PSP got rRootage

(tags gaming, programming, PlayStation Portable, shmup, Kenta Cho, Windows, porting)

Kenta Cho's rRootage was ported to the PSP (but not recently), according to Game|Life. This is what I was talking about Kenta Cho's championing the D programming language: rRootage is not implemented in D, but in C. That makes it easier to port to other platforms, including something as esoteric as the PSP. D-based games aren't in for the easy port, I'm afraid.

I'm not sure if it is possible to port D-based games onto the PSP, though. Googling for ports of the D's standard library "Phobos" to PSP yielded one interesting blog entry: Cross-compiling Phobos for the PSP is horrendously difficult! (Japanese) Ozy points out the main roadblocks at the time of writing which is 2005/11 (my translation):

1. Compiling std/format.d doesn't stop! (compiler bug?)
2. deh.c (Exception Handling code) probably needs to be clean up a lot
3. gc (Garbage collecting) also probably needs to be cleaned up.
4. thread also probably needs clean up.
5. socket related parts are pretty much shot

Regarding Parsec47 (which according to a 2004 interview is the author's favorite game) without knowing a whole lot about the source code I will implement a WAG and say that points 2, 3, 4 are major obstacles, since these are basic parts to any D program. Obviously 1 is a huge obstacle but can probably fixed at the cross compiler. Parsec47 definately uses the Phobos standard library and other libraries to do the heavy lifting. In a sound bite: I'm not holding my breath.