Not much to report really. I have been able to use the Android SDK to produce a simple frontend for MAME (basically just a command line prompt), but tackling the NDK is a different matter. Without much experience compiling, I decided to try a normal compile of MAME on my vista machine first. To do this successfully I had to use a repackaged version of MinGW called mingw-w64. The Android NDK on the other hand uses it's own specialized toolchain, and I don't know if it's possible to incorporate mingw-w64, or if it is necessary. I didn't even know what a toolchain was a couple of days ago.
A recent post by R. Belmont suggests there may also be other issues with porting MAME to Android.
I'm still not sure MAME's SDL backend could be used in any way. Perhaps there's a modded Android system I could install on my pc that would give me a more open lynx environment. It's just not possible to "build" anything from within my gtab. But even if I could find an Android mod to compile in, what would I do with the binary?
Another method that's always open is translating all the C++ code to Java, and writing all new sub routines to make up for tools found in mingw-w64. Do we have any takers for this option? Anyone?
My money is still on the Andorid NDK. Until an answer is found (or someone builds a MAME for Android), I plan on exploring possibilities using of using older source code for MAME, or even the source from ports of MAME. Something that compiles with a standard MinGW toolchain (if there is such a thing...).
Anyhow, thanks for reading and please spread the word! Perhaps if someone who knows what their doing looks into this, we can get MAME on Android soon, rather than never!
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