[fpc-pascal] Cross platform mobile development

[Michalis Kamburelis]

2016-09-07 18:41 GMT+02:00 Ryan Joseph <ryan at thealchemistguild.com>:
>
> I did enough research in Android for FPC to know I could do a simple OpenGL game using the JNI but it didn’t look very complete and I never could get the compiler built on my Mac. Is there enough of the Android NDK (I think it’s called) ported to Pascal so that it’s useful?

Android SDK + NDK and OpenGL ES work flawlessly with Pascal:)That's
what we use in Castle Game Engine to have a cross-platform game engine
for desktops (Windows, Linux, MacOSX...), and mobile (Android, iOS).
See http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/engine.php . We're actually
making large Android games with it, http://cat-astrophe-games.com/ :)

We have a special "built tool" that takes care of compiling and
creating Android APK for your project (it calls FPC, and Android SDK /
NDK tools underneath). See
https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-engine/wiki/Build-Tool and
https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-engine/wiki/Android . Things
are not so easy for iOS *yet* (that is, creation of iOS application
from Pascal is not 100% abstracted by the tool yet), but I'm confident
we'll get there in next release:)

The only downside for "normal" applications is that the GUI does not
look native. We draw everything  ourselves (or you can embed the
engine control within a Lazarus form, and then use Lazarus GUI for
it). This is not a problem for games, that traditionally have their
own GUI, themed to look like the game.

Regards,
Michalis