib(for faster jpeg and png decoding).
I think this OS's based on Linux will use OpenGL ES instead of OpenGL, so there is a lot of work must be done for ZenGL...
Hm, maybe later I will try to build toolchain for ARM under my ArchLinux and will try to compile ZenGL... but for now I'm too busy with ZenGL 0.2 RC6
ZenGL 0.2 RC6 released.
Changelog:
- [Direct3D]fixed problem with render targets when using FreePascal 2.4.x
- [Direct3D]fixed tex_SetMask, wich was broken in RC5
- [Direct3D]fixed problems with camera and render targets
- [OpenGL]fixed slow terminating in some cases
- [Linux]DIRECTORY_HOME will return $HOME/.config/
- [Windows]timers will stop when window is moving(with enabled APP_USE_AUTPAUSE)
- [Windows]rendering will not stop when window is moving(with disabled APP_USE_AUTPAUSE)
- [MacOS X]fixed problem with wnd_SetCaption when using dylib
- [MacOS X]removed deprecated SetWTitle from wnd_SetCaption
- [MacOS X]DIRECTORY_HOME will return /Users/$username/Library/Preferences
- [MacOS X]all resources will checks first in App/Contents/Resources
- [MacOS X]log-file now puts near bundle
- optimized all functions which loads resources from memory
- fixed potential memory leak in font_LoadFromFile and font_LoadFromMemory
- fixed bug with scaling of text(the right bottom corner)
- PasJPEG replaced by original libjpeg8b(speed up to 5x for FreePascal and USE_LIBJPEG, by default enabled for GNU/Linux and MacOS X)
- PasZLib was replaced by original zlib 1.2.5(speed up to 1.5x)
- optimizaed loading of ini-files
- cam2d_Set now works like cam2d_Apply, but doesn't applied automatically when render target is set. cam2d_Apply was removed
- now ini_LoadFromFile and file_Open returns a result
- argument Directory was added to file_Exists for checking if directory exists
- now rtarget_Add is more "safe"
- behavior of rtarget_Set when use camera was changed, now camera works only for TARGET_SCREEN, for TARGET_TEXTURE it must be set manually
- changed declaration of ini_ReadKeyStr, key_GetText, file_GetName, file_GetExtension and file_GetDirectory
- file_Find now sorts the list
- now mouse_X/mouse_Y returns coordinates using global mouse position for all OS's
- added new functions: cam2d_Get and sengine2d_Get
- added argument SeparateAlpha to fx_SetBlendMode
- improved particles subsystem
- added loading of emitters from files
- added new constants for zgl_Get: ZGL_VERSION, ZGL_VERSION_STRING, ZGL_VERSION_DATE and MANAGER_EMITTER2D
- added header file of Chipmunk
Links was updated here. Now available archives with binaries for different OS's. I hope next release will be stable 0.2 with frozen API
Sad moment - 64-bit windows binaries now won't work, but 32-bit works fine as always
Last edited by Andru; 22-01-2011 at 11:59 PM.
Hi Andru!Hm, maybe later I will try to build toolchain for ARM under my ArchLinux and will try to compile ZenGL... but for now I'm too busy with ZenGL 0.2 RC6
Is there any news about ARM support?
Then, have you planned something about implementing OpenGL ES on ZenGL (like did the team of Asphyre Sphinx)?
I need to start a 2D project and I would start it with ZenGL (I repeat, it is amazing), so if it would be OpenGL ES compatible for when I'll finish the project (less or more) I'll can compile it for win, linux, maemo/meego and ios
(OpenGL ES run on also on desktop ATI with latest drivers, I don't know about nvidia)
Let me know
Thank you very much!
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