After doing the WebAssembly port, I thought: This D Runtime must
be very flexible, so, I thought to myself that maybe this could
be a time to try again a very old hobby I had: Doing homebrew
games for PS Vita.
So, hands to work, I started dealing with PS Vita again, but now,
instead of using LWDR, I used the custom runtime I helped on in
Adam's repository. After bunch of testing D features inside this
platform, (many memory related bugs specially as how in that
platform it works a little different), I kept trying to make it
work and thankfully to a plenty of helpful people from PS Vita
homebrew (including a forum user's colleague), I was able to
bring my game engine to breath into PS Vita:
Currently, using OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenAL for its front features
and on its backs, Gamut, Arsd:ttf and Audioformats. Incredible D
libraries. This game engine is being made with almost 100% D code
and I wish to keep doing like that, it is a lot easier to
maintain.
Special acknowledgements to Guillaume which was really helpful
into helping me avoid some of my problems into his libraries
(specifically try/catch).
After the PS Vita port, I can say again: The D runtime is not
hard to port, it is an exhaustive process and currently, I'm
pretty sure I must be version locked (which I'm going to look
that after finishing the next incoming port). The D runtime could
get hooks for memory allocation, a version of `throw` which
actually only causes `assert(false)` (which is what I'm using
right now). Even better, Adam wrote a great post about the main
problem we find when needing to get a custom runtime: Sometimes
partial support is all we need to get things done:
http://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2023_02_20.html
So, here's a pic of my game running on PS Vita and promise some
day I'll work into doing a video instead (I need to make it a
little more polished over all the platforms I support)
#dlang #hipremeengine
