Remar's Abstract Graphics Engine

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Introduction

Rage is an abstraction of the Nintendo DS graphics implemented in C++. It is currently quite limited, but it is intentional, to simplify the implementation of the first versions.

Features

• Abstract background handling with scrolling
• Animated sprites
• Automatic palette blending

Abstract backgrounds means that you can use tiles of other dimensions than 8x8, e.g. 16x16 or 24x8, as long as they are divisible by 8. Rage will take care of setting the correct 8x8 tiles when you set an abstract tile. You can easily scroll the backgrounds.

In Rage, you load in sprites and then create instances of these sprites. A sprite can have several different animations that you can select from. Defining a sprite is done by filling in a data structure with information about the animations that it contains.

Automatic palette blending means that you easily can add sprites and tile sets that don't have matching palettes. Rage will take care of blending the various palettes together, so you won't have to blend your own "master palette".

See the examples found in the Rage package and the tutorial on this site to learn how to use these features.

Future features

The current version of the graphics engine does not support the following features, but many will be included in later versions.

• Sprite rotation, scaling, and mirroring
• Better control of background tiles (e.g. mirroring)
• Better control of the VRAM mappings
• Being able to choose color depth (4bpp, 8bpp, 16bpp)
• Usage of rotation and extended rotation backgrounds
• Abstraction for scrolling "views" (large maps)
• Different ways of reading in graphics (file system, included in code)
• Reading some graphics format (png?)
• Provide a console for debugging the graphics engine
• Provide a diagnostics screen showing memory allocation/fragmentation
• Being able to get information about VRAM caching

Licensing

Rage is licensed under the Lesser General Public License, LGPL. In short, this license allows you to link against Rage without making your source free. If you modify Rage, you must provide the source for the modified Rage version.