Sorry if we are asking a dumb question but are there any developer guides for moving SAS/C apps to MorphOS? What is recommend for best & quickest development time? Cubic IDE? GCC? A combo of both? What supports accelerated 3D via the GPU?

[ Edited by discreetfx on 2008/1/7 21:22 ]

Sorry to answer our own question but based on further research Cubic IDE might be the best way forward.

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This might help.

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Use tinygl

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...which is basically (a subset of) OpenGL. Look for OpenGL tutorials, most of them work just fine. http://nehe.gamedev.net has some simple ones, but many do things in, let's say "less-than-optimal way"

If you are new to OpenGL, I recommend that you start using vertex arrays as soon as possible, it will be later painful, if you need / want to convert your direct mode / display list code to use vertex arrays instead...

Our fear on developing the MorphOS version is that we would like to take advantage of GPU rendered displays. We are doing that on the OS X version of A4D. This has also been demoed on MOS 2.0 but is not in the current version. We feel GPU acceleration is the future but don't want to do double work on Aladdin 4D by not taking advantage of it now but having to recode for it later.

The place to search and ask for answers is on the developer site. Over here:

http://developer.morphosppc.com/

You don't need to take care about anything or recode anything later.

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Yes. And it looks embarrasing to see something from two years ago quoted as "news". And you can also get, at first sight, articles dated from a full four years ago. The forum section is also a desert.
There are actually a couple of insightful technical posts but, in all, it's a big shame that the once announced "official" developer site is a joke. It makes MorphOS look ridiculous. The announcement of a second developer site, present here too, makes it more depressing.
Why did this very important effort became void? Because it came from Genesi? Are there really any MorphOS developers outside of the core team, willing to comunicate?
A computer system is as good as its developers. MorphOS developers are invisible. In its current status, MorphOS can't attract new users, because it lacks functions (meanwhile, the finished functions that it already has work very, very well).
So the obvious target is to attract developers. And this MDC is all they get?
What a pity.

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What MOS2.0 offers over 1.4x in GPU usage is that, it will use graphics acceleration for "traditionally drawn" 2D graphics aswell in way that all current applications should automatically take advantage of that (although I guess that some new things will be possible, and API will be extended to cover those)

What I think you are after is "traditional" 3D acceleration using OpenGL, which works on current MorphOS. Sure, there are a few bugs that I have been bugging kiero with but I can live with them, but hope to see them fixed anyway. I guess that MOS2.0 will add support for more OpenGL functionality (such as glInterleavedArrays() which is really easy to code from scratch anyway, if you need it) but as I see it, there shouldn't be anything that would make A4D development impossible.

If you need more info about the current status, ask more specific questions.

"What MOS2.0 offers over 1.4x in GPU usage is that, it will use graphics acceleration for "traditionally drawn" 2D graphics aswell in way that all current applications should automatically take advantage of that (although I guess that some new things will be possible, and API will be extended to cover those)"

sigh, what makes you think graphics operations are not accelerated even in mos 1.4? if everything would be dome with cpu it would be much much slower.

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Didn't mean to say that it's "totally unaccelerated" (With "traditionally drawn" I meant "using the same API's that certainly didn't use any modern GPU based acceleration on classic amigas")

The first point was that the "big news concerning graphics acceleration" are about how it's used with 2D graphics (transparency, cube screen switching etc.). (Despite a few annoying bugs) OpenGL works already, and I'd guess that's what's needed for A4D.

The second point was that even if 2D drawing is done differently inside MOS2.0, it shouldn't require any changes to the code, unless you want to use some new MOS2.0 features.

By the way, will MorphOS 2.0 support non-accelerated diagonal gradients?

Thank you for the help Jupp3, that answers some questions we had concerning MOS development.