nCine

apptest_allocators

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

This is a test for the various custom allocators available when compiling with the NCINE_WITH_ALLOCATORS=ON CMake option.

The ImGui interface will allow you to create different types of allocators and to allocate and free memory blocks of different sizes and alignment requirements.

Videos

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

Modern Renderer

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Multiple viewports for offscreen rendering or split-screen
Custom shaders for post-processing or bespoke effects
Automatic batching for sprites and text
Sprite meshes for deformation or tight bounding
Binary shader caching for faster startup
VAO and immutable texture support
Efficient OpenGL buffer updates (mapped or direct)
Indexed and instanced drawing
RenderDoc In-application integration
Optional Google ANGLE backend on Windows

Animated Sprites

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Play animations from spritesheet textures
Forward and backward looping support
Transformable sprites (scale, rotate)
Automatic culling when off-screen

apptest_anchor

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

This test shows how different scene nodes (sprites, text nodes, and particles) are transformed when you change their anchor point.

It has evolved to show other advanced features like blending and layer ordering options.

Videos

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface
Pressing CTRL + H on the keyboard will show or hide the ImGui interface
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

apptest_animsprites

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

One of the oldest and simplest tests, it shows how to make a sprite walk using a spritesheet and an AnimatedSprite class.

Controls

Use the mouse, the joystick, or the touchscreen to move the sprite around
Pressing F on the keyboard will toggle full screen
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

Particle Simulation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Simulate particles in world or local space
Affectors for color, size, rotation, position, velocity
Randomized emission properties: amount, life, rotation, position, velocity

apptest_audio

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

This test shows how to play sound effects with an AudioBufferPlayer, and how to play music using an AudioStreamPlayer. It also allows you to change some player properties and apply effects and filters. If the nCine has been compiled with ImGui some of those properties can be tweaked with an interface.

Controls

Pressing M on the keyboard or A on the gamepad will play or pause the music
Pressing Space on the keyboard or B on the gamepad will play or pause the sound
Pressing A/S/D will play/stop/pause the sound
Pressing L will toggle sound looping
Pressing T will start or stop the stress test for audio sources

Change the pitch, gain, and horizontal position of the sound with the numeric keypad or the gamepad:

Pressing KP7/KP8/KP9 will decrease/reset/increase the pitch (use the right trigger on the gamepad)
Pressing KP4/KP5/KP6 will decrease/reset/increase the gain (use the left trigger on the gamepad
Pressing KP1/KP2/KP3 will decrease/reset/increase the horizontal position (use the left stick on the gamepad)
Pressing KP0 on the keyboard or Y on the gamepad will reset all properties to their default values
Pressing the left/right arrow keys or D-pad directions, or the left bumper will change the music file
Pressing the up/down arrow keys or D-pad directions, or the right bumper will change the sound file
Pressing the Start on the gamepad will start or stop the stress test for audio sources
Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface.
Pressing CTRL + H on the keyboard will show or hide the ImGui interface
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

Sound and Music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Play memory sound buffers or stream music from disk
WAVE and Ogg Vorbis format support with looping
Control gain, pitch, panning, and more via OpenAL Soft
Apply OpenAL EFX effects and filters (reverb, chorus, echo, flanger, etc.)

apptest_bunnymark

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

The nCine version of the classic BunnyMark demo. If the nCine has been compiled with ImGui you can tweak some options with an interface.

Controls

Pressing the left mouse button, tapping the right half of the screen, pressing Space on the keyboard or A on the gamepad will add some bunnies
Pressing the right mouse button, tapping the left half of the screen, pressing R on the keyboard or B on the gamepad will reset the number of bunnies
Pressing V on the keyboard or X on the gamepad will toggle the V-Sync
Pressing B on the keyboard or Y on the gamepad will toggle batching
Pressing F on the keyboard will toggle full screen
Pressing P on the keyboard or Start on the gamepad will pause the application
Pressing CTRL + H on the keyboard or Back on the gamepad will show or hide the ImGui interface
Pressing Escape on the keyboard or Guide on the gamepad will quit the application

Scenegraph

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Parent–child relationships for nodes
Position, scale, rotation, and color inheritance
Per-node update and draw toggles

apptest_camera

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

This is the default test that will run if you debug with Visual Studio, if you double-click the macOS bundle, or if you build an Android APK.

It shows some sprites randomly moving while you can move the camera around. The camera used to be simulated by moving the sprites in the opposite direction of the input but it now supports the Viewport and Camera classes

Videos

Controls

Pressing W/A/S/D, dragging while pressing the left mouse button, touching with one finger, or moving the left gamepad stick will pan the camera
Pressing the left/right arrow keys, dragging horizontally while pressing the right mouse button or touching with two fingers, or moving the right gamepad stick left/right will rotate the camera
Pressing the up/down arrow keys, dragging vertically while pressing the right mouse button or touching with two fingers, or moving the right gamepad stick up/down will zoom the camera
Scrolling the mouse wheel will also zoom the camera
Pressing T on the keyboard or X on the gamepad will toggle between individual textures and a texture atlas (more chances for batching)
Pressing V on the keyboard or the right bumper on the gamepad will toggle between simulating a camera by moving sprites in the opposite direction or using a Viewport and a Camera objects
Pressing R on the keyboard, Y on the gamepad, or double-clicking/double-tapping will reset the camera position, rotation, and scale
Pressing B on the keyboard or A on the gamepad will toggle batching
Pressing C on the keyboard or B on the gamepad will toggle culling
Pressing F on the keyboard will toggle full screen
Pressing P on the keyboard or Start on the gamepad will pause the application
Pressing Escape on the keyboard or Guide on the gamepad will quit the application

Text Rendering

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Bitmap font support via AngelCode’s generator
Text alignment: left, center, right
Kerning pairs for precise spacing
UTF-8 encoded Unicode characters

apptest_clones

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

This test is not interactive and only stresses the object cloning system to highlight errors.

Controls

Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application.

Input

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

GLFW 3, SDL 2, or Qt 5 backends for window and input on PC
- Native input backend on Android
Handles mouse, keyboard, touch, and controller inputs
Joystick support with hot swap and SDL 2 gamepad mappings

apptest_filebrowser

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

A basic but working file browser based on ImGui, with a list of pinned directories, custom coloring, permissions support, multiple sorting types, file types, and extension filters.

The same code is used in SpookyGhost with the addition of icons.

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface and navigate the filesystem.
Drag and dropping directories to the pinned list on the left by will add them to the list.
Drag and dropping a directory/file to the browser on the right will go to that/the containing directory.
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application.

Lua Scripting

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Extensive Lua API bindings
Use Lua for full games or selective behaviors/data
LuaCATS annotations for type-checking and IDE autocompletion (with the Lua Language Server)
Hot-reloading: full state reset or fast reload

apptest_font

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

A test that loads some fonts and displays strings in text nodes, with and without kerning.

If the nCine has been compiled with ImGui some of those options can be tweaked with an interface.

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface
Pressing CTRL + H on the keyboard will show or hide the ImGui interface
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

Job System

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Lock-free work-stealing queue with parent–child jobs, continuations, and parallel loops
CPU-topology aware thread pool with automatic affinity assignment
Fast user-space semaphore for efficient thread synchronization
Batch job submission for reduced scheduling overhead
Built-in debug tools: job state tracking, detailed logging, Tracy zones, statistical counters
Public API for direct access to the job system

apptest_gui

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

A test showing some bouncing sprites and interfaces to control some parameters.

Based on the enabled integrations and the preferred backend you might see the ImGui, Nuklear, and Qt5 interfaces, even all at once!

This was once called apptest_scene

Video

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the interfaces
Pressing P on the keyboard, or the left mouse button, or tapping the screen if no interface is available will pause the application
Pressing CTRL + H on the keyboard will show or hide the ImGui and the Nuklear interfaces
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

Texture Formats

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Image formats: PNG, WebP
GPU compressed formats: ASTC, ETC2, ATC, PVR, DXT
Container formats: KTX, PVR, DDS

apptest_jobsystem

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

A test for the multi-threaded job system supporting all of its features like parent/children relationship, continuations, parallel for, jobs spawning more jobs, job system satistics.

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface
Pressing CTRL + H on the keyboard will show or hide the ImGui interface
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

ImGui Integration

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Full Dear ImGui integration
Usable for in-game UIs or debug overlays
On-screen statistics for rendering and Lua
Line plots for inspecting values over time

Nuklear integration for skinnable userc interfaces

apptest_joystick

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

Gamepad support has always been very important for the nCine and this test shows information about the connected gamepad and visual feedback about its axes, buttons, and hats.

Controls

Connect a gamepad to see visual feedback about the state of its axes and buttons.

Press the Back button on the gamepad to enable or disable the vibration, if available
Pressing the left/right trigger when vibration is enabled, will vibrate the left/right motor
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

Low-Level

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fully C++11-compliant codebase
High-precision monotonic timers
Atomic counters with multiple memory orders
Thread creation, synchronization, and affinity control
Lightweight math library for vectors, matrices, and quaternions
Flexible logging system with console and file output
FileSystem API for querying and manipulating paths, files, and directories
Custom memory allocators (linear, stack, pool, free list)

apptest_loading

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

A test for the loading system of all types of resources: textures, sounds, fonts, Lua scripts, and shaders.

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface
Pressing CTRL + H on the keyboard will show or hide the ImGui interface
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

Template Library

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Custom containers: arrays, lists, hashmaps, hashsets, sparse sets
Forward and reverse iterators for containers and strings
Unique and shared pointer implementations
STL-like algorithm and method naming for easy adoption

apptest_lua

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

By default, this test will load the example script.lua but you can supply another script as the first parameter when launching it on the command line.

When running on a platform with writable files, the loaded script can be edited, reloaded, and executed again with the changes.

Controls

Press the left or the right mouse buttons to set the positions of the sprites
Press V to toggle the screen blur using viewports and custom shaders
Press the Back button on the gamepad to enable or disable the vibration, if available
Pressing the left/right trigger when vibration is enabled, will vibrate the left/right motor
Pressing F on the keyboard will toggle full screen
Pressing F5 or 5 on the keyboard will reload the same script
Pressing CTRL + H on the keyboard will show or hide the ImGui interface
Pressing P on the keyboard or Start on the gamepad will pause the application
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

Tracy Instrumentation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

CPU and GPU zone profiling
Plot custom values (vertices, render commands, etc.)
Call stack collection support
Memory profiling via overloaded new/delete
Lua script zone markers

apptest_luareload

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

This test shows you how to pass data between the C++ application and a Lua script with ad-hoc custom tables.

It also shows how to hot-reload a script to update the parameters of your program without recompiling or restarting it.

Controls

Pressing the left button and dragging the mouse around will move the particle system
Pressing F5 or 5 on the keyboard will reload the same script with a different parameter that will result in different particle colors
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

Cross-Platform

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Platforms: Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, and Emscripten
- Tested on Raspberry Pi 4B, Android TV, Android Wear, Chrome, and Firefox
Compilers: GCC, Clang, Apple Clang, MSVC, MinGW-w64, and Emscripten
Build options: static or dynamic library, CMake-based scripts
Packages: Windows and macOS installers, Arch Linux and MSYS2 pacman packages
Android asset files support for streamlined mobile integration

apptest_meshdeform

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

This test shows one big MeshSprite object being deformed and animated.

You can choose between three types of deformations and three different animations, or deform it freely with the mouse, the touch, or the gamepad.

Controls

Pressing A or the left arrow on the keyboard, clicking or tapping the left half of the screen, or pressing the left gamepad bumper will change the deformation
Pressing D or the right arrow on the keyboard, clicking or tapping the right half of the screen, or pressing the right gamepad bumper will change the animation
Pressing B on the keyboard or A on the gamepad will toggle batching
Pressing C on the keyboard or B on the gamepad will toggle culling
Pressing P on the keyboard or Start on the gamepad will pause the application
Pressing Escape on the keyboard or Guide on the gamepad will quit the application

Development Tools

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Unit testing with Google Test and coverage reports via Gcovr
Microbenchmarking with Google Benchmark
Automated documentation with Doxygen and LDoc
Static and runtime analysis with Cppcheck and Valgrind
Consistent code style enforced with clang-format

apptest_meshsprites

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

The test shows the same scene using regular Sprite objects with blending, or with MeshSprite objects composed of an inner opaque part and a transparent border.

Controls

Pressing B on the keyboard or A on the gamepad will toggle batching
Pressing C on the keyboard or B on the gamepad will toggle culling
Pressing T on the keyboard or X on the gamepad will toggle between individual textures and a texture atlas (more chances for batching)
Pressing V on the keyboard or the right bumper on the gamepad will toggle between simulating a camera by moving sprites in the opposite direction or using a Viewport and a Camera objects
Pressing M on the keyboard or the left bumper on the gamepad will toggle between using Sprite or MeshSprite objects
Pressing P on the keyboard or Start on the gamepad will pause the application
Pressing 1, 2, 3, 4, or 8 will progressively animate fewer sprites
Pressing R on the keyboard or Y on the gamepad, or double-clicking or double-tapping will reset the camera zoom
Pressing F on the keyboard will toggle full screen
Pressing Escape on the keyboard or Guide on the gamepad will quit the application

apptest_multitouch

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

GitHub

On Android or a laptop with a touch screen, this test will show you the position of your fingers on the screen.

Controls

Use the touch screen to tap with multiple fingers. Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application.

apptest_particles

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

A test that shows a particle emitter with some preset affectors and emitting particles.

If the nCine has been compiled with ImGui some options can be tweaked with an interface.

Controls

Pressing W/A/S/D, dragging while pressing the left mouse button, touching with one finger, or moving the left gamepad stick will move the particle emitter
Pressing the arrow keys, dragging while pressing the right mouse button, touching with two fingers, or moving the right gamepad stick will move the emission direction
Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface
Pressing CTRL + H on the keyboard or Back on the gamepad will show or hide the ImGui interface
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

apptest_rotozoom

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

A very simple test showing a bunch of sprites rotating, zooming, and moving around while maintaining a square formation.

Controls

Pressing B on the keyboard or A on the gamepad will toggle batching
Pressing C on the keyboard or B on the gamepad will toggle culling
Pressing the left bumper on the gamepad, or the left mouse button, or tapping the screen with one finger will pause sprites rotation
Pressing the right bumper on the gamepad, or the right mouse button, or tapping the screen with two fingers will pause the square sprites formation
Pressing F on the keyboard will toggle full screen
Pressing P on the keyboard or Start on the gamepad will pause both the sprite rotation and the square formation
Pressing Escape on the keyboard or Guide on the gamepad will quit the application

apptest_scaling

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

A test showing nCine support for the window scale factor of a monitor.

You can drag around the window on a monitor with a different scale factor to see it automatically resized.

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface
Pressing 1, 2, 3, or 4 will center the window on the first, second, third or fourth monitor
Pressing 5, 6, 7, or 8 will go full screen on the first, second, third or fourth monitor
Pressing CTRL + H on the keyboard will show or hide the ImGui interfaces
Pressing F on the keyboard will toggle full screen
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

apptest_shaders

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

A test that shows the custom shaders API and how to do post-processing with viewports. You will see regular sprites, mesh sprites, and some multi-textured normal mapped sprites, all using custom shaders and with batching!

The ImGui interface will allow you to tweak the lighting parameters for normal mapped sprites and change the post-processing between bloom (using multiple render targets and downsampling) and a separable Gaussian blur.

Video

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface
Dragging the mouse while pressing the left button, touching with one finger, or moving the left gamepad stick will move the light
Pressing B on the keyboard or A on the gamepad will toggle batching
Pressing C on the keyboard or B on the gamepad will toggle culling
Pressing T on the keyboard or X on the gamepad will toggle between individual textures and a texture atlas (more chances for batching)
Pressing Y on the gamepad will reset the light position to the center of the screen
Pressing R on the keyboard will toggle between the original and the custom shader for regular and mesh sprites
Pressing V on the keyboard will toggle between different no post-processing and blur
Pressing L on the keyboard will toggle between different no post-processing and bloom
Pressing the right bumper on the gamepad will cycle between no post-processing, blur, and bloom
Pressing 1, 2, or 3 will change the number of blur passes in post-processing
Pressing CTRL + H on the keyboard will show or hide the ImGui interface
Pressing F on the keyboard will toggle full screen
Pressing P on the keyboard or Start on the gamepad will pause the application
Pressing Escape on the keyboard or Guide on the gamepad will quit the application

apptest_simdbench

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

This test was made while researching Intel and ARM Neon SIMD intrinsics and their performance.

The branch with intrinsics was not merged back as auto-vectorization seemed fast enough, while this benchmark was added to the rest of the tests.

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

apptest_sinescroller

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

A small homage to old-skool demoscene sine scrollers, with letters forming a message and bouncing in a sine wave.

Controls

Pressing B on the keyboard or A on the gamepad will toggle batching
Pressing I on the keyboard or X on the gamepad will toggle batching with indices
Pressing F on the keyboard will toggle full screen
Pressing P on the keyboard or Start on the gamepad will pause the application
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

apptest_texformats

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

This is a test for different texture format loaders, especially for GPU compressed formats (like ASTC, DXT, or ETC), and for container formats (like PVR, KTX, or DDS).

Controls

Pressing the left/right or A/D keys, clicking or touching the screen on the left or right side, moving the left gamepad stick left/right, pressing the D-pad left/right, or using the bumpers will change the texture
Pressing the up/down or W/S keys, clicking or touching the screen on the upper or lower side, moving the left gamepad stick up/down will change the MIP level
Pressing Escape on the keyboard or Guide on the gamepad will quit the application

apptest_viewports

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

This is a test for the Viewport and Camera classes. It shows multiple viewports arranged in a vertical split screen and with picture-in-picture.

You can tweak both the viewport and the camera parameters with an ImGui interface.

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface
Pressing W/A/S/D, dragging while pressing the left mouse button, touching with one finger, or moving the left gamepad stick will pan the camera
Pressing the left/right arrow keys, dragging horizontally while pressing the right mouse button or touching with two fingers, or moving the right gamepad stick left/right will rotate the camera
Pressing the up/down arrow keys, dragging vertically while pressing the right mouse button or touching with two fingers, or moving the right gamepad stick up/down will zoom the camera
Scrolling the mouse wheel will also zoom the camera
Pressing R or double-clicking will reset the camera position, rotation, and scale
Pressing B on the keyboard will toggle batching
Pressing C on the keyboard will toggle culling
Pressing I on the keyboard will enable or disable the mouse input
Pressing CTRL + H on the keyboard will show or hide the ImGui interface
Pressing F on the keyboard will toggle full screen
Pressing P will pause the application
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application

glapptest_fbo_cube

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

This test is only available when the nCine is built as a static library and it uses the OpenGL API layer directly, bypassing the scenegraph and the sprite systems.

Controls

Pressing the left bumper on the gamepad, or the left mouse button, or tapping the screen with one finger will pause the triangle animation
Pressing the right bumper on the gamepad, or the right mouse button, or tapping the screen with two fingers will pause the cube animation
Pressing F on the keyboard will toggle full screen
Pressing P on the keyboard or Start on the gamepad will pause both the triangle and the cube animations
Pressing Escape on the keyboard or Guide on the gamepad will quit the application

Long-Term Roadmap

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Data-oriented ECS for parallel entity updates
System-agnostic rendering API with Vulkan backend
- Additional backends: Metal, DirectX 12, WebGPU
iOS platform support
Cross-platform editor built with Dear ImGui
2D skeletal animation system

2026

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

March 2026

Improvements

Refactor all iterators to respect STL-style invariants
Add support for std::initializer_list to nCTL containers
Add a new Pair and Span classes that works similarly to their STL counterparts
Fix self-assignment with StaticHashMap and StaticHashSet classes
It’s now possible to access some nCine and project version strings as numbers in the VersionNumbers struct
The fast-hash algorithm has been improved and it’s now used by default for all hashmap and hashset classes

February 2026

Breaking Changes

Renamed ITextureLoader and ITextureSaver to IImageLoader and IImageSaver
- Png and WebP sub-classes have also been Renamed

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.92.6
Added a Lua utility class to manipulate non-float color objects (nc::Color class)

January 2026

Improvements

Dependency libraries are now copied in all nCine and project artifacts for MinGW
Add a new Optional class to nCTL that works similarly to std::optional

Signed Commits

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Starting today, all nCine-related repositories will feature verified commits on GitHub.

This allows anyone to confirm that changes to the codebase are authentic and originate from the project maintainer. The signing key is published on the site and can be found at the following page: GnuPG Public Key.

The associated private subkeys are stored on a hardware security token (a YubiKey 5C NFC), which ensures that the signing keys cannot be copied or extracted from the device.

This is part of an ongoing effort to strengthen the project’s supply chain integrity and provide long-term trust in the history of the repositories.

A New Site

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

After many years with Jekyll and the Beautiful Jekyll theme by Dean Attali, the nCine official site gets a revamp thanks to Hugo and powered by the Blowfish theme by Nuno Coração. 🚀

The move brings faster builds, more flexibility, and a cleaner design. You’ll also find improved navigation, better support for images and charts, and dark mode out of the box.

Wet Paper

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub Itch.io

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

Wet Paper is an improved version of the Global Game Jam 2025 game made with the nCine. You can read more about it on its website.

Videos

Controls

Menu Navigation
- Skip Splashscreen: Escape key or Start button on a gamepad
- Move in Menu: Arrow keys, D-Pad, or left stick on first gamepad
- Select Menu Entry: Enter key or A button on first gamepad
- Go Back: Escape key, B button, or Back button on first gamepad
Other
- Pause/Unpause: Escape key or Start button on any gamepad during game (This action cannot be remapped)
Player 1 (Keyboard or Gamepad 0)
- Move Left: A key or left stick left
- _Move Right_: D key or left stick right
- _Jump_: W key or A button - Dash: S key or B button
Player 2 (Keyboard or Gamepad 1)
- Move Left: Left arrow key or left stick left - Move Right: Right arrow key or left stick right
- Jump: Up arrow key or A button
- Dash: Down arrow key or B button

You can remap all player actions from the Controls menu in-game.

Wet Paper

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The complete source code and game data for Wet Paper are now available on GitHub!

You can also play it online and watch a video on the Videos page.

The game has seen many improvements since its original Global Game Jam 2025 submission:

The codebase has been substantially cleaned up, making it a great starting point for learning the nCine API.
The ImGui debug interface has been rewritten to be more consistent and useful.
A (skippable) splash screen now welcomes you with the nCine logo. 😉
You can play with a friend, just like in the original version, or go solo.
A proper menu system has been added, fully navigable via keyboard or gamepad.
Controls are fully rebindable — assign any key or gamepad button to your preferred actions.
Game settings are saved on exit and reloaded on startup.
Match statistics are now saved while you play.
Bubbles feature a custom refraction shader, and the game view blurs when paused.
Music now plays both in the menus and during gameplay.
Gamepads will vibrate when you pop a bubble!

Wet Paper

Presented at /dev/games

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On June 5th I attended /dev/games, a two-day game development conference held in Rome.

I gave a talk about my 14-year journey developing nCine, sharing both challenges and achievements, and diving into a selection of technical details.

You can check out the interactive slides made with Sli.dev, or download the PDF version.

A video recording will be available in the coming months on the conference’s official YouTube channel.

Presenting at /dev/games 2025

Video from /dev/games

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On June 5th I attended /dev/games, a two-day game development conference held in Rome.

Now, after five months, the recording of the talk about my 14-year journey developing nCine, has been published on YouTube on the official conference channel.

You can check out online the slides or download a PDF version.

Getting Started with CLion

Sun, 11 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It has been only a bunch of days since JetBrains announced that its C++ IDE is now free for non-commercial use.

To celebrate for this happy news, the wiki has now an article showing how to setup the IDE to work with the nCine and its projects!

CLion hits a breakpoint in ncPong

nCine at the GGJ 2025

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This past weekend me and Cominu have participated to the Global Game Jam 2025 in Granada. I was there as both a jammer and an official sponsor with the nCine! 💪

With the help of two graphic artists we put together a nice little game made with the nCine, called Papel Mojado.

In the live video from the jam location you can see both a short presentation of our game and me giving away an nCine mug as a sponsor price :D

Papel Mojado

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

GGJ Entry

Papel Mojado is the original Global Game Jam 2025 entry made by Encelo and Cominu. The revamped version is called Wet Paper.

2025

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

December 2025

Breaking Changes

Removed FIXED_CAPACITY mode from the String class

Improvements

Added a new StringView class to operate over C-style character arrays
The small size optimization for strings now works for strings of 24 characters long
It’s now possible to set the resizable flag of a window after it has been created
Dependency libraries are now copied in all nCine and project artifacts for Linux
The version of the integrated Tracy has been updated to v0.13.1

New Features

Added an option to compile a smaller version of the nCine library by removing support for the scenegraph

November 2025

New Features

The job_system branch has been finally merged into master

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.92.5
The version of the integrated Tracy has been updated to v0.13.0

October 2025

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.92.4

September 2025

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.92.3
Using FindFirstFileExA with FindExInfoBasic and FIND_FIRST_EX_LARGE_FETCH for faster directory traversal on Windows

Fixes

Fixed self-assignment in some move assignment operators

August 2025

Breaking Changes

Trying to change the capacity of an Array with ArrayMode::FIXED_CAPACITY will trigger a fatal assert
Renamed Thread::yieldExecution to ThisThread::yield

New Features

Added a multi-threaded job system that is accessible to the user

Improvements

Added kernel and user-space semaphores to the thread synchronization primitives
Added a new ThisThread namespace for functions only available from the calling thread
Added atomic classes for unsigned integer types
- Added thread and signal fences, and acq_rel memory order
The Array class now better supports non-movable and non-copyable types
The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.92.2b

July 2025

New Features

Added an integration with Google Crashpad for crash reporting

Improvements

Added CMake options to extract and install debug symbols
The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.92.1
The version of the integrated Tracy has been updated to v0.12.2
apptest_filebrowser now has a directory history and related navigation buttons

Fixes

CMake version variables for projects have been fixed

June 2025

Breaking Changes

Inverted the order of the values in all Atomic*::cmpExchange() methods

New Features

Add a set of environment variables to override all the user configurable compile-time variables in AppConfiguration

Improvements

The version of the integrated Tracy has been updated to v0.12.1
The version of the RenderDoc in-application API has been updated to v1.6.0
The version of the integrated Google Test has been updated to v1.17.0
The version of the integrated Google Benchmark has been updated to v1.9.4

April 2025

Breaking Changes

Renamed nc.input.joymapped_state() Lua function to nc.input.joy_mapped_state()

New Features

Added support for joystick vibration (also in the Lua API)

Improvements

Added two new dirty bits for GPU data upload of SceneNode properties
The Node Inspector in the ImGui debug overlay shows clearer information for viewports

Fixes

Culled drawable nodes will not waste time with transformations on every frame
The OpenGL debug group for viewports has been fixed
Viewports will only clear the available attachments (no depth/stencil clear if not specified in the format)

March 2025

Breaking Changes

apptest_scene has been renamed to apptest_gui
Renamed SceneNode::setColor(Colorf color) to setColorF()
Renamed IInputManager::joystickState() to IInputManager::joyState()

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.91.9b
Added the TimeStamp::toNow() method to set a timestamp object counter to the current clock value
Added support for joystick vibration on SDL2 and Android

Fixes

Fixed the return value of SceneNode::alpha() and SceneNode::absAlpha()

February 2025

Breaking Changes

Removed isLeftButtonDown(), isMiddleButtonDown(), isRightButtonDown(), isFourthButtonDown(), isFifthButtonDown() from the MouseState class
- Use the new isButtonDown(MouseButton button) method or the ncine.input.is_mouse_button_down() Lua function instead
Removed isLeftButton(), isMiddleButton(), isRightButton(), isFourthButton(), isFifthButton() from the MouseEvent class
- Use the new button field of the MouseEvent class and compare values with the MouseButton enumeration
Renamed ncine.input.key_down() to ncine.input.is_key_down() in the Lua API
Renamed isButtonPressed() to isButtonDown() in both JoystickState and JoyMappedState classes
Renamed ncine.input.joy_button_pressed() to ncine.input.is_joy_button_down()
Renamed ncine.input.joy_present() to ncine.input.is_joy_present()
Renamed ncine.input.joy_mapped() to ncine.input.is_joy_mapped()
Renamed Application::interval() to Application::frameTime()
- Renamed ncine.application.get_interval() to ncine.application.get_frame_time()
Renamed IFrameTimer::lastFrameDuration() and IFrameTimer::currentFrameDuration() to IFrameTimer::lastFrameTime() and IFrameTimer::currentFrameTime()
- Renamed ncine.frame_timer.last_frame_duration() to ncine.frame_timer.last_frame_time()
- Renamed ncine.frame_timer.current_frame_duration() to ncine.frame_timer.current_frame_time()

Improvements

Added new isButtonPressed()/isButtonReleased() methods to the MouseState class to detect the frame when a button is pressed/released
- Also added is_mouse_button_pressed()/is_mouse_button_released() functions to the Lua input table
Added new isKeyPressed()/isKeyReleased() methods to the KeyboardState class to detect the frame when a key is pressed/released
- Also added is_key_pressed()/is_key_released() functions to the Lua input table
Added new isButtonPressed()/isButtonReleased() methods to the JoystickState and JoyMappedState classes to detect the frame when a button is pressed/released
- Also added is_joy_button_pressed()/is_joy_button_released() functions to the Lua input table
Added various utility constructors and conversion methods for the rectangle and vector classes
Added a NCPROJECT_DEBUG compiler definition for when projects are compiled in debug
Added a new NCPROJECT_ALWAYS_FIND_PACKAGES that can be useful when creating a Linux package with a dynamic nCine library
The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.91.8
The version of the integrated Google Test has been updated to v1.16.0

January 2025

Improvements

Script and callbacks errors are now shown on screen in apptest_lua/ncinelua
Added tabular character support to the TextNode class, with configurable tab size (also in the Lua API)
Implemented introspective sort for render queues, making the sorting faster and more robust

LDoc Lua API documentation

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Lua development experience is getting even better!

The documentation already available through the Lua Language Server is now available online, thanks to LDoc.

Lua Language Server support

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today you can find the nCine among the Lua Language Server official addons!

If you are using Visual Studio Code, autocomplete, type checking, and full API documentation are only one click away.

Lua development experience should be now on par with other Lua scriptable frameworks, making the whole process more pleasant and functional.

If you also install the Local Lua Debugger extension, you should have all the tools needed to create nice games with Lua and the nCine.

Please refer to the updated Wiki for more details.

Lua Language Server

nCine article in SUGO

Sat, 19 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

SUGO is a new Italian magazine about indie game development in Italy, with a nice impagination derived from traditional medias and distributed as a PDF.

In the first issue that just came out today, there is an article I wrote about the story behind nCine development.

If you understand Italian grab a copy and let me know what you think!

SUGO article

One thousand stars!

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

After thirteen years of development and five years on GitHub, the nCine has surpassed one thousand stars! ⭐

One thousand stars!

Getting started guide

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There is a new Getting Started guide in the project wiki. It comes with many screenshots, covers both Lua and C++, and it should be easy to follow.

The C++ part of the guide targets three different IDEs: Visual Studio 2022, Visual Studio Code, and Qt Creator.

I have removed any references to the old GitHub releases from the site. I have collated all the changes they introduced in a new Changelog page.

I have also removed the links to the video tutorials from the wiki, they were deprecated and confusing. The videos have been unlisted from the Youtube channel.

I hope those changes better reflect the current state of the project and its setup process. 👌

Custom engines presentation

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today I gave a presentation for GRInteractiva about in-house custom engines: why they are so important, what are some indie games based on custom technology and, of course, a small overview of the nCine.

The slides are made with Remark and are available on GitHub.

An attendee also wrote an article in Spanish about the talk. 😉

GRInteractiva XII

2024

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

December 2024

Breaking Changes

Renamed ncine.audiobuffer to ncine.audio_buffer in the Lua API
Renamed ncine.audiobuffer_player to ncine.audio_buffer_player in the Lua API
- Renamed get_audiobuffer() and set_audiobuffer() to get_audio_buffer() and set_audio_buffer()
Renamed ncine.audiostream_player to ncine.audio_stream_player in the Lua API
- Renamed num_samples_in_streambuffer() and streambuffer_size() to num_samples_in_stream_buffer() and stream_buffer_size()

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.91.6
The version of the integrated Google Benchmark has been updated to v1.9.1
The GameController mapping database has been updated to the one in SDL 2.30.10

November 2024

Breaking Changes

Renamed permissions() to get_permissions() in the filesystem table of the Lua API
Removed the get_ prefix from get_num_vertices(), get_num_bytes(), and get_num_indices() in the mesh sprite Lua functions

Improvements

Lua statistics are now disabled by default to enable hooking by external debuggers like the Lua Local Debugger
The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.91.5
Multiple additions, fixes, and expansions to the Doxygen documentation
Added some new Lua API functions
- Added input.num_joymappings() to return the number of available mappings for joysticks
- Added particle_affector.get_base_scale() to return the base scale factor of a size affector
- Added a constructor overload that takes the position as a vector for animated and mesh sprites
Many viewport, shader, and shaderstate Lua functions now return a boolean to indicate the result
When calling the Lua particle_system.add_size_affector() function, you can now use a vec2 for the scale factors

Fixes

Added missing overload constructors for mesh and animated sprites in the Lua API
Added some missing button names for mapped joysticks in the Lua API
Minimum CMake version has been raised to 3.10 to avoid a deprecation warning
Added the missing dpi field to the Lua table returned by gfx_device.get_monitor()
Fixed the Lua viewport.set_camera() function to accept nil as a camera parameter
Added missing joystick buttons to Lua input event tables

October 2024

Improvements

Add MemoryFile class constructors that own a memory buffer
The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.91.4
The version of the integrated Google Test has been updated to v1.15.2
The version of the integrated Google Benchmark has been updated to v1.9.0

September 2024

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.91.2
The version of the integrated Tracy has been updated to v0.11.1
Swap deprecated ALooper_pollAll() function for ALooper_pollOnce() on Android

July 2024

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.90.9

June 2024

New Features

Added many new OpenAL source properties to the audio players
Added support for some useful OpenAL extensions
- pause_device, deferred_updates, source_spatialize
Added optional support for EFX effects and filters, also in the Lua API

Improvements

The sound sources are now arranged in a pool for the players to pick, fixing some issues with playing
Handling the OV_HOLE vorbisfile error code by continue decoding instead of fatal asserting
Added a stress test mode to apptest_audio
Added support for joystick axes mapped as buttons
The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.90.8
The version of the integrated Google Benchmark has been updated to v1.8.4

Fixes

Fixed a couple of alignment faults with Emscripten and some apptests

April 2024

Breaking Changes

Renamed nc::IAudioDevice::PlayerType::AUDIOSTREAM to nc::IAudioDevice::PlayerType::STREAM

March 2024

Breaking Changes

The freezePlayers()/unfreezePlayers() methods of the audio device have been removed
- The Lua functions freeze_players()/unfreeze_players() have been removed too

February 2024

Improvements

Added support for custom memory allocators and window position hints of GLFW 3.4
Some minor changes to the IAllocator methods that handle debug allocation entries
The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.90.4

January 2024

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.90.1

Fixes

Fixed compilation when enabling the custom memory allocators
Moved Particle.h to public headers to fix compilation warnings
- The header should not be directly included by users

Fireman

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Itch.io

Fireman is a GMTK Game Jam 2023 entry made by Ana30.

Fireman game for GMTK 2023

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Made by Ana30 as a submission for the GMTK Game Jam 2023, Fireman is an nCine game where you play as the web browser.

Fireman

2023

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

November 2023

New Features

There is now an option to use binary shaders: they will be compiled on the first run and then cached on disk
- Default shaders will use this feature as well, if enabled in the configuration
- Batched shaders can be compiled twice to query the max number of batches for the UBO size

Improvements

A new class has been added to calculate a 64-bit hash from strings or from file information (also in the Lua API)
Emscripten stack size has been increased from the default 64 Kb to 128 Kb
The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.90

October 2023

Breaking Changes

The Timer::sleep() method now needs an integer number of milliseconds instead of a float number of seconds.
The join() and exit() methods of the Thread class do not support custom return values anymore

Improvements

The version of the integrated Tracy has been updated to v0.10

Fixes

The Thread class can be be move constructed or move assigned without causing random crashes

September 2023

Improvements

Updated support for Gradle plugin 8.1.0 and build tools 33.0.1 on Android
The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.89.9
The version of the integrated Google Test has been updated to v1.14.0
The version of the integrated Google Benchmark has been updated to v1.8.3

July 2023

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.89.7

June 2023

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.89.6

May 2023

New Features

Add a new apptest_bunnymark, an nCine port of the famous BunyMark benchmark

Improvements

Added an interface class to tweak the frame timer options
- A second timer has been added to the frame timer to calculate averages

April 2023

Breaking Changes

The homeDir() method of the FileSystem class have been renamed to homePath()
The get_home_dir() function of the Lua filesystem table has been renamed to get_home_path()
The get_datapath() and get_savepath() functions of the Lua filesystem table have been renamed to get_data_path() and get_save_path()

New Features

The apptest_lua has a new ImGui interface and can now automatically reload a modified Lua script

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.89.5
The version of the integrated Google Test has been updated to v1.13.0
There is now a new method in the FileSystem class to return the path to store cached files

March 2023

Improvements

The version of the integrated Tracy has been updated to v0.9.1
The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.89.4

February 2023

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.89.3

January 2023

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.89.2

Jazz² Resurrection

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

Jazz² Resurrection is the C++ version of the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 reimplementation project by DeathKiller.

Videos

Native version of Jazz² Resurrection

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Jazz² Resurrection is reimplementation of Jazz Jackrabbit 2, a 1998 platform game by Epic Games (at the time called Epic MegaGames). The author, DeathKiller, used C# and parts of the Duality 2D framework to put together the project.

He is now porting it to C++ and he decided to use nCine for the job! 💪

The native project embeds a modified version of the engine to make the porting easier and faster. You can have a look at the source code on GitHub.

ncJump on the Steam Deck

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I have recorded a video of ncJump running (and jumping 😉) on the Steam Deck!

2022

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

December 2022

Breaking Changes

The animation_index() and frame() functions of the Lua animated sprite have been renamed to get_animation_index() and get_frame()

Improvements

The Lua API for the Application class has now a function to get the AppConfiguration table
Scale down the size of the error messages in apptest_lua if does not fit the screen
Added a method to RectAnimation to automatically add multiple rectangles from a spritesheet
Added functions to the Lua API to retrieve the array of children of a node

Fixes

The minimum and maximum values of a joystick axis are now queried on Android
When calling Sprite::setTexture() with the same texture the rectangle gets reset
Create or destroy the Windows console if changing the console log level with the setter

November 2022

Improvements

The version of the integrated Tracy has been updated to v0.9
The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.89.1
It is now possible to choose the render mode used by a TextNode
- There is a new render mode for colored fonts that uses the sprite shader
On Android there is now always a fallback joystick mapping based on the default system configuration

Fixes

The joystick GUID calculation on Android has been updated to be again compatible with the SDL2 controller database

October 2022

Breaking Changes

The IGfxDevice::setResolution() method has been removed. Depending on the full screen state, use setWindowSize() or setVideoMode()
The inFullscreen and isResizable flags of the AppConfiguration class have been renamed to fullScreen and resizable
To query the supported video modes, you have to query the list of connected monitors with IGfxDevice::numMonitors() and IGfxDevice::monitor()

New Features

It is now possible to enumerate connected monitors on all desktop backends
- You can now query window scaling and drawable resolution to better support HiDPI monitors
- The Lua API has been extended to support the new methods of the IGfxDevice class
- There is a new apptest_scaling application that shows automatic window size scaling

Improvements

Failing to load a file will now never exit the application

Fixes

Various fixes about window size, window position, and full screen

September 2022

New Features

There is a new onFilesDropped() input callback to support drag’n’drop from the system to the application window

Improvements

The JNI helper classes have been refactored to use global references and be more stable and secure
Shader programs now detach shaders before deleting them, so they are really deleted and memory is freed
The new NCINE_UNDEFINED_SANITIZER CMake options adds support for the UBSan of GCC and Clang

Fixes

The Android manifest has been updated to allow compilation on latest Android versions

August 2022

Improvements

Improvements to ParticleSystem and to particle affector classes
- It is now possible to add affector steps out of order
- A new getter method in ParticleSystem allows the manipulation of affectors
- Affector steps can be manipulated via a new Lua API
A new AudioStreamPlayer getter returns the sample offset relative to the whole stream
The audio, font, and particles apptests have brand new ImGui interfaces

July 2022

Breaking Changes

The viewport chain is now an array accessible with the static Viewport::chain() method
The Application::rootViewport() method has been renamed to screenViewport()
The GLShaderAttributes class have been deleted and its functionalities transferred to GLShaderProgram
Added the get_ prefix to some Lua getters of the MeshSprite class
The Android sources are now an independant module inside the app directory

New Features

New Shader and ShaderState classes to support custom user shaders (Lua API too)
- Mesh sprites now support custom vertex format, if the appropriate shader is provided
- The script.lua example has been updated to show post-processing using viewports and shaders
Added support for multi-texturing and multiple render targets
A new apptest_shaders application has been added to test custom shaders with batching
- It shows post-processing blur, normal mapping, and bloom

Improvements

The version of the integrated Tracy has been updated to v0.8.2
The render batcher is now able to deal with custom shaders, providing the user writes a batched shader
Improved and simplified API for viewports (also ported to Lua)
Added methods to set OpenGL debugging labels for shaders, textures, and viewport’s FBOs
There is now an onDrawViewport() callback that you can use to set shader uniforms when drawing a particular viewport
There is also an onResizeWindow() callback that can be useful to recreate post-processing viewport textures
Added missing getters and more methods to the Lua API of the MeshSprite class
Updated support for Gradle plugin 7.2.0, build tools 33.0.0, and NDK r25 on Android
Added support for the Vector4 class in the Lua API

Fixes

Added the missing SceneNode::lastFrameUpdated() method to the Lua API
You will never see again errors about reserved OpenGL uniforms or attributes not being found (like gl_VertexID)
Non-compiling shaders will not fatal assert like they did before
Fixes to the methods dealing with vertices and indices of the Lua API of the MeshSprite class
The minBatchSize/maxBatchSize rendering settings have been fixed and will not cause flickering when batching

June 2022

Breaking Changes

Added the get_ prefix to some Lua getters of the Application and IAudioDevice classes

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.88
No more crashes when dereferencing Lua light user data pointers of the wrong type
- The tracking of pointers to C++ objects created in Lua has improved a lot

Fixes

Trying to play a sound when there are no available audio players will not crash the application
Fixed the parameters retrieving of Lua joystick state functions

May 2022

Breaking Changes

Added the get_ prefix to the Lua getters of the Font class

Improvements

The version of the integrated Tracy has been updated to v0.8.1
Added a static method to the TextNode class to calculate the boundaries for arbitrary text and font
The Font class can now be constructed using an existent Texture object
- This allows for texture sharing (like an atlas) or textures constructed from texels

April 2022

Breaking Changes

The DrawableNode::LayerBase enumeration has been deleted
- This also means that TextNode will not be on a higher layer by default
The SceneNode::draw() method now returns a boolean to indicate if it has been rendered

New Features

You can set the layer of a SceneNode and it will carry this value over to its children
- A child node with a layer different than 0 will not inherit it from its parent
Added a scenegraph visit order when sorting the rendering commands

Improvements

The apptest_anchor application can now show and modify all the different order and layer values

Fixes

The apptest_scene and apptest_viewports applications now work correctly on Qt5

March 2022

Breaking Changes

The Object::name() method now returns an array of characters
Inverted position and rotation view values for the Camera. It will now behave as an object that you move around the scene.

Improvements

The version of the integrated Tracy has been updated to v0.8
Allow a relative path from executables to data on Linux

Fixes

Fixed an issue with ImGui and Nuklear uploading VBOs before setting a vertex format (and consequently a VAO)
Map and set containers can now perform a rehash when their values or keys are non-copyable classes
Updating node transformation before committing uniform blocks

February 2022

New Features

There is now a new nctl::StaticString class that stores its characters on the stack

Improvements

The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.87
Using the new event-based ImGui input API on all backends
Math classes like vectors, matrices, and quaternions will now initialize their members in the default constructor
Disabling the cursor will now enable a relative mouse motion if supported (SDL and GLFW)
The Qt5 widget exposes a flag to disable per-frame updates
It is now possible to retrieve last frame AABB of a DrawableNode
More information will be presented when the OpenGL debug context is enabled (marker annotations)

Fixes

The fixed capacity property is now correctly initialized when copy constructing, move constructing, and move assign a String
A Sprite or a MeshSprite without a texture would make the application crash when a texture was assigned
A TextNode without a font would make the application crash when a font was assigned
A scene node with a negative scale factor will invert its rotation sign

January 2022

Breaking Changes

The public x and y fields of a SceneNode have been made protected for consistency
The IGfxDevice interface cannot set the OpenGL viewport and clear color, use viewports instead
The ImGui and Nuklear layer settings are part of the GUI settings structure in the Application class

New Features

Multiple viewports to support offscreen rendering or split screen
A camera system to move around without transforming a parent node (slow on the CPU)
The viewport and camera systems can also be used via the Lua API
A new apptest_viewports application has been added to test the viewport and camera systems

Improvements

Dirty bits to update shader uniforms only when they change
Dirty bits to transform a node or update its AABB only when needed
There is now a centralized pool of render commands that serves multiple classes
There are now OpenGL state classes to track the viewport and the clear color
The Rect class has some new useful manipulation methods (also in the Lua API)

June 2020 - December 2021

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Breaking Changes

The nctl::Array and nctl::StaticArray subscript operator will not grow the array size
The return type of the createAppEventHandler function has been changed to a unique pointer
The SceneNode query methods for drawing and updating have been prefixed with is, for example isEnabled()
The setWidth() and setHeight() methods of the BaseSprite class have been removed
The errorToString() function of the LuaDebug namespace has been renamed to correct a typo
The parameters order of LuaStateManager::runFromMemory() has changed
The default line height of a TextNode object is now its font line height instead of the base
The AnimatedSprite class now stores RectAnimation objects instead of smart pointers
The type alias declarations for hash containers with string keys have been removed
The run() method of the LuaStateManager class has been renamed to runFromFile()
The onFrameEnd() callback is now invoked before the OpenGL buffers swap
The assign() method of nctl::String will now always truncate the destination
- The new replace() method wil behave like the old assign() method
Pushing an element beyond the capacity of an array will now cause a fatal assert
Popping an element from an empty array will now cause a fatal assert
Retrieving a front or a back element from an empty array will now cause a fatal assert
Retrieving a front or a back element from an empty list will now cause a fatal assert

New Features

The engine now supports custom memory allocators
- All containers have been updated to allow the specification of an allocator
- Unique pointers support custom deleters in a compressed pair
- A new apptest_allocators application has been added to test the four included allocator types
- You can set a name for an allocator and it will be used in Tracy too
The FileSystem API now supports Android asset FileSystem
It is now possible to load textures, sounds and fonts from memory buffers
There is a new loading API for resources as textures, sounds, and fonts
- The user can create empty resources and load data at a later time
- Data can be loaded inside a resource multiple times
- Failed loads will never result in a fatal assert nor modify a resource
- A texture can be loaded from uncompressed texels and audio from PCM samples
- A new apptest_loading application has been added to test the enhanced loading capabilities
Sprites can be created without a texture, they will be rendered in solid color with a simpler shader
TextNode objects can be created without assigning a Font
AudioBufferPlayer can be created without assigning an AudioBuffer
It is now possible to move construct or move assign resource and node classes
A clone() method has been added to node classes to perform an object copy
A new onTextInput event has been added to receive UTF-8 characters
It is now possible to query and set the window position on all desktop backends
There is now an onPostUpdate() callback that you can use to access the node transform for the current frame
- It is also possible to change it inside the callback by using SceneNode::setWorldMatrix()
The nctl::String class will now automatically reallocate memory to expand its capacity and never truncate by default
- The old behavior is still available by specifying the nctl::StringMode::FIXED_CAPACITY option
The template project files are now part of the engine
- You only need a simple CMakeLists.txt file for your project
You can save a texture from video memory to RAM and then from RAM to disk as a PNG or WebP image
On desktop platforms the IGfxDevice provides a flashWindow() method to make the taskbar flash
nCine can now run on a Raspberry Pi
- Various fixes to better support OpenGL ES features and older CMake versions
It is now possible to disable the scripting API while retaining the Lua integration

Improvements

The version of the integrated Tracy has been updated to v0.7.8
The version of the integrated ImGui has been updated to v1.86
The version of the integrated Google Test has been updated to v1.11.0
The version of the integrated Google Benchmark has been updated to v1.6.1
All containers now split the allocation phase from object construction
- Creating a container will only reserve memory for the elements
- Inserting or removing elements will trigger construction and destruction
On Android unfound libraries will not be linked anymore to the game library
- The Java activity will not load the nCine or OpenAL libraries if unneeded
It is now possible to set the ARGB components of a color with a hexadecimal code
The nctl::String class can now decode Unicode code points from UTF-8 strings and vice versa
The Font class now supports Unicode characters exported in the Fnt descriptor file
The Android software keyboard visibility can be toggled on and off
The seek position of an audio buffer can be queried and modified
It is now possible to set a custom line height for a TextNode object
When loading a RGB texture it is possible to treat a color as transparent
You can now use nctl::String and const char * as keys for hash containers without specifing an hash function
There is a new removeAllChildrenNodes() method in the SceneNode class
You can retrieve the current RectAnimation of an AnimatedSprite with the currentAnimation() method
Errors in Lua scripts will not cause the engine to assert and exit
- It is now possible to load a Lua script without running it
- More information will be provided when a script fails to load or to run
The engine project is now shipping with an .editorconfig configuration file
The OpenGL class that keeps track of the blending state can now use separate functions for RRB and alpha
The file extension comparison method is now case-insensitive
The FileSystem class returns constant strings to prevent move assignemnt and any modification to the capacity of destination ones
There is now a fixExtension() function in the FileSystem class to assure that a file has the intended extension

Fixes

GCC hardening compiler flags have been fixed with the explicit addition of PIE flags
The root node of the scenegraph now honors its own transformations
The buffer of an AudioBufferPlayer class was not detached from the OpenAL source when it finished playing
The setSize() method of nctl::Array will now create objects when extending an array size
The ImGui and Nuklear drawing commands were previously appended to the render queue with one frame delay
Fix ncine.sprite.set_flipped_x() and set_flipped_y() functions in the Lua API

November 2019 - May 2020

Breaking Changes

Removed flipX() and flipY() sprite methods
- They have been superseded by setFlippedX() and setFlippedY()
Removed setOpaqueTexture() sprite method
- You can achieve the same result with the general setBlendingEnabled(false)
The Matrix4x4<T>::scale() static method has been renamed to Matrix4x4<T>::scaling()
The dataPath() and savePath() methods of IFile have been moved to the new FileSystem class
- The access() method of IFile have been superseded by the more powerful query methods of the FileSystem class
- The nc.application.datapath() Lua function is now nc.fs.get_datapath()
The children() method of a SceneNode now returns a nctl::Array

New Features

Scene nodes support anchor points and non-uniform scaling
- There is a new apptest_anchor application that shows all new node features
Drawable nodes support custom alpha blending factors
Nuklear integration for fully skinnable user interfaces
You can now embed the whole engine inside a Qt5 widget by choosing the Qt5 desktop backend
- If the Qt Gamepad library is available it will be used for gamepad input events
Touch events are supported on desktop through the SDL2 and Qt5 backends
- They now also provide information about touch pressure
The FileSystem class has been added to help you query and manipulate paths, files, and directories
- It comes with a new apptest_filebrowser application that shows an ImGui based file browser
ImGui and Nuklear integrations support custom fonts loading
Added a new unclamped three channels ColorHdr class
The IAppEventHandler class now receives onSuspend() and onResume() events

Improvements

The logging system is initialized earlier and can be used inside onPreInit()
The Android asset manager is initialized earlier and can be used inside onPreInit()
Handling of windows resizing events has been fixed
Emscripten applications react to window resizing and fullscreen events
Emscripten applications can now load and save local files
Sprite flipping methods now take a status flag
The version of the integrated Tracy has gone from v0.5 to v0.6.3
The version of the integrated ImGui has gone from v1.73 to v1.76
Deletion of children scene nodes upon parent destruction has been made optional
The Matrix4x4<T> can now translate, rotate and scale in place, avoiding a full matrix multiplication
- It can now also be multiplied on the right side of a vector
Automatic sprite batching is now available on Emscripten
- You can choose the fixed batch size with a variable in the AppConfiguration class
Added support for Google ANGLE libraries on Windows
Sorting of render commands is now stable
- If two commands have the same material sorting key then a secondary key based on node creation time is used
All kind of hashmap and hashset containers can now correctly use const char * as key type
Added two low-level classes to save textures as Png or WebP images
It is now possible to set the swap interval on all desktop backends with IGfxDevice::setSwapInterval()
The new String::append(const char *) overload will prevent allocating a string object when appending
Visiting the scenegraph should be faster as children are now stored in an array instead of a list
The new unordered remove methods of arrays will remove elements faster when preserving order is not required
The debug overlay interface has now a node inspector to query and modify nodes in the scene
Android Gradle Plugin, Build Tools, compileSDKVersion and targetSDKVersion have all been updated to newer versions

Fixes

The Emscripten port compiles with upstream LLVM WebAssembly backend
Some minor fixes in the color classes code
Culling of drawable nodes works with negative scaling factors
Scene nodes are now correctly transformed before children thus eliminating any update delay with nodes chains
Caching of TextNode boundaries does not introduce a one frame delay on update
The Lua stack is now cleaned after a failure in calling a function
- Previously the stack would easily overflow if some callbacks were not defined
String lenght is now updated if a string is truncated when using a formatting method
Fixed OpenGL FBO wrapper class when dealing with reading and drawing buffers

nCine used at university

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The nCine has been recommended as the framework to be used by students for the second lesson homerwork of the Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games course at the prestigious Charles University in Prague.

Many thanks to Dr. Jakub Gemrot for choosing the project, for providing a custom installation guide for students, and for his feedback about the Windows build instructions.

Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games

The Runtime Podcast

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The nCine and its ten years of development are the main focus of the fifth episode of The Runtime, a podcast about software development.

I have been interviewed by Rafael Kennedy about my work on the nCine during those years: from why I felt the urge to start developing it to some of the design decisions and trade-offs I had to made.

The Runtime

Ten years anniversary

Sat, 19 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Today marks the tenth anniversary since the first commit in 2011!

Happy birthday to the nCine! 🍾

SpookyGhost released on GitHub!

Sun, 23 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

SpookyGhost, the procedural sprite animation tool made with the nCine, has been released as FOSS.

Not only it has now a MIT license but it has also been updated with many new features and bug fixes.

On GitHub you will find the SpookyGhost and the SpookyGhost-data repositories along with the manual.

You will also find the demo among the web-tests.

SpookyGhost

ncJump

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A new release of ncJump has been published today by Antonio “Fahien” Caggiano.

ncJump is a platform game that uses Box2D for the physics, ImGui for the editor and of course the nCine. It has been developed as an nCine reference version of the CS50’s lecture 4.

On Fahien’s GitHub you can find the ncJump, ncJump-data and ncJump-artifacts repositories.

You can read progress update articles and interact with the author on both GitHub Discussions and Itch.io.

As with other nCine projects, there is an Emscripten version that you can try online on Fahien’s site.

ncJump

ncTiledViewer

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

ncTiledViewer is a viewer for some of the map types that you can create with Tiled.

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface
Pressing B on the keyboard or A on the gamepad will toggle batching
Pressing C on the keyboard or B on the gamepad will toggle culling
Pressing H on the keyboard or Start on the gamepad will hide or show the ImGui interface
Pressing Escape on the keyboard will close the file dialog window
Pressing CTRL + Q on the keyboard or Guide on the gamepad will quit the application

ncTiledViewer

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

ncTiledViewer is a viewer for Tiled maps with an ImGui interface. It is able to parse TMX and TSX files using pugixml and then display the map using sprites.

On GitHub you will find the ncTiledViewer and the ncTiledViewer-data repositories for you to build the application.

You will also find the same demo among the web-tests.

ncTiledViewer

Icculus Microgrant 2020

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The new year brings great news: the nCine has been awarded one of the $250 microgrants from icculus!

icculus sponsor

For more information about previous year projects you can read the 2019 edition article from icculus’ personal blog.

ncJump

Sat, 12 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

ncJump is a platform game built with the nCine by Fahien, with an ImGui level editor and using Box2D for the physics.

Devlogs: NcJump: a jumping project

Videos

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface
Pressing W/A/S/D on the keyboard, or moving the left gamepad stick will move the character
Pressing Space on the keyboard or A on the gamepad will make the character jump
Pressing CTRL + Q on the keyboard will quit the game

JugiMapGuiDemo

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

There is a new JugiMap Framework demo published by Jugilus that shows the new GUI system.

On GitHub you will find the ncJugiMapGuiDemo and the ncJugiMapGuiDemo-data repositories for you to build the test.

You will also find the same demo among the web-tests.

ncJugiMapGuiDemo

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

ncJugiMapGuiDemo is the fourth of four framework demos of the JugiMap map editor. It shows the custom GUI toolkit of JugiMap in action.

Videos

Controls

Use the mouse or the touch screen to interact with the interface.

C.I. migrated to GitHub Actions

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

All nCine projects are now continuously integrated using GitHub Actions workflows. The old Azure Pipelines setup has been disabled and it will not be used anymore.

GitHub Actions

With this migration, the C.I. is now more integrated with the code as everything is accessible from GitHub. For example, have a look at the nCine actions page showing the building workflows. You will also notice the new CodeQL workflow and status badges in the README.md file.

There is also another news related to building the source code: the develop branch does not exist anymore. It is a transition from the Git Flow model to GitHub Flow.

Improvements will appear in feature branches: they will be pushed on GitHub and updated regularly. Every feature branch will have one or more accompanying issues with explanations, instructions, and user comments. This change will allow for a broader testing phase, a transparent development process, and clearer tracking of progress.

ncTracer

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Today I decided to publish pmTracer and ncTracer on my personal GitHub space. You will also find online the ncTracer-data and the ncTracer-artifacts repositories.

I have been working on the first, a ray tracing and path tracing library, for quite some time now. It is based on my studies of Ray Tracing from the Ground Up by Kevin Suffern, a book I recommend if you want to start from scratch on the topic and before delving into the more complete but also harder to understand Physically Based Rendering:From Theory To Implementation. 😉

I also developed an ImGui front-end to make it easier to perform tests and gather important feedback about speed and correctness, two things that are severely lacking at the moment. 😅

But I decided to publish both projects either way because it can give me the motivation to refine them and you the opportunity to have a look at an application that uses the OpenGL and the threading private API of nCine by compiling it statically.

You can try the Emscripten version here.

ncTracer

JugiMapSpriteTimelineAnimation demo

Sat, 27 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The third JugiMap Framework demo by Jugilus that shows how to animate sprites with the new timeline feature has been published on GitHub.

You will find the ncJugiMapSpriteTimelineAnimation and the ncJugiMapSpriteTimelineAnimation-data repositories for you to build the test.

You will also find the same demo among the web-tests.

ncJugiMapSpriteTimelineAnimation

Sat, 27 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

ncJugiMapSpriteTimelineAnimation is the third of four framework demos of the JugiMap map editor. It shows the camera moving around in a level while different objects and props are animated.

Videos

Controls

Pressing the left mouse button or touching the screen will temporarily pause the camera movement.

Release 2020.05

Tue, 19 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A new release has been just finalised: nCine 2020.05.

Some of its highlights are covered by the following video:

Most notable entries from the slides:

JugiMap supports the nCine
- Sprite system enhancements
Qt5 desktop backend
Nuklear GUI integration
FileSystem API
Support for ANGLE rendering libraries on Windows

For a more detailed list of changes and improvements you can refer to the Release 2020.05 page.

Don’t forget to check the updated DoxyGen documentation and the Lua API functions list.

ncJugiMapParallaxScrolling

Mon, 18 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

ncJugiMapParallaxScrolling is the second of four framework demos of the JugiMap map editor. It shows the camera moving horizontally on a background made of multiple layers with parallax scrolling.

Videos

Controls

Pressing the left mouse button or touching the screen will temporarily pause the camera movement.

November 2019 - May 2020

Fri, 01 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Breaking Changes

Removed flipX() and flipY() sprite methods
- They have been superseded by setFlippedX() and setFlippedY()
Removed setOpaqueTexture() sprite method
- You can achieve the same result with the general setBlendingEnabled(false)
The Matrix4x4<T>::scale() static method has been renamed to Matrix4x4<T>::scaling()
The dataPath() and savePath() methods of IFile have been moved to the new FileSystem class
- The access() method of IFile have been superseded by the more powerful query methods of the FileSystem class
- The nc.application.datapath() Lua function is now nc.fs.get_datapath()
The children() method of a SceneNode now returns a nctl::Array

New Features

Scene nodes support anchor points and non-uniform scaling
- There is a new apptest_anchor application that shows all new node features
Drawable nodes support custom alpha blending factors
Nuklear integration for fully skinnable user interfaces
You can now embed the whole engine inside a Qt5 widget by choosing the Qt5 desktop backend
- If the Qt Gamepad library is available it will be used for gamepad input events
Touch events are supported on desktop through the SDL2 and Qt5 backends
- They now also provide information about touch pressure
The FileSystem class has been added to help you query and manipulate paths, files, and directories
- It comes with a new apptest_filebrowser application that shows an ImGui based file browser
ImGui and Nuklear integrations support custom fonts loading
Added a new unclamped three channels ColorHdr class
The IAppEventHandler class now receives onSuspend() and onResume() events

Improvements

The logging system is initialized earlier and can be used inside onPreInit()
The Android asset manager is initialized earlier and can be used inside onPreInit()
Handling of windows resizing events has been fixed
Emscripten applications react to window resizing and fullscreen events
Emscripten applications can now load and save local files
Sprite flipping methods now take a status flag
The version of the integrated Tracy has gone from v0.5 to v0.6.3
The version of the integrated ImGui has gone from v1.73 to v1.76
Deletion of children scene nodes upon parent destruction has been made optional
The Matrix4x4<T> can now translate, rotate and scale in place, avoiding a full matrix multiplication
- It can now also be multiplied on the right side of a vector
Automatic sprite batching is now available on Emscripten
- You can choose the fixed batch size with a variable in the AppConfiguration class
Added support for Google ANGLE libraries on Windows
Sorting of render commands is now stable
- If two commands have the same material sorting key then a secondary key based on node creation time is used
All kind of hashmap and hashset containers can now correctly use const char * as key type
Added two low-level classes to save textures as Png or WebP images
It is now possible to set the swap interval on all desktop backends with IGfxDevice::setSwapInterval()
The new String::append(const char *) overload will prevent allocating a string object when appending
Visiting the scenegraph should be faster as children are now stored in an array instead of a list
The new unordered remove methods of arrays will remove elements faster when preserving order is not required
The debug overlay interface has now a node inspector to query and modify nodes in the scene
Android Gradle Plugin, Build Tools, compileSDKVersion and targetSDKVersion have all been updated to newer versions

Fixes

The Emscripten port compiles with upstream LLVM WebAssembly backend
Some minor fixes in the color classes code
Culling of drawable nodes works with negative scaling factors
Scene nodes are now correctly transformed before children thus eliminating any update delay with nodes chains
Caching of TextNode boundaries does not introduce a one frame delay on update
The Lua stack is now cleaned after a failure in calling a function
- Previously the stack would easily overflow if some callbacks were not defined
String lenght is now updated if a string is truncated when using a formatting method
Fixed OpenGL FBO wrapper class when dealing with reading and drawing buffers

JugiMapParallaxScrolling demo

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

There is a new JugiMap Framework demo published by Jugilus that shows how to render a beautiful parallax scrolling landscape.

On GitHub you will find the ncJugiMapParallaxScrolling and the ncJugiMapParallaxScrolling-data repositories for you to build the test.

You will also find the same demo among the web-tests.

ncJugiMapParallaxScrolling

nCine as a custom Qt5 widget

Thu, 20 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

It is now possible to use Qt5 as an input and window management backend on desktop platforms.

The engine will render inside a custom QOpenGLWidget and receive all input events from Qt5. if Qt Gamepad is available gamepad events will be received as well.

SpookyGhost available on itch.io

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

An initial demo of SpookyGhost has been published on itch.io.

SpookyGhost is a procedural sprite animation tool made with the nCine.

SpookyGhost prototype

SpookyGhost

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub Itch.io

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

SpookyGhost is a cross-platform open-source procedural animation tool for sprites. You can read more about it on its website.

Videos

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface. The ImGui menu items will show their keyboard shortcuts.

More information can be found in the official documentation.

ncJugiMapFrameworkDemo

Tue, 24 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

ncJugiMapFrameworkDemo is the first of four framework demos of the JugiMap map editor. It shows sprites walking in a level while the camera moves around.

Videos

Controls

Use the mouse or the touch screen to interact with the interface.

JugiMap supports the nCine!

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A new version of the JugiMap map editor tool has been released and it now officially supports the nCine! You can use the JugiMap Framework to load a map created with the tool.

On its website you can try a web version of the Framework Demo that uses the nCine. 😉

On GitHub you will find the ncJugiMapFrameworkDemo and the ncJugiMapFrameworkDemo-data repositories for you to build the test.

ncJugiMapFrameworkDemo

Release 2019.10

Mon, 21 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The culmination of five months of work is finally here: nCine 2019.10.

Some of the highlights for this release are:

Emscripten is supported as target platform: you can use the nCine for web games! 🕸️
New AngelCode’s FNT format parser
When you compile the engine you can choose to disable the support for various dependency libraries and features
The user can now query the available fullscreen video modes on PC and choose one
Fixes and enhancements to OpenAL implementation
It is possible to defer shader checks and queries for a decreased starting time
Refactoring of the clock and timestamp classes
Update of Tracy integration to v0.5
Update of ImGui integration to v1.73

During the same time there has been a lot of work in side projects with the addition of:

ncline, the nCine command line tool
ncTemplate, a template project for applications and games made with the nCine
ncInvaders, a simplified version of Space Invaders made with the nCine

The site have also been updated with:

A web-tests page for you to run all tests, tools and games in the browser
A gallery with a selection of screenshots and videos
A download section
A video tutorials page with a list of video from the YouTube channel
A donate page that allows you to support and sponsor future development

Video Tutorials

Sun, 20 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

There is a new Video Tutorials page in the Learn section. It contains a list of tutorials videos from the nCine channel on YouTube.

Two videos have already been uploaded, they explain how to start with the engine by using ncline and the ncTemplate project.

May 2019 - October 2019

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Breaking Changes

The Font constructor has now inverted parameters: fntFilename as first and texFilename as second
- The reason for that is the new single parameter constructor
SceneNode::parentNode() getter has been renamed to just parent(), to be consistent with the new setParent() setter
The xResolution and yResolution fields of the AppConfiguration class have been replaced by a single 2D resolution vector
- The setResolution() helper method has been removed as it is now possible to call resolution.set()
- In Lua x_res and y_res have been replaced by the resolution 2D vector
The old non ImGui debug overlay has been deleted. If you need the debug overlay you also need to enable the ImGui integration
- As part of this change the fontTexFilename and fontFntFilename strings in the AppConfiguration class have been deleted
The withProfilerGraphs and withInfoText flags in the AppConfiguration class has been unified into a single withDebugOverlay flag
- You have to explicitely set the new flag to true to enable the debug overlay even when your application is compiled in debug mode
Many nctl::String::copy() methods have been turned into assign() methods in order to be more consistent with STL
The Timer::now() method has been removed, refer to the new TimeStamp class

New Features

Emscripten is now supported as a target platform, meaning you can now use the nCine for web games! 🕸️
The user can now query the available fullscreen video modes on PC and choose one
- The IGfxDevice interface has been enriched with methods to query the current video mode, the list of available ones and to set a new mode
A new deferShaderQueries flag has been added to the AppConfiguration classes
- When it is set to true all the shader error checks and introspection queries are deferred upon the first use of the shader, if it is ever used.
- The option allows for decreased starting time at the expense of possible stutters when the shader is first used in a frame
New methods have been added to the audio classes to query their state
- They were used in the new Audio Players section of the ImGui debug overlay interface
If you use the nCine compiled as a static library you have now access to more functionalities in the OpenGL classes
- You can now create PBOs and TBOs.
- You can now use GL_SAMPLER_1D and GL_SAMPLER_3D types in shaders
- A new GLCullFace class has been added to track OpenGL face culling state
The Font class now relies on FntParser class to extract all the data from a FNT file
- More checks are now performed to ensure the text can be properly rendered
- More glyph channel configurations are now supported and rendered correctly
- The Font class can be constructed with a single parameter: the FNT file. The texture will be loaded according to the file specified in the first page tag.
When you compile the engine you can now choose to disable the support for various dependency libraries and features
- You can disable threads support, Lua bindings, Png or WebP image loading, Ogg Vorbis sound loading or audio altogether

Improvements

The version of the integrated Tracy has gone from v0.4.1 to v0.5
- It is now easier to use Tracy in custom nCine projects, including on Android
- Threads can be named so that they can be tracked in the Tracy profiler
- You can now also retrieve current thread priority or set a new one
- All log entries are written out as coloured Tracy messages
- Threads id are invalidated on join and cancel so that they can be reused
The version of the integrated ImGui has gone from v1.70 to v1.73
The GameController mapping database has been updated from the one included in SDL 2.0.9 to the one in SDL 2.0.10
The SceneNode classes has seen the addition of long awaited helper methods in the shape of setParent(), alpha() and absAlpha()
- The first one makes it easy and intuitive to set a node parent without going the opposite way by calling parent->addChildNode(this)
- The alpha related methods should make it easier to query for a node alpha value
- There are also new Lua methods for scene nodes: set_parent(), get_alpha() and set_alpha()
The new TimeStamp class can be used to collect timestamps at the full precision of the internal clock
- The Time class has been enhanced with stop() and totalTime() methods to aggregate multiple time spans
- Most methods of the TimeStamp class are also accessible through the Lua API
It is now possible to assign() a certain numbers of characters from a C string to an nctl::String object
You can now enable the ImGui debug overlay even when the scenegraph is disabled
- In this case be sure to track OpenGL states using GLBlending, GLDepthTest and the new GLCullFace class
The Font class has a new query method, numKernings(), to retrieve the number of kerning pairs in a font (it is called num_kernings() in Lua)
You can access the array of animations in an AnimatedSprite and the array of rectangles in a RectAnimation
On Windows the executables use the Windows subsystem instead of the console one
- They will also expose version properties thanks to the VERSIONINFO file
The Android Gradle plugin version has been updated from 3.4.0 to 3.4.1 and Android build tools from 28.0.3 to 29.0.2
- The changes have been reflected in the template project as well

Fixes

Compiler warnings related with nctl::UniquePtr wrapping forward declared classes have been fixed. They could have sometimes led to incorrect object deletions and possible leaks. 😨
The OpenAL implementation has been rewritten and many bugs that were lurking in the code should have been squashed 🐛
Some changes dictated by the layout of the new ncTemplate project
- The CMake scripts now expect a nCine-data/icons/icon.ico file instead of the old nCine.ico
- Installers are now built with the CPACK_PACKAGE_VENDOR and CPACK_PACKAGE_HOMEPAGE_URL variables correctly set
The returned value for GL_MAX_UNIFORM_BLOCK_SIZE is now clamped to 64kB because some OpenGL drivers might return very big numbers

ncline

Fri, 27 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

GitHub

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

ncline is the nCine command line tool. It uses Git and CMake to automate the download, configuration, and compilation processes for the engine and its projects.

Instructions

Read the README.md for more informations.

ncline

Tue, 17 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

ncline is a tool to automate the download, configuration and compilation processes for the engine and its accompanying projects. It has been uploaded on GitHub where you will find the ncline and the ncline-artifacts repositories.

ncTracer

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

ncTracer is an ImGui interface for the Poor Man’s Tracer, a very simple and minimal ray tracing and path tracing library.

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface. Pressing Escape on the keyboard will quit the application.

ncInvaders

Tue, 30 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

ncInvaders is a simplified Space Invaders clone made with the nCine as an example game.

Videos

Controls

Pressing the left/right arrow keys, clicking or touching the screen on the left or right side, or moving the left gamepad stick left/right will move the spaceship
Pressing Space on the keyboard, or the A button on the gamepad, or clicking or touching the center of the screen will make the spaceship fire a rocket
Pressing R on the keyboard or Start on the gamepad will reset the game
Pressing P on the keyboard or Back on the gamepad will toggle the pause
Pressing Escape on the keyboard or Guide on the gamepad will quit the game

ncTemplate

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

If you go on GitHub today you will find the ncTemplate and ncTemplate-data repositories.

You can use them as a starting point for your nCine projects.

ncPong, ncParticleEditor and ncInvaders have been adapted to use the new template scripts.

ncInvaders

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

ncInvaders, a simplified version of Space Invaders made with the nCine, has been uploaded on GitHub. You will find the usual ncInvaders, ncInvaders-data and ncInvaders-artifacts repositories online.

It has also been compiled with Emscripten and made available here.

ncInvaders

Emscripten port

Sun, 14 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A new and exciting platform has been added to the nCine already long list: Emscripten. It means that you can now easily port your games and tools to the web!

Try out some of the web tests and have a look at the build instructions to learn more.

Eight years in the works

Wed, 19 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This is not the first anniversary post on the site, but there is an interesting difference this year.

Now that the source code have been released you can have a look at that very first commit from eight years ago!

Happy birthday, nCine. 🍾

Article on GameFromScratch

Mon, 17 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Today GameFromScratch has talked about the nCine!

With an article on the site, a tweet (actually two 😄) and a ten minutes overview video on YouTube.

Article on Phoronix

Sat, 01 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

It is an honor for the nCine to appear in an article on Phoronix today!

Many thanks to Michael Larabel for the very first press coverage about the project.

Source code released

Thu, 30 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The time has come, the source code has been released! Go on GitHub and take a look at the nCine organization.

You will find the engine code, the Pong example project, the particle editor, the data sets, the CMake scripts used to compile all the dependency libraries on PC and Android, the Jekyll website and the artifacts from the Azure Pipelines continuous integration.

Follow the project on Twitter and come on Discord to share your ideas and your nCine games! 😉

ncParticleEditor

Sat, 15 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

ncParticleEditor is a particle editor with an ImGui interface that uses the nCine particle emitter API for its effects.

Videos

Controls

Use the mouse, the keyboard, the gamepad, or the touch screen to interact with the ImGui interface. The ImGui menu items will show their keyboard shortcuts. Pressing CTRL + Q on the keyboard will quit the application.

Six years ago

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Another year has passed and the project activity is still as high as it was in the very beginning!

ncPong

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Run with Emscripten GitHub

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

ncPong is a minimal Pong clone made with the nCine as an example game.

Videos

Screenshots

Part of the source code of the Lua version of ncPong

Controls

Pressing the up/down or W/S keys, clicking or touching the screen, or moving the left gamepad stick up/down will move the paddle
Pressing R on the keyboard or Start on the gamepad will reset the game
Pressing Escape on the keyboard or Guide on the gamepad will quit the game

Closed beta

Sun, 26 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A short testing period among a small group of testers has just started.

Five years ago

Sun, 19 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Five years ago, on June the 19th of 2011, the initial source code for the nCine was committed in Mercurial.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Yet another game engine, what a complete waste of time! Am I right? 😒

Well, it surely wasn’t a waste of time for me, I learned plenty of stuff and had a lot of fun programming it. And it has also started to be useful to others!

It might not captivate the interest of who uses big engines like Unreal, Unity or Godot, but it should attract users of frameworks like Cocos2d, MonoGame, LibGDX, LÖVE, SFML, LWJGL, Phaser, HaxeFlixel, or raylib.

Some use cases

1. It could be used for small cross-platform 2D games. You can program your game in C++ for maximum performance and the ability to customize the engine itself or you can use the Lua bindings for prototypes or game jams.

2. You can use the ImGui integration and put together game developing tools like I did with my particle editor or with SpookyGhost. They would be cross-platform and work on Android and the web as well.

3. When compiled as a static library it becomes a graphics demo framework and every low-level implementation class would be accessible, including the OpenGL and threading layers. All the other features would still be available, like the cross-platform abstraction, the template library, or the RenderDoc and Tracy integrations.

4. Being a minimal open source engine programmed by a single person, it can represent a starting point to learn and experiment with game engine programming. 😉

Credits

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This site is built with Hugo using the Blowfish theme by Nuno Coração.

The background image is by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash.

This site is licensed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license.

Donate

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m an engine and graphics programmer from the AAA game industry that has been pursuing a dream since 2011: to write my own engine and witness what people can create with it!

nCine is a cross-platform 2D game engine written in C++ with an emphasis on performance. It is also scriptable in Lua for more flexibility. You can use it to create your games and tools, or to learn and experiment with its source code.

With your donations I can bring my commitment to a whole new level and push even harder in important aspects like performance, usability, and extensibility.

Platforms

GitHub Sponsors

Sponsor

Patreon

Become a Patron!

Ko-Fi

Buy Me a Coffee

LiberaPay

PayPal

Download Instructions

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

These buttons let you quickly download prebuilt nCine binaries for your platform. For more platforms or branches, click All Platforms.

Before building or running projects, it may be useful to read the Getting Started guide.

ncline

Windows macOS 15 (AppleSilicon) Linux All Platforms

ncline is an all-in-one command-line tool to download, configure, and build the libraries, the engine, and example projects.

Sources

All source code is available on GitHub. Start by cloning and building:

nCine-libraries and nCine-android-libraries
nCine and nCine-data

Then optionally clone and build the example projects:

See Build Instructions for details.

F.A.Q.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

How do you pronounce “nCine”?

I like to think it is pronounced as in “n-scene”.
Why the name?

The name is a combination of “engine” and “Encelo”, my nickname on the internet. 😄
What does the logo represent?

The logo unifies all the letters that form the name of the project in a single entity. This concept is evident when you have a look at the banner image used for Android TV.
Why don’t you use the STL? Why implementing a subset from scratch?

The main purpose of this project is learning new things. Reimplementing template based containers, iterators and algorithms gave me enough confidence to handle templates in C++.

Having used Google Test and Google Benchmark also gave me enough confidence to know that it somehow works and sometimes performs well. 😉
Are you going to support feature “X”?

The project is a constant work in progress but my spare time is limited and many basic functionalities are not there yet. You can help immensely by trying to develop something with the features that are available now and by giving me feedback about how to improve things.

If you feel generous you can also support the project with a donation. 🙏
Is the engine going to be limited to two dimensions forever?

Supporting a third dimension is a very tempting but also demanding job. Currently I have more pressing features on my to-do list.

GnuPG Public Key

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

nCine’s commits are signed using the author’s GnuPG public key.

The same key is also published on encelo.github.io, GitHub, keys.openpgp.org, and keyserver.ubuntu.com.

Fingerprint: 387C DEFE 8A87 AEB3 2897 8C80 7289 85A1 8FEE 4962