RISC OS port of XAMOS?

I’m wondering if RISC OS would be well-served by a port of XAMOS?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xamos/

XAMOS is an early alpha reimplementation of AMOS BASIC from the Amiga, utilising SDL libraries and implemented in C++. It includes support for Amiga-style screens, bobs, sprites and rainbows using SDL, a mostly-complete interpreter for the AMOS Animation Language (an included script in AMOS), and an extended language with the beginnings of support for some simple object-orientation and concurrent routines.

XAMOS currently runs on the following platforms:
Win32 (MinGW)
Linux (multiple architectures)
AROS (x86, others possible)
MorphOS (PPC)
AmigaOS 4.1 (PPC)

The sources are above, with makefiles provided for the above platforms. Does anyone wish to attempt building this for RISC OS? It would be a show of full circle, with Acorn and Amiga machines both being revolutionary in their own way. And now we get the possibility of not only RISC OS running BBC BASIC, but AMOS BASIC as well, with extended Amiga-style screen and sprite support.

I have a lot of work on at the moment, so any takers at getting XAMOS working on RISC OS?

It should be relatively easy for someone familiar with building SDL games on RISC OS, by looking at the Makefiles I’ve provided for e.g. Amiga-like platforms or Linux. Currently, SDL and SDL extension libraries are required, as well as some dependency on OpenGL which would be trivial to remove (XAMOS supports fully soft-rendered SDL rendering). XAMOS can also optionally use Boost headers/includes (no libraries needed) when available on the target platform.

I’m particularly looking to target Raspberry Pi’s RISC OS Pi for its price and educational niche, although support for other RISC OS platforms would be a bonus.

I got this up and running. All the example scripts run ok. Once I’ve tested it a bit more I’ll make it available for download.

Excellent news! And thanks for testing. Are you using GCC to build?

I’d be interested in adding any modifications (including makefiles, any code changes needed and so forth) for RISC OS support to the official XAMOS source, so RISC OS can be another supported platform. Of course credit will be added for your support on a RISC OS port.

I’d like to build this myself for RISC OS Pi (I have a registered NutPi card), if you could provide instructions on how to build this on RISC OS from the current XAMOS sources.

Are you using GCC to build?

I’m using GCCSDK to build it. Its GCC running on Linux as a cross builder. It should be possible to build it using RISC OS Pi but all the required libraries aren’t available to download yet. They’ll hopefully appear in !Packman in the near future.

I’ve uploaded a test version of Xamos here.

I’ll add the source changes once its been tested a bit more.

One problem – Textease Studio Plus uses a97 and a98 filetypes for Branch templates and Branch files.

If I may: I’ve added your test version to http://sourceforge.net/projects/xamos/files/

Here’s a screenshot I added to the SourceForge page: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51441369/XAMOS-RISCOSPi.png

Cheers for your work on this!

XAMOS has now been updated to version 0.29, please try building the updated version from XAMOS.zip on RISC OS:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xamos/files/

This will be the codebase for future development of XAMOS, so I’d appreciate it if the RISC OS build is kept up to date in line with with alpha 0.29.

Thanks for your work.

Stephen / Mequa

P.S. I’d be delighted for !XAMOS to be added to !Store as a free download. (My preference is for uppercase XAMOS if possible in the app name.)