Homebrew GRRLIB Equivalent?

[JGSHEW]

In Wii homebrew, there is a super useful library called GRRLIB. It is basically a simplified wrapper to the GX core to make 3D graphics much easier. Is there anything similar for Wii U's GX2 library? Or, failing that, at least a solid documentation for GX2.rpl?

 

[V10lator]

To my knowledge there's no documentation (except from Nintendo itself behind the NDA wall). Now I don't know GRRLIB but there's a UI library available at https://github.com/wiiu-env/libgui. This library is used by the Homebrew Launcher, the Homebrew App Store, NUSspli and others. Sadly documentation doesn't exist here, too, so your best bet is too look at other homebrews utilizing it. Example: https://github.com/V10lator/NUSspli/blob/master/src/renderer.cpp#L257

Also hop on to 4TU Discord as that's where developers share.

 

[JGSHEW]

Hmm, that's a shame. I'm kind of thinking of working on one myself. I've been looking through wut examples for gx2, I'll probably use it as a reference.

 

[V10lator]

I'm kind of thinking of working on one myself.

Why not look into libgui first? I know it's not perfect but why reinvent the wheel when you can fix the one already running? Just make sure to have a look at the pull requests as there are some important bugfixes.

Also SDL just came to my mind: We have SDL2 for the Wii U. It's used by the Homebrew App Store, for example:
https://github.com/fortheusers/hb-appstore/blob/master/Makefile.wiiu#L39
https://github.com/fortheusers/hb-appstore/tree/master/gui

//EDIT: And again: Hop onto the Discord server. There are all the developers so you can have a direct talk to @Maschell from libgui or @QuarkTheAwesome who IIRC works on SDL2.

 

[JGSHEW]

Thanks for the reply, but I’m not looking for 2d gui gx stuff, I’m looking for any sort of 3d library

 

[V10lator]

Thanks for the reply, but I’m not looking for 2d gui gx stuff, I’m looking for any sort of 3d library

So SDL2 ? Other than that there was a small talk about a OpenGL to GX2 wrapper on Discord yesterday. Such a wrapper does not exist right now but one dev might write one. He writes it to port SM64 to the Wii U and at this point in time it's not clear if he will write such a wrapper or change the renderer of SM64 to utilize GX2 directly. Anyway, you might want to get in contact with him, so again: Hop onto the Discord server. Here on GBATemp you're lucky if one developer (like me right now) replies but most of the time that replying developer is not experienced in what you need (I never worked with 3D graphics before). On Discord you have all the pros like FIX94 (CFW developer), Maschell (wiiu-env, WUT, ... developer), Quarky (CFW, RetroArch, WUT, SDL2, and so on dev), RW (CFW developer), exjam (WUT leader), Gary (WUT + amazing homebrew developer - You'll see the first hardware accelerated video player homebrew in the foreseeable future thanks to his work) and so on... These guys know the Wii U (APIs) like nobody else.

 

[JGSHEW]

Yeah I saw mastervermillion talking about that. As it is now, a wrapper exists called gx2gl but it only supports colors not textures and I think it may be a dead project. I might try to make one (maybe not based on opengl though)

 

[V10lator]

Oh, you are already on the server. Sorry then: I was sleeping when you wrote there (was around 2 to 3 AM in my timezone).