BACKENDS: NDS - Failure to load most plugins

[ccawley2011]

When building for Nintendo DS with dynamic plugins enabled, the majority of plugins fail to load with "elfloader: R_ARM_CALL/R_ARM_JUMP24: Out of range relocation ..." errors, as shown in the screenshot.

[raziel-]

When you say "most", which plugins do actually load?

[bgK]

How do you reach this error? I tried on a DS, ScummVM crashes when trying to add a game before reaching that point. I tried on a 3DS using nds-bootstrap, ScummVM crashes on startup.

[ccawley2011]

I'm using this branch: ​https://github.com/ccawley2011/scummvm/tree/ds-rewrite

[bgK]

Do you have more hints? The version built from this branch using the latest versions from devkitpro and these configure flags ../configure --disable-all-engines --enable-engine=scumm --host=ds --enable-plugins --default-dynamic --disable-debug:

• Fails to start on a DS (white screen)
• Crashes when adding a game on a 3DS using nds-bootstrap (data abort, PC at 0xFFC)
• Generates an invalid instruction error in no$gba when adding a game
• Infinitely loops in desmume when adding a game

[ccawley2011]

I'm currently building on Windows with the following packages installed:

• default-arm7 0.7.4-7
• devkitARM r55-1
• devkitarm-crtls 1.1.0-1
• devkitarm-rules 1.2.1-2
• dswifi 0.4.2-1
• libfat-nds 1.1.5-1
• libnds 1.8.1-2
• maxmod-nds 1.0.14-1
• nds-libmad 0.15.1b-1 (​https://github.com/devkitPro/pacman-packages/pull/198)
• nds-zlib 1.2.11-1
• ndstool 2.1.2-1

I usually compile ScummVM with the following commands:

$ source $DEVKITPRO/ndsvars.sh
$ ./configure --host=ds --enable-plugins --default-dynamic --enable-all-engines --disable-png --disable-freetype2 --enable-debug
$ make -j6

The resulting scummvm.nds file works on a DSi with TWiLight Menu++ v15.3.0, as well as with the latest DeSmuME builds from AppVeyor.

[sev-]

The port is dead.

[bgK]

Thanks, fixed in 55db121.

ScummVM still crashes for me when starting games, but at least the plugins load.

[ccawley2011]

Thanks.

Unfortunately, only the games that worked before that change still work. The ones that didn't can now be added to the launcher but throw a Guru Meditation Error when run.

For reference, the following games work for me with dynamic plugins:

• Beneath a Steel Sky
• Eye of the Beholder
• Eye of the Beholder II
• Lure of the Temptress
• Testbed

and the following games crash on startup:

• Full Throttle
• Future Wars (demo)
• Operation Stealth (demo)
• Simon the Sorcerer (demo)
• Space Quest I (SCI)
• Space Quest II
• Teenagent

In addition, Flight of the Amazon Queen used to work with dynamic plugins, but now crashes during the intro.

Most of the games I tried work fine when using static linking.

[ccawley2011]

From what I can tell, the issue seems to be with mixing ARM and THUMB code in plugins. The file-specific optimizations and ARM assembler code has been disabled in the ds-rewrite branch which seems to have fixed most of the games I previously mentioned.