############ Nitro Engine ############
This is a 3D game engine, a lot of functions designed to simplify the process of making a 3D game. It isn't standalone, it needs libnds to work.
You can use Nitro Engine with BlocksDS <https://blocksds.github.io/docs/>_ and
devkitPro, but BlocksDS is preferred as some features of Nitro Engine are only
available with BlocksDS.
Features:
DSMA library <https://github.com/AntonioND/dsma-library>_, which converts MD5 models (with
skeletal animation) into a format that can be rendered with hardware
acceleration. It can also blend two animations together (for transitions).ptexconv <https://github.com/Garhoogin/ptexconv>_).libDSF <https://github.com/AntonioND/libdsf>, which is
based on BMFont <https://www.angelcode.com/products/bmfont/>.Nitro Engine doesn't support any of the 2D hardware of the DS. In order to use
the 2D hardware you can use libnds directly, or you can use a library like
NFlib <https://github.com/knightfox75/nds_nflib>_. There is an example of how
to integrate Nitro Engine and NFlib in the same project here <./examples/templates/using_nflib>_.
Clone this repository and run:
.. code:: bash
make install -jnproc
This should build the library in both debug and release modes and install it.
If you want to check that everything is working as expected, open one of the folders of the examples and run:
.. code:: bash
make
That should build an .nds file that you can run on an emulator or real
hardware.
Note: The build system of the examples in this repository is make. The makefiles aren't very flexible, and they don't support converting 3D models, or saving graphics or models to the filesystem (you can only inject them as data to the ARM9, which isn't acceptable for big games).
For BlocksDS, try ArchitectDS <https://github.com/AntonioND/architectds>. This
build system written in Python supports converting every format that Nitro
Engine supports, and it lets you save everything in NitroFS so that your game
can grow as much as you want. ArchitectDS comes with plenty of examples of how
to use it with Nitro Engine.
Clone this repository. Create a symbolic link to it inside the devkitPro
folder in your system. For example, in Linux, create a symlink so that
/opt/devkitpro/nitro-engine points to the folder with Nitro Engine:
.. code:: bash
ln -sT /path/to/nitro-engine /opt/devkitpro/nitro-engine
Go to the nitro-engine folder and type this on the terminal:
.. code:: bash
make dkp -jnproc
This should build the library in both debug and release modes.
If you want to check that everything is working as expected, open one of the
folders of the examples and type make -f Makefile.dkp. That should build
an .nds file that you can run on an emulator or real hardware.
Note: If you're using melonDS, remember that any example that uses NitroFS with will fail if it's built with the libraries that come with devkitPro because of a bug in the libraries. Other emulators like DeSmuME still work.
Note that some features of the 3D hardware aren't emulated by most emulators, so you may need to use an actual NDS to test some things. melonDS seems to emulate all features correctly. DeSmuME doesn't emulate the polygon/vertices count registers, so the touch test feature of Nitro Engine doesn't work.
Normally you should link your programs with -lNE, which is the release
version of Nitro Engine. If you want to use the debug features of Nitro Engine,
you should link with -lNE_debug, and add -DNE_DEBUG to the CFLAGS
and CPPFLAGS in your Makefile. Make sure to clean and rebuild your project
after doing the changes mentioned in this step. Check the error_handling
example to see how to use the debug mode of Nitro Engine.
Screenshots of some of the examples included with Nitro Engine:
.. |animated_model| image:: screenshots/animated_model.png .. |box_tower| image:: screenshots/box_tower.png .. |fog| image:: screenshots/fog.png .. |specular_material| image:: screenshots/specular_material.png .. |screen_effects| image:: screenshots/screen_effects.png .. |shadow_volume| image:: screenshots/shadow_volume.png .. |sprites| image:: screenshots/sprites.png .. |text| image:: screenshots/text.png
+------------------+-------------------+ | Animated model | Box tower physics | +------------------+-------------------+ | |animated_model| | |box_tower| | +------------------+-------------------+
+------------------+---------------------+ | Hardware fog | Specular material | +------------------+---------------------+ | |fog| | |specular_material| | +------------------+---------------------+
+------------------+-------------------+ | Text | Shadow volume | +------------------+-------------------+ | |text| | |shadow_volume| | +------------------+-------------------+
+------------------+-------------------+ | Screen effects | 2D sprites | +------------------+-------------------+ | |screen_effects| | |sprites| | +------------------+-------------------+
This project is currently hosted on GitHub at:
https://github.com/AntonioND/nitro-engineIf you want to contact me (Antonio Niño Díaz) directly you can email me at:
antonio underscore nd at outlook dot com
The code of this repository is under the MIT license. The examples are under the CC0-1.0 license.
The full text of the licenses can be found under the licenses folder.