David's Computer Blog

So back in 2014 I started coding in BlitzResearch's Monkey-X programming language. It was, to me, the next iteration of BlitzMax that allowed more web development and commands into the Blitzbasic programming language. Monkey-X did not have the GUI elements that BlitzMax had, but it did have more web-friendly commands.  Around 2014 I ported an older version of my game " Astrocrunch " from AmigaOS into the Monkey-X language. Technically it was more than a mere port and more of a complete rewrite as Monkey-X was Object Oriented while Blitzbasic on AmigaOS was Procedural. It took me a few months to get it working, but in time, the game, renamed to " GermBlaster, " was completed. Monkey-X allowed for a game to be published as a Windows Desktop app or as an HTML5 web-app that could be run on a website. You can still play the older version (1.0) of GermBlaster online here .  GermBlaster is a casual game and not meant or designed to be anything spectacular.  You can dow...

BlitzMax is a strongly-typed, garbage-collected, open-source programming language with built-in support for advanced 2D graphics, sound, unicode and is ideally suited to making all kinds of apps and games. BlitzMax was discontinued several years ago by Blitz Research , but it was open sourced and is now freely available . BlitzMax primarily targets the main three desktop platforms - Windows, Linux and macOS - but also supports building native binaries for Android, iOS, Raspberry Pi and NX (Switch homebrew). Back in the day, the Commodore Amiga was the initial platform for the BlitzBasic programming language. BlitzMax is a newer version and has continued its development since those early days of BlitzBasic on the Commodore Amiga.  Creating a Command Line or Terminal app is as simple as:   Print "Hello, World" And creating a Graphics app is almost as simple with the following code: SuperStrict Graphics 640,480 Repeat     DrawText "Hello, Commodore OS Vision Worl...

I did a compile test of simple SDL code, which is listed at the end of this blog entry, to see what would happen. I had already discovered that gcc was installed by default.  For this SDL code compiling test, I was compiling with libsdl version 1.2, which is older, I know. The initial compile failed as it couldn't find the SDL.h header file. So SDL is not installed by default in Commodore OS Vision 2. It's not a big deal, but it is good to know.  I queried the apt-get cache and discovered sdl1.2-dev, sdlnet1.2-dev, and sdlimage1.2 were available. However, I could not find sdl_ttf1.2-dev, so that's still an outstanding issue. Since sdl_ttf 1.2 is not available for some reason, I had to comment out the include file for it and remove the "-lsdlttf" option from the compile command.  After this, the program did compile and run successfully.  Nothing fancy about this program as all it is meant to do is test for include and runtime files, start a loop, then end when the ...

I recently tested two types of programs on Icaros 2.2.5/Aros. The first was a basic GLUT program while the other was a basic MUI program. GLUT AmigaOS 3.x running simple GLUT program. I tried GLUT as I was looking for a cross platform GUI library that provides basic windowing functions in OpenGL. Although GLUT provides basic window functions, it lacks in gadgets. So I did a further search and found the Agar Library  and the GLUI Library , both of which I will try in the future. So in testing GLUT on Icaros 2.2.5 and on AmigaOS 3.x, I downloaded a small sample program from this website . The sample program is here . I did modify the program and changed the screen resolution to 800 x 600 rather than the default of 1280 x 800. The sample GLUT program ran and operated successfully on AmigaOS 3.x, which was running on WinUAE 3.4.0. When running on Icaros the program ran but it did not draw the line. So unsure as to the cause of this on Icaros as other OpenGL programs ha...

 Icaros Desktop New Install I had some extra time recently, so I decided to try out the Icaros Desktop  2.2.5, which was released in December 2018. Icaros Desktop is an AmigaOS clone that runs on x86 hardware. Icaros is based upon Aros. Aros in an operating system that can be installed on an x86 computer and it requires no host operating system to run. Most AmigaOS emulators require a host operating system such as Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. Aros, however, eliminates the need for a host OS.  OWB web browser running on Icaros Desktop It took maybe 10-15 minutes to install Icaros into a Virtual Machine (Oracle VM Virtual Box, to be precise). During the install I selected to install the Extras as well as the Developer tools. I tested the default web browser, OWB, soon after installation. It handled many website adequately. However, I was unable to compose this article using Icaros because I was unable to login to my blogging website, blogger.com, with OWB. And, ...

Linked Lists can be quite annoying and troublesome. I'm working on an animation routine using Linked Lists to hold each frame image. I'm working with the SDL library, and C++ isn't making it much easier.