Release 2008.09.21

Major changes in this release

• Support for loading code from a normal text file
  This only works for console implementation
  Use ./ngaro --with filename
• Improved screen clearing
  Trying to display a negative character code clears the display.
  This allows a cleaner, more portable way of clearing the display without relying on particular escape sequences being emulated.
• Console source trees merged
• Cleanups to I/O handling in the console implementation
• Curses-backend used for console implementation by default

The most significant of these is the addition of --with to the console implementation.

The binary package will be updated within the next few days.

Binary Package

I just uploaded a set of binaries for Retro. This contains the standard image, the current documentation, and prebuilt copies of the Ngaro VM for many systems.

Console

• Linux (x86, x86-64, and Alpha)
• Mac OS X (Intel)

Framebuffer

• Windows (x86, tested on XP SP3)

The Linux binaries are statically linked, so should work on pretty much any distro for the listed architectures. The OS X build is dynamically linked and built on OS X 10.5. The Windows build includes the SDL.dll and should work on most Windows systems without problems.

I couldn't produce static cross-platform binaries with the framebuffer as some of the Linux systems don't have the SDL libraries and the one that does lacks support for building static SDL applications. For OS X, the framebuffer support is not working yet.

I'd like to expand the number of platforms I can provide binaries for sometime soon. (Perhaps I'll try to get my old box with the BSD's on it up and running again.). For now this should make trying Retro even easier.