1st contact with sdl2...

[Tux]

10 minutes ago, Pingouin said:

I remember years back you said that porting it would be difficult sicne a lot of code is asm.

However, I just checked Github, and it seems the only asm is the video filters.

Does that mean Raine is quite portable now, and an Android version is possible? I'd much rather have Raine (or FBA) over MAME these days.

Thanks!

Yes, said on the topic for raine 0.92, it's now possible.
But you are wrong, the 32 bits version is still full of asm everywhere, video functions, cpu cores, plus small pieces of asm everywhere, but the 64 bits version had to do without this, so it's not the sdl2 version which made it portable, it's the 64 bits version.
But sdl2 is more widely ported, and it's probably easier to make an android version with it.
If someone wants to try that, he's welcome to, I'll eventually try that one day but I am not in a hurry for that (I don't think an android device is the ideal console for arcade games, lacks real controls, you would need at least some kind of real joystick, the virtual ones would probably lack too much precision for most games).

[Pingouin]

1 hour ago, Tux said:

But you are wrong, the 32 bits version is still full of asm everywhere, video functions, cpu cores, plus small pieces of asm everywhere, but the 64 bits version had to do without this, so it's not the sdl2 version which made it portable, it's the 64 bits version.
[...]
If someone wants to try that, he's welcome to, I'll eventually try that one day but I am not in a hurry for that (I don't think an android device is the ideal console for arcade games, lacks real controls, you would need at least some kind of real joystick, the virtual ones would probably lack too much precision for most games).

I'm sure I missed something, I only checked the stats on github, I didn't actually browse all the code to find out where asm was used.

You're right that on a touch screen Android device, emulation is not very attractive. I was thinking more about Android TV boxes (e.g. Minix).

I was also thinking about handheld gaming devices based on ARM9 (e.g. AllWinner) or MIPS (e.g. Ingenic jz47xx), but as far as I know those are all using 32bits CPU cores, so not much chance of porting the 64 bits version to them.

[Tux]

17 minutes ago, Pingouin said:

I was also thinking about handheld gaming devices based on ARM9 (e.g. AllWinner) or MIPS (e.g. Ingenic jz47xx), but as far as I know those are all using 32bits CPU cores, so not much chance of porting the 64 bits version to them.

Nope, you misunderstood, now that this 64 version is made using pure C everywhere, nothing forbids to use this code in 32 bits, gaining an absolute portability.

I don't do it for the pcs, because I like my asm, it was a lot of hard work after all, even if it creates problems sometimes (use of VirtualProtect in windows to allow self modifying code to work without crashing !), but it's easy to do.... !

[Pingouin]

15 hours ago, Tux said:

Nope, you misunderstood, now that this 64 version is made using pure C everywhere, nothing forbids to use this code in 32 bits, gaining an absolute portability.

I don't do it for the pcs, because I like my asm, it was a lot of hard work after all, even if it creates problems sometimes (use of VirtualProtect in windows to allow self modifying code to work without crashing !), but it's easy to do.... !

Oh, right, yes of course, I get it now. The C code written for 64 bits doesn't preclude compiling it for a 32 bits target. Thanks!

Edited December 3, 2021 by Pingouin