Oolite Bulletins

I want to kick this off early as I can see large hills if not mountains in the distance which may be insurmountable (let hope not). I realise not much is known, but if it's running RiscOS there are some pretty long in the tooth coding tools out there for c etc.

NigelJK wrote:

I realise not much is known, but if it's running RiscOS there are some pretty long in the tooth coding tools out there for c etc.

I think its shipping with Fedora....

It does shipping with Fedora if you by the SD card fitted version - Giles (Aegidian) is already looking at converting the code to run on it using Ahruman's work on a WebGL graphics engine (the gpu on the Raspberry uses OpenGL ES)

Since the card ships without a case - I'm hoping for a future where we can buy a boxed Oolite branded version of the Raspberry (Raspboorry?) where you plug in a USB Mouse/KB a monitor and boot your Credit Card sized PC into Oolite...

I did read that work is afoot to port RiscOS to Rtt, but won't be shown to the public until it's almost there.

Well 1.76.1 is in Debian Wheezy (currently frozen). I am running on QEMU ATM while I wait for my PI to arrive. Rest assured, it will be one of the first things I try

m4r35n357 wrote:

Well 1.76.1 is in Debian Wheezy (currently frozen). I am running on QEMU ATM while I wait for my PI to arrive. Rest assured, it will be one of the first things I try

Tried it, and Oolite downloads and installs to the Pi just fine. However when you try to run it, nothing happens. Looking at the latest log reveals that Oolite has failed to start owing to OpenGL errors (as expected).

Gimi wrote:

Tried it, and Oolite downloads and installs to the Pi just fine. However when you try to run it, nothing happens. Looking at the latest log reveals that Oolite has failed to start owing to OpenGL errors (as expected).

Heh, on my emulator it fails before it gets that far - I haven't set up sound yet.

Latest log after trying to run Oolite on the Raspberry Pi. Dosn't say much though.

NigelJK wrote:

I did read that work is afoot to port RiscOS to Rtt, but won't be shown to the public until it's almost there.

It's just been released.

Yeah this is exciting news. I have given it a go and it is really fast and smooth, boots up very quickly from cold too.
So are you thinking about doing a native port of Archimedes Elite to Risc OS or getting it running via an emulator?

As far as I know the old Archimedes had a 26 bit processor and obviously the RPi is 32 bit Arm v6.
I have heard a rumour that Adrian Lees may be doing a RPi version of Aemulor which would do the job.

Davespice wrote:

Yeah this is exciting news. I have given it a go and it is really fast and smooth, boots up very quickly from cold too.
So are you thinking about doing a native port of Archimedes Elite to Risc OS or getting it running via an emulator?

I've also been playing around with riscos on the pi and agree that it is fantastic! It's been years since my trusty old acorn electron and a (borrowed) arc 440 and the BASIC programming is still in a dusty corner of my brain waiting to be poked with a stick I completed the gertboard last weekend so it's on to risc-ing with it in the next few days... exciting.

With regards to a pi port - i really think it would be great to get oolite running on the raspbian distro rather than fire up the old arc elite. Mainly as I imagine that it would be a bit easier being based upon an existing linux distro but also because (and no disrespect to my acorn brothers & sisters here ) I just think that oolite is better than the origonal elite, arc version or not.

The other great reason for getting it going on a pi would be to create a case shaped like a cobra mk3 to put the pi in to - thereby creating a model of a ship that plays the game.

xzanfr wrote:

The other great reason for getting it going on a pi would be to create a case shaped like a cobra mk3 to put the pi in to - thereby creating a model of a ship that plays the game.

That would be fairly easy to do, actually; we already have the 3D models, so it's just a case of modifying them to make room for the RPi and feeding them into a 3D printer. Most "Hackerspaces" probably have one of those knocking around by now, or you can buy one in kit form for about four hundred quid.

xzanfr wrote:

With regards to a pi port - i really think it would be great to get oolite running on the raspbian distro rather than fire up the old arc elite.

I agree with xzanfr. Oolite would be ideal for Raspbian, as it is currently their recommended distribution. Running ARC Elite again would be fun for a nostalgia trip, but for the new kids coming to the platform they’re going to want a game that they can just play. This is exactly the kind of intelligent, cerebral game the foundation would probably like to see kids playing too. Instead of the mindless violence of first person shooters you see on consoles.
I’ve spoken to Giles (aegidian) a couple of times regarding porting the code and last time I checked he had not yet received his Pi. I don’t know if that has changed. But from what I can see there are number of issues that will need to be overcome in order to have a playable build.

• The source requires Debian Wheezy (probably gcc 4.6), which is ticked off now that Raspbian is in use (this has gcc 4.6.3).
• The graphics code uses Open GL which is not supported by the Pi gpu. This requires Open GL ES, which would mean models would need conversion (only triangles are allowed), plus a number of other function calls are left out. There is a fair amount which is the same though. I have done some work with model conversion for another project I am doing (happy to share code).
• The about page on the Oolite site says that the game requires a 1 GHz processor and 1 GiB of memory. It remains to be seen how well the Arm performs here, but the memory might be a problem. Obviously most RPis out there only have 256 MB of ram (512MB version out now) which is shared between the system and the gpu – so some work may have to be done to get Oolite to fit inside a smaller memory footprint. That could be the point of pain.

Thoughts?

The raspberry pi foundation website has gone a bit elite crazy today!
It gives a link to this site that explains how to port arc elite on to riscos. It's also got a massive ad / article for the DB kickstarter project on the front page.

Davespice wrote:

Thoughts?

Unfortunately coding is well out my intelegence range, mate!, and even to my untrained eye they look like some hefty issues to overcome.... although it may be an idea to put a comment on the foundation site about a potential oolite-pi port while elite news is still hot - it may attract someone who is experienced with the raspbian distro that could provide the key to unlock the problems.