Experiments with OpenGL on AmigaOS

It has been a while since I did some OpenGL testing with AmigaOS. A while meaning two to three years. I had tested OpenGL in WinUAE running AmigaOS 3.X and it worked fairly well in emulation. Since it had been a while that I last experimented with OpenGL, I decided to give it another go.

Four months ago I downloaded an OpenGL lesson (the Linux version of lessons 5 and 6) from the NeHe OpenGL Tutorials website. I compiled them on Linux Mint and on Haiku. While it compiled on both Linux and Haiku, it wouldn't display the GL_QUAD object on the version of Haiku that I was running. I worked with the Haiku problem and found that the issue was related to a difference in Haiku versions.

Eventually it was AmigaOS' turn. I copied the code for lesson5 to AmiKit 8.5 running AmigaOS 3.X. I downloaded the GCC based Amiga Development Environment (ADE-repack.lha) from Aminet and got it working and compiling.

Once GCC was configured and successfully tested, I compiled NeHe's lesson5 code (Linux version) in AmiKit/AmigaOS 3.X with no modifications other than changing the window title. It compiled and linked fine. When I ran it; however, the results were interesting. It opened a window but the content of the window was blank. The program didn't crash, and I was able to press ESC to end the program as programmed. I'll have to work with it some more to figure out what's causing the OpenGL triangle and quad objects not to render.

I then moved to test the code on AmigaOS 4.1 PPC FE. In the 4.1 version I had to remove the "GLUT_ALPHA" option from the glutInitDisplayMode function as GCC in OS 4.1 didn't recognize it. After removing that option, the code compiled and linked. When I attempted to run the compiled code, it wouldn't run. It wouldn't run because apparently OpenGL isn't setup to run by default as indicated by the Fatal Error received: "Could not create an OpenGL window/context."

My configuration of AmigaOS 4.1 PPC FE is mostly unchanged from the default install. I've added the SDK, Codebench, and some other Apps but no other changes to the system. In time I read that Warp3D is required and it did not come with my version of AmigaOS 4.1 PPC FE. So bummer with coding OpenGL on AmigaOS 4 for me. For now.

I prefer to write code that works on bare minimum configurations. So until OpenGL is available on a base system in AmigaOS 4, I may stick with 2D programming on AmigaOS4 and on AmigaOS 3 so that the software works on both OS versions.

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