Implemented basic sorting and search function including replace, very basic but working, also the sorting close to the LibreOffice sorting, multi key sorting (up to 3 but in principle could make more, but is more than 3 really useful?) Together with the Format options this should be enough for a new LEU Version release Leu 0.08.
Download: LEU Download Page
Fixed a little bug in Leu regarding number format. If no number format was selected the output format was one char too long, resulting in very ugly rounding errors. Already long time before I started to implement a solution to set the number format for a cell. But it was very crude and not ready to release, so I deactivated it for Leu 0.07. But this bug got me back to work. 😉 I started to implement a format settings window, a little bit inspired by the LibreOffice one. Finally its working, not perfect but already usable.
Also fixed some small problems with the color blending on selection for RTG systems (for <15bit screens it will just use a fixed color for the selection) and new now the fixed col/row will show where the selected cell is. much easier to find, especially if it is out of scroll area.
Updated Online Amiga FPC Compiler again with the latest CRT unit and also tried a bunch of console based games using CRT units, all work more or less (some need some adjustments in the code) some of them are even single file pascal source files, so can be used in the online compiler.
| Source | Notice |
|---|---|
| DeadCold | rouge-like unfinished game (no win) |
| Gruesome | nice rouge like game |
| tetris-pascal | insert a TextBackground(DarkGray); at start |
| Top-snek-dotpas tetris | insert a TextBackground(Black); CursorOff(); at start |
| BitTetris | No exit from game |
| Snake Game in TP | comment the two port[] lines at start |
| Snake | |
| Pascal Snake | |
| Serpent Snake | |
| Tic-Tac-Toe | |
| Pascal Threes | |
| Pascal Torch | nice tech demo, replace line 257: i := xxx error with Break; or compile with fpc -Mtp |
| Pascal PET | Tamagothi |
| Symbol Game | strange gfx, replace chars #xxx Values with some better chars |
| Gomoku | 5 in a row |
| Word guessing game | adjust pathes ‘\’ to ‘/’ wordlist only contains apple |
| Countdown game | |
| My almost FPS | tech demo figure movement |
| Snail race | insert a TextBackground(DarkGray); ClrScr; at start |
| Tank Game | |
| Memory Game |
On AROS the rouge-like Game DeadCold works already rather nicely so I decided to make a little release, maybe someone want to try and see if it also work on other AROS installations.
Download DeadCold for i386-AROS ABIv0
Working on the CRT colors. The problem is that the setting of Front and Background color in Amiga Console is very limited. You can only set the colors 0-7 of the Workbench palette as colors using the ANSI api. which are usually not very useful. Even on RTG that is very limiting. I found that you can set the color directly via the ConUnit, which is available for the standard console window (but not with ViNCed for example). But on AROS it works nicely and on plain shell in OS3.1 also, so at least there is a way to use it.
On MorphOS the ConUnit is never available, but thanks to some hints in the morph.zone forum I learned that one can use one of the 256 ANSI colors directly in the console. so I searched for closest possible colors of the standard VGA colors, sadly that only works on MorphOS.
Next days I will also try OS4… I hope that results not in an other case.
Someone might ask how the crt is going, and how useful this is already. I want to answer it with a little screenshot:
That is a nice little rouge-like game called DeadCold, written in FreePascal for the console. As you can see it runs and the picture looks right. (it’s not perfectly right, but somehow usable). And because a little video tells much more about how this game runs here is also a little video about it:
There are some drawing problems, especially on the messages and sometimes some of the map disappear but not bad I would say. There are also some messages about removing critter failed… but that seems some error in the game code.
The colors is badly hacked for now, and only works for AROS, I’m not sure if I can upload that this status to the official repository, I will work on it a bit more.
I uploaded the new crt unit for all amiga systems to the official fpc repository. Also the Online FPC compiler got an update therefore one can try very easily the crt unit in the browser.
On the currently running 36. Chaos Communication Congress 2019 (36C3) there was a little lightning talk (5 min talks) about FreePascal where also the Amiga and Atari support got mentioned (all supported platforms).
Link to Talk (actual Talk starts at 12:00)
Most Tutorials about Pascal use the CRT unit in a very early Lesson. They use it only for ReadKey() to wait for a key at end of Program. It would be of course the same to just use a ReadLn and wait for an Enter.
I tried already to implement CRT before using an old implementation, but exactly this ReadKey implementation does not work at all when KingCON or other console replacements is used.
Now I got a hint in MorphOS Forum (always a very good Source for Implementation hints) to set the console in RAW: mode (using SetMode()) and then just read from the console the pressed keys. If console in raw mode, one can read cursor keys and F keys from the console.
I tried that and on MorphOS and AmigaOS3 it works well, Read blocks until a Button is pressed. But AROS of course is different again 😉 it always returns a Value sometimes 185, sometimes 184, not really know what that means. I thought about some kind of timer event but this should look different.
But finally it works, mapped some keys like F-keys and cursor. Also worked on the output gotoxy and colors, the colors are a little bit tricky, because the Amiga console only supports the first 8 pens (as far as I see it) so I cannot just ObtainBestPen, and the first 8 Pens are usually fixed and not the colors I need. I try to change them with ObtainPen but when they are already taken I just try to find one which has a close color, which does not work very well. Solution unknown.
I compile the example of ReadKey as example3.pas and compiled a little RPG-Game I found which is console based, which is a good testcase for colors and GotoXY. Of course looks not the same as in the DOS console but it is usable.
I guess there was some confusion about the installers I presented the last days… these are not official Releases of FreePascal 3.2. In fact FreePascal 3.2 is not released yet and also no fixed date for it yet.
My work on the installers just show my work preparing the next release that we have a real Amiga style installers with all needed Readme and copyright text that they can serve as official packages and even published on the official FreePascal site.
You can download these packages and test the installer, and that was the purpose of showing them, but please do not distribute them as FreePascal 3.2 releases. (I added also a beta marker at the page and in the ReadMe to make it clear) And do not post news messages about FreePascal 3.2 Release until there is an official announcement.
Thanks!