Guide

User guides and how-to documentation for PixelRoot32 Game Engine.

Getting Started

• Getting Started — Install, first project, game loop overview
• Game Loop — Phases, delta time, lifecycle diagrams
• Music Player Guide - Complete guide for the NES-style audio system
• Extending PixelRoot32 - Creating custom drivers and extending the engine
• Gameplay Guidelines - Best practices for game development
• Entities & scene tutorial - Didactic Entity walkthrough (not a bundled examples/ folder)

Game development topics

• Core concepts — Terminology and mental model
• Scenes — Scene lifecycle, stacking, transitions
• Entities & actors — Patterns for gameplay objects
• Rendering — Sprites, layers, camera-oriented drawing
• Input — InputManager, touch pipeline, calibration
• Physics — Collisions, actors, tile helpers
• Audio — Channels, SFX, and music overview
• UI system — Layouts, widgets, HUDs

Advanced

• Memory — Pools, arenas, embedded constraints
• Performance — Hot paths, memory, build profiles, resolution scaling
• Graphics Techniques — Tilemaps, palettes, indexed color
• Platform Compatibility — platformio.ini, feature flags

Contributing & tooling

• Testing — Unity, native_test, coverage, CI

Standards & compatibility

• Coding style — C++ conventions, namespaces, naming
• Coding Style — C++ conventions, namespaces, naming
• Graphics guidelines — Sprites, tilemaps, palettes (pipeline: Rendering)
• UI guidelines — Layout patterns (architecture: UI system)
• Platform compatibility — Hardware matrix, ESP32 variants
• Performance — ESP32 hot paths, build profiles

Tools & samples

• Tools (sprite compiler, tilemap editor docs) - Workflow documentation shipped with the engine
• Example projects catalog - PlatformIO samples under examples/

Navigation

• Architecture - System architecture and design
• API Reference - Complete API documentation
• Workflow tools - Sprite compiler and tilemap editor documentation
• Migration - Version upgrade guides
• Philosophy - Engine design philosophy