Sorry if I am missing something obvious, but how can I launch the simulator with a bin of my choice? I’m using the version from GitHub (included in the EmBitz stuff), but I’m starting to suspect it requires rebuilding the Simulator with by game compiled into it.
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You can take the compiled exe and a couple of dlls it needs and make a standalone package which you can run anywhere.
That’s not really what I meant. I was trying to get the simulator to run my program (eg. run “helloworld.bin”), but I realize now that I was misunderstanding what the simulator is.
If I am understanding things correctly, it is not a tool for running arbitrary *.bin files (as I had assumed) like a typical emulator. Instead you are meant to write your program right the simulators code base (inside code blocks). Once you are happy with the game, you would then port the code to one of the other IDEs to generate a BIN file, which you would then put on the actual hardware.
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You got that exactly right.
Its a pretty advanced alternative for users who already know most of their way around writing code
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Yes, and in most cases you do not need to port, but just recompile the sources for HW.
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In fact that’s precisely why it’s labelled a “simulator” and not an “emulator”.
It doesn’t ‘emulate’ the hardware, it’s just a port of the library to ‘simulate’ the environment.
There are two main reasons for having the simulator (there might be others that I didn’t think of):
- Slightly faster development time because you don’t have to stop to upload the
.binto your Pokitto. - Can be used to develop games even without a Pokitto (i.e. if you left it at home when you go somewhere).
Of course, the downside is that the Pokitto runs slower than an exe built with the simulator,
so it pays to test on actual hardware every few builds.