WME Lite Documentation

WME Lite is a fork of the original Wintermute Engine 1.x. The code has been modified to be easily portable to other platforms. WME Lite only supports 2D games.

WME Lite discussion forum

The following features of WME 1.x are NOT supported by WME Lite:

• 3D characters. WME Lite only supports 2D games.
• Sprite blending modes.
• Video playback (theora video playback support is in development).
• Plugins.
• Calling external functions from DLL libraries from scripts.
• Game Explorer support.
• 'Directory' script object.

In addition, since a completely different font engine is used, TrueType font support may work differently than in WME 1.x.
TrueType fonts support in WME Lite

• New scripting methods and properties in WME Lite
• Changes to package handling
• In app purchases guide (iOS only)

WME Lite is an open source application, licensed under MIT license. The code and precompiled dependencies are available via BitBucket: https://bitbucket.org/MnemonicWME/wmelite

WME Lite is available for free. However, developers releasing commercial games based on WME Lite will have to purchase license of the BASS sound library. BASS license is purchased per platform and costs approximately €125. See the following link for more details: http://www.un4seen.com/bass.html#license
Also to be able to develop applications for iOS, you must be a member of Apple Developer Program, which costs 99 USD per year.

WME Lite has been successfully compiled on the folowing platforms:

• Microsoft Windows - project file and precompiled dependencied are available for Visual Studio 2008.
• Mac OSX - project file and precompiled dependencied are available for XCode.
• iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) - project file and precompiled dependencied are available for XCode.
• Linux
• Android (experimental)
• Building WME Lite from sources
• Running and testing WME Lite games
• Bringing your WME Lite game to iPhone

WME Lite is using SDL 2.0 for graphics/input and BASS for sound. Porting to other platforms should be possible, as long as these two libraries support the platform.

Q: Do I have to pay for WME Lite?
A: It depends. WME Lite itself is free, but it uses BASS library for sound, which requires that you buy a license if you are selling the game. You don't have to pay anything if you are releasing a freeware game.

Q: Will you add support for 3D characters to WME Lite?
A: No. Porting the 3D part of WME 1.x would require a lot of time and effort and I believe that time is better spent developing WME2. The goal of WME Lite was to quickly bring existing 2D WME games to other platforms.

Q: Will you port WME Lite to [instert your favourite platform here]
A: I don't have access to other platforms than Windows, OSX and iOS so personally I'm not planning any other ports. However, the source is open and I'm accepting patches. If you are a developer, you're free to port WME Lite to a new platform. It shouldn't be too complicated, as long as both SDL and BASS are available for the platform.

Q: What about Windows Phone 7 / XNA?
A: Unfortunately, WP7/XNA development is based on Microsoft's .NET platform and the C# language. Microsoft doesn't allow native C++ development for these platforms, so "porting" would basically mean "rewriting from scratch in a different programming language" in this case. In other words, WP7 port is not possible until Microsoft allows native C++ development.

Q: Are the tools also ported?
A: No, only the engine is ported. The actual game development still needs to be done on a Windows machine. But the resulting game packages (.dcp files) are runnable on other platforms.