Web / Mobile build

[1upbyte]

Is there a way to use PopTracker on a mobile device? My vision is for multiple emulators on a big TV screen (that's working great), but we are stuck using the Archipelago tracker which isn't ideal. PopTracker seems great except there only seem to be desktop binaries.

I read that WASM is in the works, though since browsers don't allow raw TCP sockets that might be tricky with anything but Archipelago (which uses websockets if I'm not mistaken). A mobile application would definitely work too if it connected to Archipelago, a major issue though being the publishing process, especially on iOS.

All this yapping to ask if there is a way I can use PopTracker on mobile (either via a website or mobile app compilation). If not, how can I contribute? I'd rather go down the WebAssembly path as that seems cooler to me + would truly be universal.

[black-sliver]

I somewhat recently pushed a screenshot of a working wasm render to Discord here.

Networking is disabled in that build, but websockets technically work. That is both Archipelago and QUsb2Snes.

I don't have an exact timeline, but I can try to push my local changes (for that build) to a github branch this weekend and link it here.

Things that are missing to get it working properly:

• a way to install packs
• inputbox, messagebox, file browsers (save state, load state) do not exist in wasm yet since that needs to either be rendered inside the window or go through javascript
• networking

[1upbyte]

Oo how wonderful! As far as packs go, what prevents them from loading? The lack of a virtual filesystem? I'd love to learn a bit and help out if I can, though I'm fairly unfamiliar with C++. Maybe I can help out a bit with the JavaScript side.

[black-sliver]

One step is getting the pack source into the native code - that could either be a vfs and a "drop file" with the virtual path, or maybe it could even be something custom where the native part reads the stream via emjs.
I don't think SDL has something builtin for that, but I have not checked.

The second step is writing the pack to a permanent position. (This should just work if the vfs is set up correctly.)

Emscripten has idbfs that mounts on the javascript side and then presents itself as a regular (fopen) folder structure.

I think getting a proof of concept to work might not need a lot of C or C++ experience, but mostly reading emscripten docs.

[1upbyte]

Ok, I'll look at that, probably this weekend since classes are my priority during the week. Do you have a Discord or other platform I can contact you on if I have questions about the project while I learn more about how it works? My GitHub profile has my email so you don't have to post it publicly. I also understand if you don't want to share your contact, that is also all good and we can just chat here :)

EDIT: I forgot to mention the Discord link doesn't work for me, what server do I need to join? Found it.

[black-sliver]

The community discord is listed in the readme. I think opening a thread in the dev channel there for ad hoc communication would probably be best.