- December 26th, 2006: Only weeks ago Francesco Lombardi has submitted changes to the Free Pascal compiler to add a target for the Nintendo DS platform based on his work on the GameBoy Advance platform. Just yesterday Francesco and I (Jason McMillen) have released a small Christmas demo that acts as a demonstration of what can be done so far with the new binaries now offered at his website. The only other previous examples show simple patterns and blank screens. In this tiny WIP demo we have put together shows background music, detailed background graphics, stylius input and simple sprites. The FPC 4 NDS project is really taking off fast!
- October 3rd, 2006: Added News updates from Francesco's Site via RSS Feed. Also, added a link to the brand new, official 'FPC 4 GBA Game Programming Tutorial', your own extensive reference guide to writting your own software on the GBA platform.
- June 1st, 2006: Free Pascal 2.1.x now officially has GameBoy Advance support included! Francesco has released a binary package of the GBA targeted port of FPC 2.1. This release was rewritten from scratch to be more compatible with the Free Pascal source. Future versions of Free Pascal will now permanently support the GBA target and Francesco himself has been added to the Free Pascal Team as the official GBA port developer. The 1st binary package is now available on the FreePascal.org site and Francesco's personal site. There is now a push for testing and improving of the standard RTL and units as well as a possible Nintendo DS branch target. ARM THUMB for ARM7 (and ARM9 for NDS) still needed for full GBA target hardware support.
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2008.05.15 - Wii/GCN patch
As I announced, Wii and GCN porting projects are stopped. I have made a diff patch that you can download in the Wii/GCN section and that you can apply to the Free Pascal's trunk from SVN. I'll not provide support about patching and compiling, so use it only if you know what you are doing. In the diff file there is no lib and no example; you will need to link libogc from devkitPPC. Feel free to continue my work on it.
2008.04.28 - Summing up the situation
fpc4gamecube/fpc4wii: at this time all I have is a proof-of-concept toolchain. Free Pascal is capable to generate executables for both consoles and, as far I can see, the speed is pretty good. Nevertheless I have put these two ports in stand-by, because no one seems interested in a pascal compiler for Gamecube or Wii, so I won't waste my time and my bucks in something useless, I won't make this error twicefpc4nds/fpc4gba: in the next weeks will be released a major update for libnds. This update will make easier to program for nds, because it will add a high level layer on the top of the old library.
2008.04.20 - News about fpc4gamecube
This is a pageflip demo ported from a libogc example. Tested 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, as usual.
In this archive (116 kb) you will find both fpc and gcc executables.I have made a new FPC 4 GameCube page in "Projects" too.
2008.04.18 - New web site
Yes, I know, it looks like the older one :)
I have modified a bit the php script and now I can edit stuff withouth touching the html pages. It needs some adjustements here and there, so if you find something wrong, then let me know! ^_^
2008.04.16 - News about fpc4gamecube
A couple of days ago I have got my first working executable from fpc4gamecube =D
Nothing amazing, as you can see, but at least now I know that it can work. At this time there is a compiler and a stripped down RTL. In order to get a working .dol (the gc executable) file, I need to link libogc, an open source library for gamecube/wii that 's shipped with devkitPPC. This library embeds a crt0, so at this time I have removed the prt0 from the RTL, in order to avoid conflicts in linking stage.
Help request:I need a real gamecube now because the emulator lacks basic debugger functionalities. The problem is that I need an old version that should have a serial port. In newer versions this serial port has been removed, so it is unusable for debugging purposes. If anyone have a spare gamecube with serial port to sell for some bucks, please contact me at this email: francky74 at gmail dot com
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