Welcome to XFlib.net tutorials !

Here, you'll learn how to set up a free and functional development environment to develop games (essentially) on PocketPC using XFlib.

Before going on to the next tutorials, please take a few seconds to read the FAQ…

• Day 1 - Installating and Compiling (50% done, only the windows part)
• Day X - Text, Part 1 : Getting the basics… (0.001% done)

Haha, tricky question ! XFlib is still under development, so can eventually contain a few critical bugs. If it crashes, you might need to soft reset your PDA, which isn't dramatic, but not really what's best ^^. Though actually, if you develop under Windows, Microsoft distributes a free Windows Mobile emulator that works great (and is much faster to reboot than your PocketPC…).

You probably also know that other libraries are available out there, like GapiDraw, Edge, etc… Well, chances are the performance will be better with those libraries, as they are very likely much more optimised.

XFlib has been designed following a few principles : completely free library, very simple to use, and with good enough performance to allow you to do your games without too much technical knowledge…

It all started when we, at the XFTeam, decided to do some PocketPC development. There were already tons of solutions out there, like using .Net, but pretty much everything was Windows-based, which was a problem for the Linux users :p That's where CEGCC came in to help : it provided us with a great free cross-platform compiler for ARM PocketPC !

We have been strongly influenced by GBA/NDS development, so the library was also designed with strong analogies to the old school 2D consoles : manage your sprites, bitmap layers, tiled backgrounds, text, etc…