GameEngine pocket

A game engine for creating GameBoy (Color) inspired games.

Currently only Windows is supported

Version status

The project is currently versioned at 0.8.0, which means the first 80% of the work is done. Cleaning it all up for a 1.0.0 release will be the second 80%.

How to build

Open a cmd.exe window with 64bit Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 tools available in the path. (Open the "x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2017" from the start menu or execute the relevant vcvarsall.bat x64 in a cmd shell)

There are build.bat scripts to build the different parts of the project.

• When run for the first time, you need to run them with build.bat full to create necessary directories.
• After that a simple build.bat will create a debug build.
• build.bat release will create a release build.
• build.bat clean will remove the directories created in the full build.

To build everything at once, use the buildall.bat which takes the same arguments and simply calls the build.bat files for all the sub-projects.

To create a release zip, call release.sh with the name for the finished file (without .zip) as an argument. (Yes, this is a bash script. I use Windows Subsystem for Linux.) release.sh depends on the zip program.

How to create a game

Your game will be loaded by the gep.exe as a file called game.dll. The dll needs a few exported symbols that the exe will load.

One update() function which will be called at a fixed 60 times per second.

DLLEXPORT void update(gep_state *GS)

and the following custom strings

DLLEXPORT const char *ORG_CONF_PATH = "org";
DLLEXPORT const char *GAMENAME_CONF_PATH = "game_conf";

DLLEXPORT const char *GAMENAME = "The Name of the Game 2: Revenge of the Game";

The ORG_CONF_PATH and GAMENAME_CONF_PATH will be used together to determine the path for the config file.

the Gamename will be used in the window title.

How to play a game

Put your game.dll next to the gep.exe and SDL2.dll files. Then launch gep.exe.

Controls

Key	Virtpad	Description
ESC		Switch between the game and the settings screen
W	Up	d-pad up
A	Left	d-pad left
S	Down	d-pad down
D	Right	d-pad right
Q	L1	left bumper
E	R1	right bumper
1	L2	left trigger
3	R2	right trigger
Arrow Up	A	A face button
Arrow Down	B	B face button
Arrow Left	X	X face button
Arrow Right	Y	Y face button
Return	Menu	Button to activate a game menu
Backspace	Option	Button to activate game options
F4		DEBUG Take screenshot
F5		DEBUG Begin/End screen recording
F9		DEBUG Open window showing the tile map
F10		DEBUG Open window showing the window map
F11		DEBUG Open window showing the tile and sprite memory

Missing major features

• Controller support
• Key rebinding
• Proper handling of non-60hz refresh rates. For now just use exclusive fullscreen which should set the display to 60hz.