exult... = pocketpc port

[Nosferatu]

Hi...

ok... I'm thinking about trying to port EXULT !! over to the pocketpc OS... can anyone give me some tips on this?

Would the Zaurus (sp?) C port help at all here?

I have a c compiler for the pocketpc but I'm not sure if it can be a straight port ?

thanks,
Ian.

[Darke]

The Pocket PC's compiler was non-C++ compilent in areas that
exult used, last time this was considered. As a result it would have
taken quite a significant rewrite of parts of it to port it. I don't
know it's current state, though.

You'd also need support of SDL and SDL-mixer to the Pocket PC at least.

There was no Zaurus 'C' port, since it was all C++, the compiler
was just gcc compiled to support it's target architecture. I got the
impression there was little to 'port', since gcc on it was as
standards compliant as gcc is on other platforms, and it was a
fairly routine linux 'distro' installation.

I suspect if it was 'just' a straight port, then Colourless would
have done it quite a while ago, back when he was looking into it. *grin*

Good luck!

Darke

[artaxerxes]

The zaurus port was just a matter of making a few #defines here and there (and debugging that too, of course!).

Artaxerxes

[Colourless]

Lack of support for C++ Exceptions in Embedded Visual C++ 3 is the problem. Exult has extensive use of C++ exceptions so compiling for PocketPC is not easy.

Embedded Visual C++ .Net will compile Exult fine. However, Microsoft's website is unclear about compiling for PocketPC with EMVC.net. As far as I can tell, if the PocketPC is running WinCE .Net then EMVC.net is the one to use. What I don't know if EMVC.net will work with PocketPCs running WinCE 3.0.

[Nosferatu]

I did read that the pocket pc didnt support a lot of the graphic handling.... but I thought that with Ultima being quite an old game then it might have been reasonably simple.

I have seen EMVC runtimes for some pocketpc versions although I'm not sure if they contain all the things needed for a EMVC compile. What I do know is that I use WM2003, (PocketPC2003) which seemingly uses technologies such as the .net framework and the other 'features' that .Net was to support. So maybe with the WinCE 4.x OS (.net) a compile might be easier?

thanks
~Ian.

[Nosferatu]

I found these links for 4.0 .net


eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

PocketPC 2003 SDK
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... layLang=en

they might be of some use to anyone interested....

[Nosferatu]

If any moderator would like to convert these into real links I'd be rather appreciative...

god why dont people use real forums *grumbles*

[artaxerxes]

for the same reason people don't read [href=http://exult.info/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9004#p9004]the guidelines[/href].

Artaxerxes

[wjp]

Artaxerxes, you might want to read them yourself

[Nosferatu]

LOL

Seriously though why Phorum?

Who's going to own up to it? hehe

vbulletin (personal fav)
phpbb (free)

Everything about Phorum is just.......

but then thats a personal opinion Its just all very stoneage to me... unless it somehow intergrates with the standard sourceforge stuff?

*shrugs*

IF its just simple BBC code then that wouldnt be so bad... but I really cant be bothered reading http://exult.info/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9004#p9004 to find out lol

no offence intended

[Nosferatu]

omg... and it was too lol

bleh

[wjp]

I think this 'stoneage' phorum is a lot better than most of the online forums I see around. It's clean, does what you need, and doesn't have an enormous amount of bloat. (Like an icon/image for every poster *shudder* that causes pages to look like huge flashy billboards)

[dino]

I hate phpBB. It's used on most Ultima sites, making the entire net look the same.

I like phorum - right, it's clean, and it doesn't even have smilies - even smilies can be a nuisance on most forums, because the smilies are actually higher than the text itself, causing a larger line-height...

This is the way a forum should be. Nice and simple.

(Oh, by the way, I'm against forum avatars as well [those pictures for every poster])

[Nosferatu]

hmmmm fair enough, although most of the bloat can be disabled leaving you with a clean and easy to mange forum.

I miss:

1. why do I have to keep clicking the box for messages to be sent to my mail?
2. Why cant I create a rule from the to put all messages from Exult into the exult folder (the address of the poster not of the forum)
3. no autolinking (its about 6 lines of code !)
4. no ability to quote?
5. no categories..
6. no smilies (I'm a smilies person) what I dont like is the huge flash signatures and pathetic avatars you see
7. the bbc code needs to be found before it can be used
8. no private messaging (not a biggie)
9. without replying again how do I stop 'subscriptions'

just the small things like that

I admit I'm quite big on the features of the bloated bboards and I'm not a *huge* fan of phpbb2 I dont like the layout of it.

I'm beta testing vBulletin 3.0.0 over here:
http://forum.4development.net

Setup an account if you wish... then disable/enable the options you want... post a little and tell me what you think...

I doubt you will *shrugs* but I'm curious

[Kagehi Kossori]

I seem to remember something in, I believe, Dr. Dobbs Magazine a while back about implimenting a method of faking exception handling. I say faking, because it relies on added code, not the OS, where it should take place.

[Nosferatu]

ahhh I'm a little on the fence about this to be honest... I doubt my ickle 206mhz arm phone/pda could handle this anyways..

I'm getting a new 400mhx xscale when the XDAII comes out but that wont be for a bit yet.

Mibbie I'll give it ago... I dont have broadband so downloading the stuff above might take me a little while LOL damn bb isnt in my area

Atleast I could emulate it with the sdk in windows...

cheers,
Ian.

[artaxerxes]

wjp,

I can't believe I typed that! Yup, I'll reread the whole thing again!

Artaxerxes

[Nosferatu]

looks like someone is confusing their html scripting with UBBC hehe

>:P

[dino]

I miss:

1. why do I have to keep clicking the box for messages to be sent to my mail?
2. Why cant I create a rule from the to put all messages from Exult into the exult folder (the address of the poster not of the forum)
3. no autolinking (its about 6 lines of code !)
4. no ability to quote?
5. no categories..
6. no smilies (I'm a smilies person) what I dont like is the huge flash signatures and pathetic avatars you see
7. the bbc code needs to be found before it can be used
8. no private messaging (not a biggie)
9. without replying again how do I stop 'subscriptions'

To Nossie: If you bothered to find out how, you'd find out that at least half of those features are possible.

[Nosferatu]

[QUOTE=Dino2]To Nossie: If you bothered to find out how, you'd find out that at least half of those features are possible.[/quote]

After looking at the link provided I stand corrected on the lack of quotations but it is just UBBC code anyways.

The autolinking.... using doesnt quite cut it really whats automatic about adding characters for the preprocessor to understand?

anyways you all have your own opinions and bias so we should maybe agree to disagree here... I realise I'm a noob on this forum and dont wish to create any kind of unrest. SpamNet uses the same forum system as Exult does.... so I suppose some people do actually prefer it.

People like myself will just do what they always do on the web... and move on.

thanks anyways,

Ian.

[DirtyHairy]

While looking around for CE software perhaps a year ago, I found this page:
http://www.rainer-keuchel.de/wince/celib.html

Description quoted from the page:

"celib.dll is a library providing standard crt, stdio, unix and win32 ansi functions for wince development."

If anyone wants to look into porting exult to pocket pc, this might help - dunno what license it is, though (I didn't download the source). He ported an impressive amount of UNIXish software to win CE using this library, e.g. Emacs, Vim, tex. Of course, this doesn't solve the problem with missing exceptions...

[Colourless]

As I already stated, the problem is C++ Exceptions. These are a compiler feature.

There are other minor problems, but I have already worked around those here on my machine. These are:
- No STL (already ported by someone else, but I needed to extend it)
- Only have Unicode Win32 API (Unicode support is already in CVS where required)
- Don't have all Win32 Functions (Work arounds already in CVS where required)
- SDL_mixer not ported (Only minor modicifications to SDL_mixer source required)

Now, even if it is ported, you should note that Exult is really bad in terms of memory usage. We haven't quite tracked down why, but Exult can use well in excess of 50 MB of memory. This sort of usage is likely to cause more than just a few problems for PPC users.

After the Final v1.1 of Exult is out we will possibly be making some changes, that would be beneficial to PPC users. These would be lower memory usage, and rewritten screenbufffer handling. Rewritten buffer handling may not seem important, but it is, if I want to get Exult to use GAPI instead of SDL for accelerated access to the framebuffer.

-Colourless Dragon