How to Join Us ?

Enjoying the concept ? Henna Project has just begun and is completely open ! To join, you just need to create an account on GNA and select "henna" group to request full access (ie. get a "write" access to the SVN repository). You'll be added to the development mailing list too.

How to Contribute ?

The frienliest way to participate will be soon available: the Henna Wiki. It will try to develop the game content (story, gameplay, characters, graphism) and to provide tutorials on each technical aspect, aiming to explain the whole game.

Free your Imagination ! As a totally artistic try, we encourage a melting-pot of drawings, water-colors, paintings and photography. Neither a graphic line nor a game design book have been defined. Don't care about homogeneity, just express yourself !

Which Technical Choices ?

It will try to associate an isometric engine with 3D characters, to keep it fast on tiny ARM processors like the GP2X one (200 Mhz). A dream would be to recreate a game engine similar to Little Big Adventure's one.

The project is developed in C++, using the SDL library. It tries to use as less libraries as possible to keep it light and easy to build.

How to Get the Sources ?

On Linux, you can use the SVN client with the following command line:
svn co svn://svn.gna.org/svn/henna/trunk henna

On Windows, you can use TortoiseSVN. Once installed, right clic in a new empty folder and select "SVN Checkout" [look]. Just fill the "URL of repository" field with svn://svn.gna.org/svn/henna/trunk and clic "Ok" [look].

How to Use SVN+SSH ?

The method above allows to quickly get the sources, without joining (anonymous). For group work, the project uses a "version control system" : Subversion on GNA. It uses Secure Shell protocol (SSH) to identify users, so you'll need to register a SSH key on GNA.

Wether on Linux or Windows, you can follow this howto:

How to Compile for GP2X ?

Compiling for GP2X or any game console refers to the concept of cross compilation: to compile some code for an architecture (GP2X with "ARM 9" processors) different from the one it's developped on (PC).


On Windows, the only very simple way is to use GamePark Holdings Official GP2X SDK. It includes a modified version of DevC++ GPL IDE and allows both to compile code for Windows and to cross-compile for GP2X [look], to build henna.dev (DevC++ project file) found in sources.


On Linux, the Official GP2X SDK is also available but community tools allows much more optimised code and are easier and faster to set. Especially, we recommand the Open2x Apps Toolchain and its Prebuilt Library Packages.

To install, just extract the prebuilt toolchain to /opt/open2x (be careful, it is built to be placed exactly there) and extract the library package to copy the libraries in the toolchain i.e overwrite bin/, include/, lib/ and man/ directories.

The project Makefile (in henna/src/) provides a specific target to build using the Open2x Apps Toolchain. You may need to edit it if you choose another installation path. It should build with the following command:
make open2x

For more detail information and other solutions, you can have a look to the GP2X Wiki :