Hacking What homebrew engines are there to make games for the Wii U?

[JR0DGamerz]

Recently, I have been interested in making games for other platforms, and I was curious if there are any ways to make games?

Yes, I am aware that there is the Nintendo Developer Program that I can register on but I don't feel too safe with that.

I want something simple and easy to use, and maybe maybe a little bit of command line won't hurt.

Preferably a 3D game engine would be nice, but 2D works too.

If anyone knows of any homebrew game engines I can work with (no vWii engines), please let me know.

And I know this is the Wii U part of GBAtemp, but you can also list game engines for PS3 and DS that work well too.

Have a great day

Edit: Modified game engines are cool too (UDK Ultimate, Build-A-Brew Engine, etc)

 

[QuarkTheAwesome]

Well, there's a work-in-progress port of SDL (currently tracking down a bug in the hardware acceleration, hopefully once that's knocked over it'll be good to go)
and, uh
hm. There was talk of maybe doing a love port, once SDL is ready? there's one on 3ds too, so that's a nice bonus.

There's not really much else that I know of. There's someone in the 4tu discord that's playing with 3D acceleration but it doesn't seem to be going well for them, and I'm not sure if they're gonna do an engine. Perhaps you could try and do your own engine based on their progress.

So yeah, it's basically just SDL/SDL_Render for the foreseeable future. A few other frameworks can be ported on top of SDL so they'll come along for the ride (see: pretty much anything currently ported to the switch) but sadly the situation isn't ideal at the moment. If you're willing to dive a little deeper than writing a basic 2D engine is totally possible; otherwise... yeah.

 

[JR0DGamerz]

Well, there's a work-in-progress port of SDL (currently tracking down a bug in the hardware acceleration, hopefully once that's knocked over it'll be good to go)
and, uh
hm. There was talk of maybe doing a love port, once SDL is ready? there's one on 3ds too, so that's a nice bonus.

There's not really much else that I know of. There's someone in the 4tu discord that's playing with 3D acceleration but it doesn't seem to be going well for them, and I'm not sure if they're gonna do an engine. Perhaps you could try and do your own engine based on their progress.

So yeah, it's basically just SDL/SDL_Render for the foreseeable future. A few other frameworks can be ported on top of SDL so they'll come along for the ride (see: pretty much anything currently ported to the switch) but sadly the situation isn't ideal at the moment. If you're willing to dive a little deeper than writing a basic 2D engine is totally possible; otherwise... yeah.

Seems interesting, is anyone working on that LOVE port? That would be an awesome game engine. And the SDL, how can it be used and what features are included?

 

[uyjulian]

You might want to check out these resources:
https://love2d.org/
https://www.libsdl.org/
Tutorials are freely available on the Internet. I'm not sure of your skill level, so you will have to decide which you want to use. SDL is lower level than LOVE.

 

[QuarkTheAwesome]

Seems interesting, is anyone working on that LOVE port? That would be an awesome game engine. And the SDL, how can it be used and what features are included?

I've seen someone say they would do a love port once SDL2 is working well (I'm not in the habit of making people's projects public before they do, but suffice to say I've got good reason to believe they actually will do this.) Guess that kinda means it's on me to finish up SDL, hey

SDL2 has:

• hardware accelerated 2D using SDL_Render (nearly complete, but currently buggy. could use some refactoring)
• 16-bit mono audio, usual SDL APIs (can do conversion)
• Gamepad buttons and analog controls via SDL_Joystick
• Gamepad touch support, usual SDL APIs

SDL2 does not have: (though I'd like to add them)

• KPAD/WPAD controllers (wiimotes, pro controllers, etc.)
• real lifecycle support (home menu overlay, clean exits, etc. impossible with current HBL)
• all the audio/texture formats the hardware supports. surround sound?
• rendering at not-720p. the system scales 720p up to 1080p when it's set for that and it's kinda blurry, not great for 2D. jury's out on whether to emulate a 720p screen for SDL apps or hope they handle unusual window sizes
• 3D? either passing through GX2 (bleh) or full OpenGL (difficult!)

Between the SDL tutorials out there and the words in the readme, hopefully usage is pretty self-evident - aside from the toolchain and a few specific things (if you want printf to work, for example) it's identical to PC. If you need help with specifc things let me know, happy to help.