Obligatory Can ZDoom be Ported Thread

[Average]

Is it possible to port Zdoom to the GPH Caanoo? It's got a Pollux 3D gpu, 533MHz (easily overclockable to 750 and above) and 128 MB of RAM.

I presume it would be no mean feat with the limited specs but it would be a great way to get ports of Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Hacx, Harmony and Chex Quest onto this great little open handheld...

[wildweasel]

The CPU is an ARM9 variant, according to Wikipedia. I'm not sure if ZDoom can be compiled for one of those yet. I know people have asked for Android, PSP, and 3DS ports before and that may have been a problem then, too (outside of the fact that the 3DS currently can't be homebrewed yet, either).

[Gez]

There was someone who ported ZDoom to the GP2X. However, since that person did his thing in his own corner and never got in touch with Randy, it's an old and obsolete version that's concerned, support for the GP2X platform was never added to the trunk. (And anyway, the Caanoo isn't compatible with older GP apps. That was in 2008 after all, so 2xZDoom wasn't even for the Wiz.)

[randi]

All the assembly code is also available as C code, so it should work with any processor architecture, so long as the necessary system glue is in place. Since ARM is pretty RISC-y, it probably wouldn't benefit much from assembly code anyway. The main reason it's used on x86 is because x86 has so few registers.

[boris]

The Windows version of the GPH SDK is a mess, I didn't get it to compile anything for the Caanoo. That the directory structures described in the docs are not the same as in the actual zip doesn't really help either. The Linux version of the SDK is better and works pretty much out of the box, but apparently only on 32 bit. Now I only have to learn CMake and figure out how to tell it to use the cross-compiler, at least to give it a first try I guess the biggest obstacle will be the sound, since there's no FMOD for ARM.

[Average]

PrBoom runs on the Caanoo. What sound system does that use and would it be possible to add that do you think?

[Gez]

PrBoom uses SDL and the horrible SDL_Mixer. PrBoom+, as of very recently, does not use SDL_Mixer anymore.

Anyway, ZDoom's sound system is deeply intertwined with FMOD Ex. Separating them so that an alternative sound system can be used is the object of the OpenAL branch; which has still a long way to go.

[boris]

What's the status of the OpenAL branch? I tried to compile it, but it got errors in src/keysections.cpp [edit] when commenting out those lines it compiles fine, but as soon as it tries to run a map it crashes (menus work)

---

/home/boris/zdoom-openal/openal/src/keysections.cpp: In function ‘void M_SaveCustomKeys(FConfigFile*, char*, char*, size_t)’:
/home/boris/zdoom-openal/openal/src/keysections.cpp:83:73: error: cannot pass objects of non-trivially-copyable type ‘class FString’ through ‘...’
/home/boris/zdoom-openal/openal/src/keysections.cpp:83:73: warning: format ‘%s’ expects type ‘char*’, but argument 4 has type ‘FString’
/home/boris/zdoom-openal/openal/src/keysections.cpp:85:79: error: cannot pass objects of non-trivially-copyable type ‘class FString’ through ‘...’
/home/boris/zdoom-openal/openal/src/keysections.cpp:85:79: warning: format ‘%s’ expects type ‘char*’, but argument 4 has type ‘FString’

Anyway, getting CMake to use a cross-compiler wasn't that hard actually. I tried it with the OpenAL branch, and it at least creates the makefiles. The first problem I ran into was with DUMB: it wants to compile with SSE (-msse), but that's obviously not supported by the ARM compiler. Commenting it out seems to solve it, though.
The second (and current) problem is that gdtoa stuff. Apparently while building it creates some executables and tries to run them... what of course doesn't work, because they were compiled for ARM.

[Gez]

You'll need to run them on the ARM and then copy paste their output. The make voodoo shouldn't try to run them again if the files they're supposed to create are already there.

[Graf Zahl]

Separating them so that an alternative sound system can be used is the object of the OpenAL branch; which has still a long way to go.

Sadly I still haven't gotten anywhere making the OpenAL branch work on Windows which is pretty much a show stopper.

Now that the software renderer's tentacles have been removed from the rest of the engine the sound system is the only remaining issue that prevents me from making GZDoom GPL.
Anyone willing to help? I'd need a Windows developer who is willing to work with OpenAL.

[Marisa the Magician]

Can it be ported to the Pandora?

[DaMan]

To put it simply, no FMOD support=not easily.
An Android port of FMOD is out though. If the whatever broke Zdoom in the later versions is fixed porting to that should be easy.

[boris]

Can it be ported to the Pandora?

The Pandora uses an ARM CPU, just like the Caanoo, so the same problems apply. I guess developing for it will be a bit more comfortable, since you'll easily be able to compile it right on the Pandora without using a cross-compiler.

[HeX]

Can it be ported to the Pandora?

Deathz0r got Odamex running on pandora. Since Odamex is quickly reintegrating early ZDoom features, you may want to keep an eye on it.

http://odamex.net/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=714

[EksFaktr]

I wouldn't mind seeing a port done to the Wii, but I'm fairly sure that's just a pipe dream.