MTek-GDL - Game Development Library for the Nintendo Wii

MTek-GDL - Game Development Library for the Nintendo Wii
January 01, 2015 11:28AM

Registered: 10 years ago
Posts: 45

I don't know where to post this library exactly but I think this is the most fitting section for me to post this on...

But anyway, here's MTek-GDL which stands for Meido-Tek Game Development Library which is an object-oriented library for devKitPPC designed to simplify game and application development as it wraps and handles low-level graphics and sound functions for you in a much more simplified API pretty much like GRRLIB but with more features, less cumbersome and is much easier to use (in my opinion that is) allowing one to make Wii games quickly and easily while being versatile enough to be used as a base for developing custom graphics engines for advanced game programmers like me.

This library features pretty much everything you need for game and application development on the Nintendo Wii such as optimized hardware-accelerated 2D graphics, image loading/saving, stereo sound and streaming music... No longer do you have to (painfully) go through the libogc docs and writing your own graphics routines unless you want to do advanced 2D or 3D graphics programming.

Library features:
- Object-oriented based programming interface inspired from SFML for handling textures, images, sprite sets, and sound files.
- Simplified system initialization with automatic video mode selection and aspect ratio correction based on console settings.
- Almost all graphics functions are hardware accelerated for maximum performance.
- Stream music off of OGG files on SD card or USB drive with little CPU and memory usage.
- Simple sound system with volume controls and 2D stereo separation (may be improved upon in the future).
- Can be used as a base for developing custom graphics engines without much of a fuss.

With MTek-GDL, something as simple as loading and displaying an image can be done very easily with only a few lines of code as shown below:

int main() {

	// Init FAT library and system
	fatInitDefault();
	gdl::InitSystem(0);

	// Load an image (assuming it exists)
	gdl::Image myImage;
	myImage.LoadImage("octavia.png", gdl::Nearest, gdl::RGBA8);

	// Display it
	while(1) {
		
		gdl::PrepDisplay();

		myImage.Put(0, 0, gdl::Color::White);

		gdl::Display();
		
	}

}

Since this library is still fairly new and hasn't gained much of a following yet, there are not that many examples included, the documentation is a bit vague depending on your programming skills and there are no tutorials available for now... However, don't feel discouraged due to these factors alone as the library is pretty much complete and the included examples and documentation are good enough to get you going in developing your own games on the Wii. If you're having trouble, you can always ask questions in the Coding section on this forum.

If you have any suggestions, contributions (mainly examples) or discovered a bug, please post them in this thread or PM them to me as such entries will be greatly appreciated... If you have any library questions, post them in the Coding section of this forum instead.

Oh, and by the way, can anyone do the following for me please?
- Test this library on a PAL system and while you're at it, test EURGB60 and MPAL (PAL60) mode through the console's video settings if possible.
- Make a Gamecube controller example while using this library (my Wii lacks GC ports unfortunately).

Associated libraries (no need to download them separately as they are already included):
- zlib
- png
- tremor (binary only)
- oggplayer (modified for file streaming and reverse stereo bug fix)
- valloc (from devKitPSP/PSPSDK modified for MEM2 memory management)
- dolexec (created by me based from FIX94's loadMii forwarder)

Download the library here (latest release recommended):
Github Repository (for those who want to try out the most recent work-in-progress version or to contribute)
Release 2.6 (07-12-2015) (17MB)
Release 2.5 (07-03-2015) (17MB)
Release 2 (03-20-2015) (15MB)
Release 1.1 (01-31-2015) (15MB)
Release 1 (01-22-2015) (15MB)
Release 0 (01-01-2015) (6MB)

Edited 14 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2015 05:40AM by TheCodingBrony.