new os3.x software ?

[SamuraiCrow]

Count me in Fishy!  I'll be trying to bridge the gap between the hardware platforms eventually, but for now there's no substitute for a good classic Amiga except the Minimig and it's sequels.  I'd welcome the Natami too but it's still in development.

[SamuraiCrow]

2) There isn't a good optimizing C compiler for 68k. Vbcc is comming along but it's a huge project to make a crossplatform multi-CPU C compiler. GCC has generated some horrible code and some of the newer versions have gotten worse. Many C developers don't even know when their code runs at 1/2 speed. This is more common than you think.

Sidewinder and I have been trying to drum up support for LLVM on the 68k Amiga.  If the 68k backend is completed, the Clang compiler would be available for the Amiga.  The catch is that it is mostly written in C++ and the backend is written mostly in a utility called TableGen.

The closest backend to the 68k would be the Intel x86 series.  It would need to be stripped down to the bare minimum also since 68k doesn't support vector registers.

I expect when we start the 68k backend we'll probably use VASM as our assembler unless we need JIT support.  We will need to render code directly to RAM if we do that.

Keep in touch, Matthey!  We'll need to have all the help we can get.

[SamuraiCrow]

Religion: Ignoring science since the dawn of time.

How is this related to OS 3.x software?  You and Dandy are getting off topic.

Also, I don't think that science has existed as long as religion so religion is grandfathered in.  :p

[SamuraiCrow]

@DavidF215

Actually, Payback is pretty CPU bound since it is a 3D game.  Having a better compiler would make a HUGE difference.  As for GCC vs. SAS/C, they both optimize code but neither produces near-perfect code so comparing those two might not be the best idea.  The main advantage of SAS/C is its top-notch debugger.

If somebody would offer a bounty for porting LLVM and its associated versions of GCC and the Clang C compiler to OS 3.x, I'd gladly take it.  It doesn't have a decent source-level debugger yet but that can be left for a later bounty.

[SamuraiCrow]

But my code is already in C++.

Okay, so I've read through the Amiga Developer Docs (http://amigadev.elowar.com/), but I couldn't find functions to load an image (i.e. a PNG or a BMP) from a file. I've also read through the old ACM and Cmanuals, but nothing there either.  ??

You should be looking at the documentation for Datatypes.library.  It loads files of many types.  Picture.datatype is the mainly used datatype.  You don't have to care if the filetype is IFF, GIF, PNG, or BMP as long as the user has the appropriate datatypes to load them.

[SamuraiCrow]

The Dev CD is good for up to AmigaOS 3.5.  If you need 3.9 documentation you can look at http://utilitybase.com/ref/?action=List&funcgroup=AmigaOS instead.