Getting Started

Installing the DevKitPro toolchain

Before downloading Morpheus, we need to install the DevKitPro toolchain that will be used to cross-compile our code for the Game Boy Advance (GBA) and the DS. In order to install the necessary components needed, follow this guide and make sure to install the GBA and the DS (or NDS) developer libraries (also known as gba-dev and nds-dev).

Installing Python 3

For many of the build scripts to function, a working Python 3 installation is needed. While the scripts have only been tested on Python 3.8 and Python 3.9, any Python version above 3.6 should work fine (If you still run into trouble with 3.6 or 3.7, install one of the tested versions). You can install Python from The Python Software Foundation’s website or through your preferred package manager (sudo apt install python3 on Debian/Ubuntu).

Installing CMake

For building Morpheus projects, we strongly recommend that you use CMake as it is the easiest and most cross-platform way to build your Morpheus projects. You can install CMake from cmake.org or through your preferred package manager (sudo apt install cmake on Debian/Ubuntu).

Installing Morpheus

Now that the toolchain, CMake, and Python 3 has been installed, we can now install Morpheus! Download the library package from the itch page here

Warning

Builds ending with -dev are unstable developer builds created upon every commit to the dev branch. Use builds ending with -release if you want to download the latest stable release.

Creating your first project

After you download the Morpheus library package and extract the zip file, you can use the Project Generator buildtool located in the buildtools/project_generator folder of the Morpheus release package to generate the project. You can do this by using your respective python interpreter (python on Windows, python3 otherwise) to run the buildtool like so:

python3 <morpheus dir>/buildtools/project_generator/project_generator.py <morpheus dir> <new project name> <project directory>

where <morpheus dir> is the directory you extracted the Morpheus release package to, <new project name> is the new Morpheus project name, and <project directory> is the (optional) directory to place the new project in. If a <project directory> is not given, the project will be created in the current working directory. Afterwards, you can generate builds by invoking cmake on the build directory with the PLATFORM environment variable either set to gba for the Game Boy Advance or nds for the Nintendo DS. For example, if you build for the Game Boy Advance, the command would look like

PLATFORM=gba cmake <src dir>

in Linux/macOS and

$env:PLATFORM=gba cmake <src dir>

in Windows Powershell, assuming <src dir> is the path to the source dir, and you are building for the GBA.

If you are building on Windows, I suggest you use the “NMake Makefiles” as I’ve had the most success compiling Morpheus with that generator. In addition, you might need to specify the python3 executable if it not found by CMake. Doing both of these suggestion would result in the following recommended command for building on Windows: $env:PLATFORM="gba"; cmake .. -G"NMake Makefiles" -DPYTHON3="C:\Program Files\Python39\python.exe" From there, you should be able to build Morpheus by invoking nmake within the build folder, assuming that you have the 64-bit version of Python 3.9 installed in the standard location on the C drive and that you are compiling for the GBA.

Afterwards you should be able to build the project, and run the generated roms on an emulator. If all goes well, you should see something like this: