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Possibility of a 32 bit Decker Version

A topic by worstexcuse created 84 days ago Views: 260 Replies: 4
Viewing posts 1 to 2
(4 edits) (+1)

Decker is a fantastic tool, one that I'd love to use on old computers (particularly a Windows XP laptop) due to it's lightweight nature and small size. However, as of right now there is no 32x support for Decker on both Mac and Windows. This is an understandable omission, but I think it's a huge missed opportunity. Decker would be a lovely little program to run on older, lower-powered devices. Would a 32 bit version for either OS be feasible? Or are there technical limits that would prevent it being ported over to older architecture?

Thank you Internet Janitor for your hard work on decker, as well as everyone making fascinating and creative projects with this tool. I would love to be able to use decker on a  wider range of computers :-)

Developer(+3)

I have no interest in providing prebuilt win32 or 32-bit MacOS binaries for Decker; I don't have the necessary devices, and it would add an undue maintenance and release burden for a feature that would be used by a vanishingly small number of users. If there is overwhelming demand, somehow, I might reconsider this stance.

However, if anyone is interested in building Decker from source for these platforms, starting with Decker 1.49 I have already included a shim which allows Decker to be compiled against SDL 1.2, which in principle allows it to be used on Windows 98 and a variety of other obsolete platforms, with certain functional limitations. Your mileage may vary. Decker has fairly modest memory requirements, but performance may be poor on very old machines.

Further disclaimer: I do not wish to provide any tech support for compiling Decker on Windows; I find it viscerally unpleasant to interact with in any quantity.

(+1)

How about the Hannah Montana Linux distro? ;)

Developer (1 edit)

Building from source on essentially any Linux distro (or BSD, or MacOS) is a snap: install the SDL and SDL_image packages, clone the Decker repo, run make, and you're set. I haven't tested Hannah Montana Linux, but it should work just like any comparable vintage of Ubuntu. I have tested the Fedora 18 image that shipped on OLPC XO-1s; it's much faster and easier now that Decker works against SDL 1.2, so you no longer have to screw around with building SDL2 from scratch.

(+1)

I was just messing with you, man. Haha!