Scaffolding a Game

1. Create your game repo

Make a new folder for your game's code and initialize it as its own git repository:

mkdir my-game && cd my-game
git init

2. Add the engine as a submodule

The engine is pulled in as a submodule, which in turn pulls in its own nugget/psyqo submodule:

git submodule add https://github.com/Forceh91/psyqo-madnight-engine madnight_engine
git submodule update --init --recursive

Your folder should now look like this:

my-game/
└── madnight_engine/   ← the engine, as a submodule

3. Scaffold your game code

Copy the engine's getting-started/Makefile and getting-started/src folder into the root of your game repo:

cp madnight_engine/getting-started/Makefile .
cp -r madnight_engine/getting-started/src .

You should end up with:

my-game/
├── madnight_engine/       ← engine submodule
├── src/
│   ├── mygame.cpp         ← your game's entry point
│   └── mygame.hh
└── Makefile

mygame.cpp is where the engine hands control over to your game. Out of the box it does the bare minimum — it registers itself with the engine and switches to a scene on startup:

#include "mygame.hh"
#include "madnight.hh"
#include "game.hh"
#include "scenes/gameplay.hh"
#include "psyqo/xprintf.h"

MadnightGame g_myGame;
MadnightEngineGame &g_madnightEngineGame = g_myGame;
static GameplayScene gameplayScene;

// required if you build with -pcdrv (mounts an ISO from your host filesystem
// instead of real CD-ROM hardware for faster iteration) — see "Loading assets"
const char* g_gameIsoName = "mygame.iso";

psyqo::Coroutine<> MadnightGame::InitialLoad(void)
{
    printf("welcome to your game code!\n");
    g_madnightEngine.SwitchScene(&gameplayScene); // show the default gameplay scene so something happens visually
    co_return;                                    // let the engine know that we're done with our initial loading
}

int main() { return g_madnightEngine.run(); }

Required for -pcdrv builds

If you skip this, the engine still compiles — but linking will fail with an undefined reference to g_gameIsoName the moment you build a -pcdrv target, since the engine deliberately doesn't supply a default

SwitchScene returns a pointer to the scene it popped (or nullptr if keepPrevious was true) — useful if that scene was heap-allocated and you want to delete it once you're done with it, rather than leaking it.

GameplayScene above is just the engine's built-in placeholder scene (madnight_engine/src/scenes/gameplay.hh) — swap it out for your own scene once you're ready to build real content. Add any new .cpp files under src/ and the Makefile will pick them up automatically (it does a recursive find).

Next: build and run it.