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Libgodc: Write Go Programs for Sega Dreamcast
- drpaneas 9mo agoI built a Go runtime that runs on the Sega Dreamcast, the 1999 console with 16MB RAM and a 200MHz SH4 CPU. You can write games in Go with goroutines, channels, garbage collection, and all the language features you'd expect. It compiles using gccgo and runs on real hardware or emulators. The project includes 3 game examples Pong, Breakout and Platformer, input handling, audio support, and integrates with KallistiOS (the Dreamcast homebrew SDK). * Star Here: https://github.com/drpaneas/godc https://github.com/drpaneas/godc * Documentation: https://drpaneas.github.io/libgodc/ https://drpaneas.github.io/libgodc/ * Video Tutorial: https://youtu.be/ahMl0fUvzVA https://youtu.be/ahMl0fUvzVA Happy to answer any questions about the implementation!
- danhau 9mo agoI just wanted to say how impressive your documentation is. I expected an average readme.md, but not only is your readme great (the performance table is wonderful), but the full documentation is awesome. It pretty much answers all questions I had. Nice job! I wish all projects were like this. I also dig the documentation / book styling.
- drpaneas 9mo agothanks @danhau, much appreciated, indeed documenting the process felt like another project of its own, so I am very happy to hear that :D
- clktmr 9mo agoHey panos! I only had a short look at this for now, and it looks impressive! I'll have to dust off my Dreamcast and get this running. I looked at gccgo when porting the runtime to n64, but at the time it wasn't updated since go1.18. Can we use Go Generics on the Dreamcast? I see that gccgo is obviously needed to support SH4.
- drpaneas 9mo agoHey Timur, long time no see, I hope all is going well :) No, you cannot use generics, they are not yet supported by gccgo.
- pjmlp 9mo agoThis is kind of cool, kudos for the effort.
- drpaneas 9mo agoyou're very welcome :D Thanks!
- lagniappe 9mo agoYou've made my entire WEEK! Thank you!
- drpaneas 9mo agoYou've put a smile on my face reading your comment, thank you for your feedback, happy holidays :D
- simonw 9mo agoThis is a beautiful thing to exist. Much respect for building this.
- phantasmish 9mo ago> Replaces the standard Go runtime with one designed for the Dreamcast's constraints: memory 16MB RAM, CPU single-core SH-4, no operating system. 24 total megabytes, with an M, of memory between system and video (another 8 there), single core 200mhz CPU, graphics chip runs at 100mhz. Shenmue runs on it. Glares at Teams.
- perching_aix 9mo agoCould implement a custom Teams client on top of that. My biggest concern would be TLS and media decoding, but could just proxy the traffic and roll a text only client. I mucked about with Microsoft Graph a bit before, didn't seem too bad.
- giancarlostoro 9mo agoIt baffles me that Microsoft can build an entire OS, and build and rebuild GUI stacks, and they couldn't build the Teams UI using C#???
- mfro 9mo agoIf they built Teams with a C# UI framework, it'd have to be rebuilt 4 times by now.
- winrid 9mo agoThey already had to rebuild it once because it was in angularjs lol
- federiconafria 9mo agoMicrosoft applications always look and behave as if they were ported to windows...
- lexoj 9mo agoThey needed true cross-platform consistence, so it had to be equally terrible everywhere.
- deleted 9mo ago
- donatj 9mo agoThe "Effective Dreamcast Go" docs on this are fantastically well written. I've read much worse docs from major corporations.
- drpaneas 9mo agoMany thanks @dontaj much appreciated, indeed documenting the process felt like another project of its own, so I am very happy to hear that! The effective dreamcast Go was inspired from the old time classic https://go.dev/doc/effective_go https://go.dev/doc/effective_go :D
- karel-3d 9mo agoI thought that gccgo supports only some old go version? Or subset of features? I will need to refresh my memory for sure
- drpaneas 9mo agoI am using sh-elf-gccgo (GCC) 15.1.0 which is ok-ish I guess. But in general gccgo tries to be close to Go, but they do not implement all the features. e.g. generics are still missing for example.
- pjmlp 9mo agoIt appears stale to me, there seems no one is driving it any longer, and Ian Lance Taylor has moved on anyway. Maybe eventually the same can be tried with TinyGo, just as an idea.
- drpaneas 9mo agoproblem is TinyGo uses LLVM, which doesn't support SH-4. The only reason I went with gccgo is due to SH4 target. In any case, I learned a ton of things doing this project :D
- AdmiralAsshat 9mo ago> Who is this for? > ... > Anyone who enjoys the challenge of severe constraints Remembering what a powerhouse the Dreamcast was when it came out, and how amazing games like Soul Caliber and Shenmue looked, it's hard to think of the Dreamcast hardware as "severely contained".
- drpaneas 9mo agoyeah, been there, nostalgia hits hard. Dreamcast was a beast of its era, it even had Ethernet! Even the VMU was something extraordinary! Too bad SEGA had to cancel it :(
- jerf 9mo agoI find it a bit weird that I find it intuitive how things like the Super Nintendo did their work, and how modern games and systems work, but comparing the hardware specs of the Dreamcast/PS2/XBox/Gamecube era to the best of their output is where my intuition struggles the most. Not that the games of the era stand up to modern stuff, even when upscaled and texture-packed etc. in an emulator, but how they did it with so little oomph still amazes me.
- tclancy 9mo agoFor anyone interested in the general topic, highly recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam
- rpastuszak 9mo agoI love this. The documentation is great and I've even learned a thing or two about golang from it! The logo makes me want to port Icy Tower to DC.
- drpaneas 9mo agothanks @rpastuszak, much appreciated :D
- Imustaskforhelp 9mo agoIf someone is interested in running golang projects on niche hardware perhaps, one pro tip I can suggest but there is way to convert golang 100% into wasm (no js shim or anything required) and the only thing you would need is a wasm library You have to use golang from source (see the stackoverflow page https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76087007/golang-to-wasm-compilation https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76087007/golang-to-wasm-... ) go install golang.org/dl/gotip@latest gotip download GOOS=wasip1 GOARCH=wasm gotip build -o main.wasm Although the way I did it is going into the gotip folder and then the binary folder which would contain the go compiler binary and then just use that path with GOOS=wasip1 GOARCH=wasm ~/sdk/gotip/bin/go build -o main.wasm Note that I forgot the exact path but it was similar to this but the point being that its super easy and simple :) I tried to do it and I can tell you that it works and it works for even the most latest versions of golang, all you need is a wasmengine which I suppose can be ubiquitous. I have built a solution where golang code gets converted to wasm and then we run a ssh server which then runs that wasm all in sandbox to create sandboxed mini golang servers :p I really love it although its a more so prototype than anything
- gothink 9mo agoLooks like this is available (since Go 1.21 [0]), so no need to build from source anymore. Just did a quick 'hello world' test to verify and it worked: GOOS=wasip1 GOARCH=wasm go build -o main.wasm main.go wasmtime main.wasm If you're interested in wasm/wasi and niche hardware with Go, you should check out TinyGo [1] if you haven't already. [0] https://go.dev/blog/wasi https://go.dev/blog/wasi [1] https://tinygo.org/docs/guides/webassembly/wasi/ https://tinygo.org/docs/guides/webassembly/wasi/
- Imustaskforhelp 9mo agoOh wow thanks for telling me, looks like I was using gotip/ source go for no reason but thanks for telling me this, this actually really simplifies a lot of things :p Tinygo is really awesome but I have heard that it has its differences so software written for golang won't really work ootb on tinygo and tinygo is really fascinating project too! I have a question but is it possible to create golang compiler itself within wasm itself. I tried doing it but it didn't really work out but I am curious if someone has thought of doing something like this or has already done it?
- nasretdinov 9mo agoNice project! Having just 16Mb of RAM does indeed sound like a real challenge for stock Go (not the TinyGo variant)! Even hello world is a couple megs, although I imagine Dreamcast isn't 64-bit, so the instructions are probably much shorter. Interesting to see anything written in it :)
- drpaneas 9mo agoThanks :D How about porting Diablo? https://x.com/PanosGeorgiadis/status/2005692695402955143 https://x.com/PanosGeorgiadis/status/2005692695402955143
- steeve 9mo agothis is incredible
- drpaneas 9mo agothanks @steeve :D
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- tasa1969 9mo agoamazing work! The "book" documentation is better than most of the books I have read and paid this year! Kudos!
- drpaneas 9mo agoglad to hear that tasa
- dcdev1999 9mo ago[dead]
- kostas73 9mo agoGreat stuff!
- drpaneas 9mo agoThanks Kosta <3
- RestartKernel 9mo agoThis is incredibly cool! How do you think these modern language features would have affected Dreamcast development back in the day? (I have no idea of how difficult the console was to develop.)
- drpaneas 9mo agoI think Lua (yes you can code Dreamcast games with it) would be really awesome for kids, being able to make their own games, given the language is simple, like Python. But in general, for serious stuff C/C++ is still the preferred way.
- aj_hackman 9mo agoIt was a dream relative to anything else on the market (until 2001, when the Xbox and GameCube were released), made even easier for some titles due to the optional Windows CE SDK. You still needed to do a fair bit of SuperH assembly programming to get reasonable graphics performance, but it was nothing like the nightmarish complexity of the PS2, despite having half the RAM. It's still one of the more popular homebrew targets.
- XajniN 9mo agoThis is awesome, but it’s even more amazing that it even exists. How many people actually make software for Dreamcast? Why?