NICO Game Framework

NICO is a simple game framework for the Nim programming language inspired by the PICO-8 API.

Supported platforms:

• Windows
• Linux, including RaspberryPi
• Web/HTML5 via Emscripten
• Android
• MacOS

What it does:

• Paletted Bitmap Graphics (you can load a custom palette up to 256 colors)
• Fixed or flexible custom display resolution with pixel scaling
• Sprite drawing, load png spritesheets, specify tile size per sheet (can load multiple and switch between them)
• Tilemap drawing, import json from Tiled
• Drawing primitives: pixels, lines, rectangles, circles, triangles
• Input: Keyboard, Gamepad, Mouse, Touch
• Sfx playback: load and play ogg vorbis files, configurable number of mixer channels.
• Built in chip synth
• Music playback: stream ogg vorbis files.
• Custom audio callback for generating your own sounds via code.
• Text drawing: load and draw fonts from png, supports variable width fonts.
• Export animated gifs

Installation

• You will need to have the Nim compiler installed
• Run nimble install nico
• Run nicoboot <yourname> <projectname> <directory> to create a new directory with an example base ready to start working with.
• You can watch a quick tutorial here
• Native build:
  • You'll need SDL2 for native builds, on Windows, ensure SDL2.dll is copied to your project directory.
  • From your project directory run nimble runr to build and run the example as a native build.
  • From your project directory run nimble rund to build and run the example as a debug native build.
• Web build:
  • For web builds you'll need Emscripten.
  • From your project directory run nimble webr to build for web in release mode.
  • From your project directory run nimble webd to build for web in debug mode.

Learning

• API Documentation
• Examples

Why should you use NICO?

• It's fun and easy to use
• Learn Nim the fun way! It's a great new statically typed programming language that compiles to C.
• You can build for Web, Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, and potentially other platforms.

Future work:

• API Documentation
• More examples
• Tests
• Utility modules for common higher level tasks
• Browser to browser networking using WebRTC
• Immediate mode GUI
• 3D Utils and Rasterizer

Games made using NICO:

• Vektor 2089
• Smalltrek
• Moving in
• Cute Cats Daily
• Super Netwalk Deluxe