ngdevkit is a C/C++ software development kit for the Neo-Geo AES or MVS hardware. It includes:

• A toolchain for cross compiling to m68k, based on GCC 5.5 and newlib for the C standard library.

• C headers for accessing the hardware. The headers follow the naming convention found at the NeoGeo Development Wiki.

• Helpers for declaring ROM information (name, DIP, interrupt handlers...)

• A C and ASM cross-compiler for the z80 (SDCC 3.7), for developping your music and sound driver.

• An open source replacement BIOS for testing your ROMs under you favorite emulator.

• Tools for managing graphics for fix and sprite ROM.

• Support for source-level debugging with GDB!

• A modified version of the emulator GnGeo, with support for libretro's GLSL shaders and remote debugging!

• A simple scanline pixel shader for a nice retro look!

You need to install various dependencies to build gcc, sdcc and ImageMagick for all the graphics trickery. You also need SDL 2.0 for the emulator and its source-level debugging support. On a Debian-derived distro, this can be done with:

apt-get install gcc curl unzip imagemagick
GCC_VERSION_PKG=$(apt-cache depends gcc | awk '/Depends.*gcc/ {print $2}')
apt-get build-dep $GCC_VERSION_PKG
apt-get build-dep --arch-only sdcc
# gcc 5.5 currently only works with isl <= 0.18
# recent distros ship a specific package for isl 0.18
apt-get install libisl-0.18-dev || true
apt-get install libsdl2-dev
apt-get install python-pygame

If running OS X, you will need XCode and brew:

brew install imagemagick
brew deps gcc | xargs brew install
# gcc 5.5 currently only works with isl <= 0.18
brew remove --force isl
brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/87ddc3513e1d15f23d2bb270f63827a5daf1259c/Formula/isl.rb
brew deps sdcc | xargs brew install
brew install sdl
# "easy_install pip" if you don't have pip yet, then
pip install pygame

Compiling the devkit for Windows 10 is supported via WSL, detailed setup and build instructions are available in the the dedicated README.

You may want to change Makefile.config to select a GNU mirror which is close to you for maximum download speed. Then, build the entire toolchain with:

make

You can see how to use the toolchain by compiling demos in directory examples. For instance:

cd examples/01-helloworld
make
make nullbios

This will compile the example and copy the replacement BIOS into directory rom. You can now run it with you favorite emulator.

Once compiled, the devkit is available in subdirectory local. In order to use it from the terminal, you need to set up various environment variables. This can be done automatically with:

eval $(make shellinit)

You will then have access to all the binaries from the toolchain, including the emulator and the debugger.

Testing your ROM is quite straightforward. For instance, these are all the steps needed to compile and execute the example ROM:

eval $(make shellinit)
cd examples/01-helloworld
make
make nullbios
make gngeo # or make gngeo-fullscreen for more fun

If you're running a recent macOS, System Integrity Protection will prevent running gngeo from make, so you'll need to run it from your terminal:

eval $(make -n gngeo)

The devkit uses a modified version of GnGeo which supports remote debugging via GDB. In order to use that feature on the example ROM, you first need to start the emulator in debugger mode:

eval $(make shellinit)
cd examples/01-helloworld
x86_64-gngeo -i rom puzzledp -D

With argument -D, the emulator waits for a connection from a GDB client on port 2159 of localhost.

Then, run GDB with the original ELF file as a target instead of the final ROM file:

eval $(make shellinit)
cd examples/01-helloworld
m68k-neogeo-elf-gdb rom.elf

The ELF file contains all the necessary data for the debugger, including functions, variables and source-level line information.

Once GDB is started, connect to the emulator to start the the debugging session. For example:

(gdb) target remote :2159
Remote debugging using :2159
0x00c04300 in ?? ()
(gdb) b main.c:52
Breakpoint 1 at 0x57a: file main.c, line 52.
(gdb) c

This work started a long time ago (2002!) and was originally called neogeodev on sourceforge.net. Since then, a community has emerged at NeoGeo Development Wiki, and it is a real treasure trove for Neo-Geo development. Coincidentally, they are hosted at neogeodev.org, so I decided to revive my original project on github as ngdevkit :P

Thanks to Charles Doty for his Chaos demo, this is how I learned about booting the console, and fiddling with sprites!

Thanks to Mathieu Peponas for GnGeo and its effective integrated debugger. Thanks to the contributors of the mame project for such a great emulator.

A big thank you goes to Furrtek, ElBarto, Razoola...and all the NeoGeo Development Wiki at large. It is an amazing collection of information, with tons of hardware details and links to other Neo-Geo homebrew productions!

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.