CRT Unit

Posted by ALB42 on 29. Dezember 2019No Comments

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.

Not Release

Posted by ALB42 on 18. Dezember 2019No Comments

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!

Installer MorphOS

Posted by ALB42 on 15. Dezember 2019No Comments

And as promised the Installer for MorphOS also to the latest Version. I used my old MacMini (with the acient MorphOS3.8) for that, but somehow it is rather slow. Maybe I’m spoiled with my PowerBook now, which feels much faster. But the MacMini is much better for such tries, not destroying my working setup on MorphOS.

Again a little Video:

Have Fun!

Installer Amiga 68k

Posted by ALB42 on 15. Dezember 20192 Comments

As mentioned yesterday the 68k Amiga Installer needed a little bit more work, but now it is working nicely the same way as the other two.

In the video the customized Option selection is shown.

Next I will test the MorphOS installer again and try to make an own Installer for AROS. Thats a little bit tricky because of the Package system they use, which is nice but no support for it in the Installer as far as I can see. Path and assigns are not added to user-startup but should be made via a Package-Startup file, in the folder and a text file in the Envarc: pointing to this Package-Startup File. I did this already for the AROS install process but not with the Install tool.

Installer OS4

Posted by ALB42 on 14. Dezember 20194 Comments

The release of FreePascal 3.2 gets closer (at least I hope) and with it the first full Release of FPC with complete Support of all Amiga Systems. I created already an Amiga-Style Installer for Amiga OS3 and MorphOS.

Today I added a Installer for Amiga OS 4 which should work on all Amiga OS 4 systems (except the X5000, yes that problem still exists because we have no way to debug it, without such a system available)

I made a little video about the general installation of FreePascal on Amiga OS 4.1 Final Edition Update 1. It needs a reboot at the end, maybe one could add that to the Installer, but I don’t like that when Installers force reboots.

If you want to try out check the url in the Video: http://build.alb42.de

MUIMapparium 0.8

Posted by ALB42 on 1. Dezember 2019No Comments

One disadvantage of writing a program relying on web resources is, that you have to update that program everytime the webresource is changed/updated. In the next days the search for MUIMapparium will break again, and the Find by IP/ Find me is broken a while before already.

So I updated MUIMapparium to Version 0.8 I also added some small new features, like some more shortcuts and also by popular demand to jump automatically to the first search result. Best update soon before the search function does not work anymore.

Also the 68k freepascal compiler got some updates which hopefully improve the stability and speed of the m68k-amiga Version.

Download the latest Version at: MUIMapparium Page

MultiLine and Selection

Posted by ALB42 on 16. Oktober 2019No Comments

Worked a little bit on Leu, a click on row/column title it selects the whole row/column as used in other spreadsheet applications. On RTG Screens with 15bit or more colors the selection now blends the background color instead just replacing it, that means you can still see different background colors when selected.

Multi-line is something people where asking me for, so I implemented that, if you are in a cell typing you can use Ctrl+Enter to go to next line, instead of finishing the editing. I got a question, if I plan to support different Font sizes and type, and I’m not sure about that until now. It would need a complicated replacement table from the Windows/Linux fonts to typical Amiga fonts and back. Especially on classic Amiga the Font sizes of Windows and Linux are WAY to big. We will see.

Leu with Multi-line text, column selection and blended selection color.

A while before I was working on the cell format (number format, date, time and so on) but this is rather complicated. It needs a bit more time it’s still not reliable but I want to finish it before release the next version. Some of these features (like the selection blending) are already present in the Leu version I gave Paolo Besser for the Icaros64 alpha WIP.

Building Block

Posted by ALB42 on 10. Oktober 2019No Comments

Improved the real time raytracer (no GL, just pure Math-Power 😉 ) a lot today, first introduced movement, standard “wasd”-Movement and mouse look. then I thought it would be cool to select blocks and change/remove them, for that I had to rewrite the raytracer to remember where I hit which block, but then the raytracing part became much slower, so I wrote a second routine exclusively for selecting Blocks (and a face of a block) which worked nicely. Of course much cooler it would be to also set new blocks. Easiest way is to just look at a face of a Block and add there an other Block. And it works well. I made a little movie to show how it looks like now.

You might notice that the image becomes a bit worse when moving. I decided to lower the resolution when moving, so you can fast move but have a nice image when stand ;-).

Again I show that on Icaros64, why, easy, it’s much faster, around double speed I would guess. You might ask why that is the case, easy, you have a lot more registers in x86_64 also for SSE3-Math calculations so much less memory access. And I also guess the optimizer for x86_64 in FreePascal is better than the one for i386. But it comes with a price, the exe is much bigger, 160k for i386, 260k for x86_64, but still rather small when you consider what it can do already 😉

Ah you want to play with it, sure: for i386-aros and Icaros64-alpha