A Powerful, Terminal-Based 2D Game Engine written in C++.

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Changelog

See what's new (28-Apr-2025) info: Linux compilation, make setup command | gmeng.org/changelog

Documentation

Gmeng's documentation can be found in gmeng.org. Please refer to the website for enquiries about functionality and usage.

Building

This project uses the GNU Make build system for an easy building process. Gmeng currently runs on all UNIX (macOS & linux) systems. While a Windows port for Gmeng is being worked on it is not yet complete. If you're on a Windows machine, install WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) to run Gmeng without having to change computers or boot into a different Operating System.

Getting Started

To get started, clone the repository and set it up with

git clone https://github.com/catriverr/gmeng-sdk
cd gmeng-sdk
sudo make setup

Important

You will need to run sudo make setup to include the sources for libraries & dependencies which gmeng uses.

submodules
Currently, gmeng uses the following submodules:

• catriverr/liblmf for interleafing and configuration file parsing,
• catriverr/noble for scripting, script parsing and plugin support

libraries & utilities

• homebrew for installing & implementing libraries required by gmeng,
• pkg-config & pkgconf for implementing cflags for C++ compiler libraries,
• libcurl4-openssl-dev for easy telecommunications & networking functions,
• libncurses-dev for easy terminal-based UI creation on CLI commands,
• libasound2-dev (linux only) for the ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) audio engine,
• ApplicationServices (macOS only) for the ApplicationServices general Mac Service utilities

Build Options

builds:
    make all (builds engine and cli)
    make test (builds interface tests / test.cpp)
    make test2 (builds unit tests / tests/test.cpp)
    make compile (builds your target file / specified in buildoptions.mk or `make configure`)
    make compile-windows (builds your target file / cross compiled to windows)
    make compile-file filename=<file.cpp> (builds the file defined in filename)
    make compile-file-windows filename=<file.cpp> (builds the file defined in filename, for windows target)
    make compile-script filename=<file.cc> (builds the file defined in filename, as a NOBLE shared library script)

    make setup (sets up the environment and installs the libraries required for gmeng to function)
    make build (builds the target in Production mode, all scripts in the scripts/src directory and your target will be compiled)
options:
    make [debug] [no-ncurses] [use-external] [warnings] [all/test/test2/compile/compile-windows/compile-file/compile-file-windows/compile-script/build]
    make configure

• The debug option adds the -g -O0 -fsanitize=address flags to the compiler.
• The no-ncurses option disables the auto-imports to utils/interface.cpp and types/interface.h from the gmeng.h header.
• The use-external option enables the auto-imports to SDL2/SDL.h headers for SDL-based windows.
• The warnings option enables -Wall so all warnings are displayed by the compiler.
• The configure option runs the configuration utility to set up the buildconfig for a program.

Debugging

Gmeng is designed and configured to be debugged with the llvm/lldb debugger. To debug different functionalities of the library, run llvm with the unit tests binary.

Internal Engine Debugging

Gmeng as its own testing utility for internal tests. Compile with:

make test2; lldb ./tests/out/test.o

to run different tests, add the -l=0,1,2,3..8 flag to the run command in lldb. refer to the Unit Tests file to see different tests and what they do.

External Application Debugging

You may also compile with debugging parameters in clang too with the make debug (compile,build,etc..make parameters) parameter.

make debug build; lldb ./game.out

This will allow you to compile with debugger parameters.

Flags & Command-line Arguments

For Gmeng's command-line arguments, refer to the help page in the command-line interface via:

make; ./gmeng -help

Gmeng takes the following preprocessor definitions:

#define GMENG_NO_CURSES // false by default, for no ncurses imports, same as the make no-ncurses parameter
#define __GMENG_LOG_TO_COUT__ // false by default, streams gm_log() calls to the std::cout stream.
#define __GMENG_ALLOW_LOG__ // true by default, allows logging
#define __GMENG_DRAW_AFTER_LOG__ // false, by default draws the dev-c console

Contributing

Please refer to gmeng-sdk/CONTRIBUTING for guidelines on how to contribute to gmeng.

Contact

you may contact me on discord via @catriverr, or e-mail me at nehir@mybutton.org.