Skip to content
This repository has been archived by the owner on Jan 4, 2022. It is now read-only.

Latest commit

 

History

History
173 lines (160 loc) · 6.63 KB

README.md

File metadata and controls

173 lines (160 loc) · 6.63 KB
Raw

Ren'Py for Nintendo Switch

This is a port of Ren'Py, a visual novel game engine, to the Nintendo Switch for homebrew purposes.
If you are looking for a commercial port for publishing to the Nintendo eShop, contact Ratalaika Games.
The repository is located at the following URL: https://github.com/uyjulian/renpy-switch
Ren'Py is a visual novel engine that is written using Python.
Discussion of this project is on the Lemma Soft Forums.

Building

These steps are to be done on a clean Ubuntu 18.04 based image. Some system files are modified during this process, which may be a security risk, so please perform these steps on a separate (virtual) machine.
Clone this repository.

git clone https://github.com/uyjulian/renpy-switch.git

Chage directory to the repository directory.

cd renpy-switch

Install prerequisites.

sudo bash setup.bash

Set up the docker environment.

sudo bash setup-docker.bash

Prepare RomFS.

bash prepare-romfs.bash

Configure and build.

sudo bash build-switch-docker.bash

The resulting files are:

  • build-switch/renpy-switch.nro - The main executable

Debugging

The log for Ren'Py is recorded in the log.txt in the Ren'Py Logs folder of the SD card root.
If a Python error occurs, the traceback will be recorded in the traceback.txt file in the Ren'Py Logs of the SD card root.
If a native code error occurs, the elf file included in the SDK, which contains symbols, along with the crash report generated by Atmosphere (usually located in the crash_reports folder in the atmosphere folder of the SD card root), can be used to pinpoint the location of the error.
The following steps can be used to find the source file name, line, and function name of the native code error:

  1. In the generated crash report file, find the line(s) that contains renpy-switch +
  2. Open GDB with the elf file by running the following: aarch64-none-elf-gdb /path/to/renpy-switch.elf
  3. Make a note of the address such as 0x99aabbcc (indicated by the number after the string(s) found in step 1)
  4. Enter the following in the GDB console: info line *0x99aabbcc (where 0x99aabbcc is the address noted in step 3)

File Formats

It is highly recommended that you use the following file formats:

  • WebP for image assets
  • Opus/WebM for audio assets
  • VP8/Opus/Matroska for video assets
  • RPAv2 for game archives

If these formats are not used, there is a possibility of the program working incorrectly or performance being impacted.
Free tools such as FFmpeg, cwebp, and ImageMagick are available to convert file formats.
rpatool can be used to create and merge RPA files, and also convert to RPAv2 format.
The file format can be changed without changing the file extension, so no script (rpy file) changes are needed.
The file example.png can be in the WebP file format without changing the filename to example.webp.

RomFS Integration (from source)

To integrate the game into one single nro file, place game files in a folder named Contents in the directory romfs (see section File system layout), and build as described in the "Building" section.
NOTE: If you do not compile the py and rpy files to pyo and rpyc respectively by running the game at least once (using either this port or upstream Ren'Py) on a read-write file system, the loading time required until the title screen is seen will be increased.

RomFS Integration (from SDK archive)

To integrate the game into one single nro file, follow these steps:

  1. Place game files in a folder named Contents in the folder named romfs (see section File system layout).
  2. Install package switch-tools from devkitPro pacman (follow the installation instructions here if you have not already)
  3. Add the tools to your PATH: export PATH=${DEVKITPRO}/tools/bin:$PATH
  4. Generate control.nacp: nacptool --create TITLE AUTHOR VERSION control.nacp
  5. Package everything into an nro file: elf2nro renpy-switch.elf OUTPUT.NRO --romfsdir=romfs --nacp=control.nacp --icon=LOGO.JPG

File system layout

The following files or folders are required to be in the same directory as the .nro or in RomFS:

  • lib.zip - contains the Python stdlib, Ren'Py modules, pygame_sdl2 modules, and libnx binding modules.
  • renpy - contains the common directory used by Ren'Py.
  • renpy.py - startup script for Ren'Py.
  • game - contains the game files. This is where you place the game.

libnx bindings

Ren'Py for Nintendo Switch supports mostly complete libnx bindings.
The bindings are generated by SWIG.

To use the bindings, you need to import the library libnx.

import libnx

To initialize a structure, you can use the following syntax:

clkrstSession = libnx.ClkrstSession()

To access members of a structure, you can use the following syntax:

service = clkrstSession.s

To access a enumeration, you can use the following syntax:

libnx.PcvModuleId_CpuBus

To call a function, you can use the following syntax:

libnx.clkrstOpenSession(clkrstSession, libnx.PcvModuleId_CpuBus, 3)

Example use cases of this feature:

  • Mounting game RomFS
  • Creating save data on the system memory
  • Opening a video in the web browser applet (with hardware acceleration)
  • Opening the software keyboard applet

Available Python native modules

The following native Python modules are available in Ren'Py for Nintendo Switch:

  • _bisect
  • _codecs
  • _codecs_cn
  • _codecs_hk
  • _codecs_iso2022
  • _codecs_jp
  • _codecs_kr
  • _codecs_tw
  • _collections
  • _csv
  • _ctypes_test
  • _elementtree
  • _functools
  • _heapq
  • _hotshot
  • _io
  • _json
  • _locale
  • _lsprof
  • _md5
  • _multibytecodec
  • _random
  • _sha
  • _sha256
  • _sha512
  • _socket
  • _sre
  • _struct
  • _symtable
  • _testcapi
  • _weakref
  • array
  • audioop
  • binascii
  • bz2
  • cPickle
  • cStringIO
  • cmath
  • datetime
  • errno
  • fcntl
  • future_builtins
  • imageop
  • itertools
  • math
  • operator
  • parser
  • posix
  • pyexpat
  • strop
  • time
  • timing
  • unicodedata
  • xx
  • xxsubtype
  • zipimport
  • zlib

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license. Please read the LICENSE file for more information.