Running F# on a PlayStation Vita

At the progressive F# hackathon yesterday I set myself the task of getting something written in F# running on a PlayStation Vita. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a while now and thought there was no better time to try it. Here’s the results running on an actual device which is always a bit more impressive than just running it within an emulator.

Sure it's only a grey screen but it's a grey screen written in F# running on a PS Vita #fsharp pic.twitter.com/v8ykeUe0jg

— Anthony Brown (@bruinbrown93) November 9, 2014

How to do it

1. The first thing you’ll need is a Mono compatible version of FSharp.Core 4.3.0.0, the quickest way I found to get this was to download the fsharp_30 branch of the fsharp tools from http://github.com/fsharp/fsharp and in the FSharp.Core.fsproj add the defined symbol CROSS_PLATFORM_COMPILER. I also removed the listed references and instead added those provided by SCE in C:\Program Files (x86)\SCE\PSM\mono\lib\mono\2.1 and then run the fsharp-library-build.proj file with MSBuild
2. Create a new F# library project (I did this in Visual Studio)
3. Remove all of the references. Add a reference to FSharp.Core which you just built. Add a reference to all of the Sce.PlayStation dlls listed in C:\Program Files (x86)\SCE\PSM\mono\lib\psm Add references to System.dll and mscorlib.dll as provided in C:\Program Files (x86)\SCE\PSM\mono\lib\mono\2.1
4. Delete all of the files in the project and add a new file called game.fs replace it with the following code

   namespace TestPSMLibrary
   
   open Sce.PlayStation.Core.Graphics
   open Sce.PlayStation.Core.Environment
   
   type Game() =
   
     let graphics = new GraphicsContext()
   
     member this.Run () =
   
       while true do
         SystemEvents.CheckEvents ()
         graphics.SetClearColor(127, 127, 127, 255)
         graphics.Clear ()
         graphics.SwapBuffers ()
       ()

5. Build your library project
6. Open up PSM Studio and create a new PSM Application
7. Add a reference to your library project as well as the version of FSharp.Core you built in Step 1
8. Replace the contents of main.cs with the following

   using System;
   using System.Collections.Generic;
   using TestPSMLibrary;
   
   namespace TestApplication
   {
     public class AppMain
     {
       public static void Main (string[] args)
       {
         var game = new Game();
         game.Run();
       }
     }
   }
   

9. Run it in the simulator or on device and you should see a grey screen