Morpheus

Morpheus is an experimental 2D game engine written in modern C++ supporting both the Nintendo DS and the Game Boy Advance, tested on real hardware when possible.

Basic graphical features

• Supports Regular and Affine (rotatable and scalable) Sprites and Regular Backgrounds
  • Larger "streaming" background up to 512 tiles by 512 tiles (or 4096 px by 4096 px) are also supported
• Supports 2D hardware blending, mosaic, and windowing on both backgrounds and windows

Cross-platform "Ani" sprite animation engine

Ani is a sprite animation engine built into Morpheus which allows frame-based animation on both the Nintendo DS and the Game Boy Advance (GBA). It also supports linear smoothing between frames for game continuity.

Cross-platform "Expression" text API

Expression is a text API built into Morpheus which allows UTF-8 custom font support, allowing non-english letters (like こんにちは, konnichiwa or hello in Japanese) to be displayed. If you are building an English game, however, you can opt to use more traditional ASCII fonts instead. Custom fonts can be easily generated from .ttf files and .txt character lists through the generate_fonts Python buildtool in buildtools/generate_fonts.

CMake Integration and Python buildtools

Morpheus is well integrated with CMake, the cross-platform build system, so you don't have to deal directly with confusing Unix makefiles or installing WSL on Windows to build your game in the first place! In addition, Morpheus is bundled with several Python 3 buildtools (or scripts) to help with asset conversion, project generation, and applying the required GBA libfat patch for Morpheus to successfully compile.

Other goodies

• Detailed documentation
• MaxMod sfx and module support
• Optional libtonc Tonc Text Engine and libnds PrintConsole integration to use instead of Morpheus's "Expression" text API
• Save manager supporting DS DLDI, GBA SRAM, and GBA 64kb/128kb FLASH saves
• External Palette support on the DS for Sprites and Backgrounds
• GBA multiplayer-mode serial communication

Open Source

All of Morpheus is open-source on GitLab and a GitHub mirror and licensed under the MPLv2 or Mozilla Public License version 2.