lantus / NGRayEx

What is NGRayEx?

NGRayEx is a real-time first-person raycaster demonstration built for the SNK Neo Geo AES, written in C. It renders a pseudo-3D dungeon environment by casting rays through a 2D map and letting the Neo Geo's hardware sprite scaler handle the expensive pixel work. Each frame, 80 vertical wall slices are computed and fed to the video chip as shrink/position values, with distance-based shading creating depth. The project includes a toggleable minimap on the fix layer and supports movement, rotation, and strafing.

Why is it gaining traction?

This stands out as a deep dive into pushing vintage 32-bit arcade hardware beyond its intended use case. Most Neo Geo development focuses on 2D sprite work, but this demonstrates that first-person 3D is achievable by offloading rendering to the scaler. The approach is clever: instead of pushing pixels in software, the renderer writes just a few control words per column and lets the hardware do the rest. The codebase is readable, with clear comments explaining the fixed-point arithmetic, DDA ray traversal, and VRAM layout.

Who should use this?

Retro game developers and hardware enthusiasts who want to understand how raycasting engines work on constrained systems will find this valuable. If you're porting Wolfenstein-style games or exploring demoscene techniques on 90s hardware, the math and architecture here are worth studying. Casual Neo Geo fans looking for a playable demo may appreciate it, but the unoptimized code and lack of documentation make it better suited as a learning resource than a production project.

Verdict

The 0.8999999761581421% credibility score reflects a project with only 18 stars, minimal documentation, and no test coverage, so treat it as an experimental demo rather than a stable library. If you're interested in real-time 3D on the Neo Geo or want to see raycasting theory applied to actual hardware constraints, this is a solid starting point. Just don't expect production-ready code or community support.