Would EasyRPG be Possible?

[arromdee]

As a non-FPGA pseudo-core, like SCUMMVM.

[Newsdee]

It would be nice to see more pure FPGA versions of these projects too

[Malor]

It's hard to create circuitry to emulate something that's not a hardware implementation. It's not impossible (as there have been chips to run Java directly in hardware), but it's terribly difficult.

It seems far more likely that someone would port EasyRPG to run on the Linux side of the Mister, rather than trying to use the FPGA.

[softtest9]

I can see two possible ways to run it on the FPGA chip:

1) Run it as-is on an existing core, such as ao486. On ao486, you may even be able run the original RPG Maker 2000/2003 programs and skip EasyRPG.

2) Make a custom "PC" core that has the bare minimum for EasyRPG, to squeeze out some more performance. It could have a RISC-V CPU and a custom 2D GPU to replace SDL. This is quite a lot of work however, so unless this core could be reused for other projects than just EasyRPG, I don't see anyone picking this up.

As for getting EasyRPG up and running on the MiSTer's ARM chip, it should definitely be possible, but it might be slow.

[Mr. Encyclopedia]

The menu core already has a sort of graphics acceleration running on the FPGA, at least it has a framebuffer which I believe is based on the software that comes with the De10-nano. It's probably possible to use the FPGA to build a more fully-featured GPU along with linux drivers, but we're still talking about a 800mhz ARM with 1 gig of RAM, so anything meant for computers later than the mid 2000s will be a stretch.

EasyRPG is already targeting roughly that time, as an interpreter for old RPG Maker 2000/2003 games, so yeah it's probably possible. But without a true GPU core most of these "what if we use the ARM side to do stuff" ideas are dead in the water. Sure, it would be cool if the De10-nano had graphics acceleration and could be more general purpose like the Raspberry Pi, but I don't think any of the Mister devs are interested in that right now. If you really want the raspberry pi experience on Mister, unfortunately the best option is to just get a Raspberry Pi.

[Newsdee]

I would love to see somebody writing a port that uses the FPGA properly, such as accelerating critical parts of the code Things such a tile engine etc could be done as custon GPU routines.

Obviously that's a huge amount of work, but that would be truly usimg the DE10 hardware.

[Malor]

If you really want the raspberry pi experience on Mister, unfortunately the best option is to just get a Raspberry Pi.

Most of the Pis are in very short supply, but the Pi 400 is pretty easy to source, at $70 for a bare board, or $100 with some accessories.

It's basically a 4B with much better heatsinks, so it runs cooler and faster. The main downside is that it's not the normal form factor, so most hats won't fit, even though you have access to the GPIO pins.