Activated the localization for MUIMapparium currently only for english and german (of course ;-)) implemented also the local library unit for AmigaOS4 so localization is available on all platforms.
I also activated the AREXX interface currently only two commands are implemented: goto lat lon [zoom] to jump to a position and addwaypoint lat lon „Name“ to create a waypoint. The Portname is the same as for Mapparium an example script can be found in rexx folder. The AREXX port does not work for AROS, Zune has no AREXX support currently.
I tried to compile it on AROS64 sadly the program did not work, it just freeze. Little bit strange sometimes it start but crash directly. I tried some other programs on AROS64 and they work rather nicely so why MUIMapparium not. The difference was easy it uses threads, finally I found the solution, the Critical Sections in FreePascal are mapped to SignalSemaphores of Amiga. In contrast to other OS the SignalSemaphores are not just simple pointers but a complicated structure. The given size there was ok for 32 bit Systems but for 64 bit the structure is much bigger. I included it for that release maybe someone want to try it 😉
Working on a very old bug. I’m not sure if someone noticed it, at least nobody reported it. The coordinate to pixel conversation was not very precise because it used a average resolution for every tile. This works well for higher zoom levels where the resolution does not change much inside a tile. But for lower zoom levels, especially the whole world picture this is certainly not right any easily visible when using way points. See for example Mapparium 0.6 on the right side of the image, all way points are (and tracks) are shifted to north. The solution was not very difficult but needed some thinking, basically a rounding error and precision problem.
MUIMapparium (Left) and Mapparium (right) Waypoint position comparison and german locale
I also start to play with localization. I never did that before, especially not in FreePascal but it’s not very complicated, just diligent work to replace all strings. So next version will also be available in german (and maybe later some more languages, at least I got an offer for french localization). There is one small problem with that, there is no locale library unit in FreePascal for AmigaOS4 so either I make some defines to turn it off for OS4 or implement the library unit.
Had some time to work a little bit on MUIMapparium, mainly implemented way points and tracks including loading and saving, same formats as Mapparium. Due to multiple requests I created a OS4 version again, but I have no way to test it. Still it’s only a very early version of MUIMapparium.
MUIMapparium 0.2:
Some days vacation, used the evenings in hotel to re implement Mapparium in native MUI and with fpimage for loading the PNG files and Drawing. The Drawing is faster than LCL (the LCL wrapper is huge, already slow) but still rather slow. At last I wrote a own Drawing routine which made it fast enough to start it on a native Amiga with Vampire A600. And it’s nicely usable even without FPU but of course on a RTG Screen.
I bought a neat eat toy for me. An A600 already equipped with an Vampire processor card. A Vampire is an FPGA based CPU card for Amiga 500 and Amiga 600. A while ago I thought already about to buy a Vampire card. The delivery times for it are very uncertain and seems in the order of 6 Month. I even would need to buy an A600 first, I was really to lazy to do such step with uncertain future. But I found an ready to use one one ebay. Maybe a little bit more expensive but thats fine by me, still much cheaper than a 68060 or PPC card. 😉 The capacitors are exchanged but the audio sounds strange, but not a big problem for me. Mainly I’m not interested in the speed but but in the GFX Card which comes with the FPGA on Vampire. Its the only way to get a 24bit GFX card into a keyboard Amiga (except the very seldom BVision for A1200). Of course my for me very interesting if freepascal and it’s programs work with it and good news on this side, it’s working nicely. The only problem (like on my A1200) is the slow harddisk which makes it much slower then UAE but as I read the next firmware should improve that a lot. Of course a screenshot (done with a screenshot program I wrote in FP-IDE directly on my A1200 some weeks before)
Didn’t have much time today, so I only show a cute little program to learn typing, out of the box compiled for AROS TappyTux, also with Mathematics. still not perfect, needs a little bit work, (sometimes the text is outside), it throws 2 hammers and so on.. but even so very neat.
Playing a little bit with loading routines for vector formats and found the amazing fpvector package. It contains also a nice test program to test loading of files. It works already very nice loading of .svg and .dxf Files. For example .odg files does not work some string to float problem. Also the drawing works rather nicely but also shows some problems with the filled polygons. Worth to try to compare with the Linux version.
Still playing with raytracing (so 3D calculations without GL or so) and other 3D Stuff. Magorium converted a nice little raytracing program from C to Pascal. It creates a random scene and calculate it with high precision. It makes a nice pictures. It is using SDL for display and threading, it seems the SDL Threads do not work, so I changed that to use Pascal Threads and now it is working nicely. Again a nice program for SMP 😛 already ready to use multiple threads (at Linux it runs fine with 8 Threads)
After long time I did again a little bit raytracing stuff, magorium found some source, I reviewed some of my old sources. I would be a perfect thing for the coming AROS SMP, ok I guess it will not appear so soon but it’s really a nice thing.
Notice the multicolor shadows and the multiple refelections.
I never worked with SDL before so I searched for a little tutorial for it and came across a YT video showing SDL game making with freepascal YouTube Link.
I tested the source and applied the special changes for AROS (basically to initialize the SDL and other link libs) and it works really a nice tiny game. I will look more to source to understand the SDL behind it. But first of course a little video
