MOBILE & GAME DEVELOPMENT
Nexus Gear
Different experiences. A common foundation.
A customer form on a phone and a game on a desktop both need a responsive application lifecycle, rendering, input, multimedia, and assets. Nexus Gear brings those concerns together in a Lua-powered application engine connected to the Nexus development ecosystem.
Mobile application development and game development are both central to Gear. The shared engine gives them a common starting point; each application chooses the interaction and presentation it needs.
Mobile applications
Build touch-oriented experiences for phones and tablets, including business applications. The embedded nexus.ui library supplies panels, labels, buttons, selections, edits, scroll views, lists, sliders, and progress indicators.
Controls participate in the engine's display groups, transforms, events, and lifetime management. Focused edits use the platform's native text input so keyboard and composition behavior belong to the device.
Games, including the desktop
Create experiences with 2D display objects, images, text, animation, physics, audio, and event-driven interaction. Desktop games are part of Gear's purpose, alongside mobile games and applications.
The Windows packaging workflow includes x86 and x64 application choices. Native plugins must match the application architecture. Desktop execution is useful in its own right and for development; it does not replace device testing.
Application controls. Native extensions. Connected workflows.
Nexus brings embedded nexus.ui controls and skins, engine construction through its build and automation tools, and a Pascal plugin bridge together around Gear. The Windows packaging workflow includes explicit x64 application selection.
These layers have distinct responsibilities. Application behavior and controls are authored in Lua. Pascal plugins extend the engine through the Lua 5.1 and Solar2D Native boundary; they do not make every application require a Pascal plugin.
Control API Pascal plugin integration
Part of the Nexus ecosystem
Nexus Pascal supplies compilation for Pascal plugins, with the appropriate native SDKs and libraries. Nexus Build and Nexus Forge describe native builds and the work around engine and application assembly. Nexus Code provides the Pascal and Nexus Script development environment; Gear's Lua authoring and debugging use their own tooling.
Native technology, connected to Pascal
Gear also demonstrates Nexus's native project integration at engine scale. Its Linux build uses LLVM operations for C/C++ engine code; its Windows workflow combines CMake-built dependencies with MSVC and MSBuild operations. Nexus Forge orchestrates acquisition and assembly around those Nexus Build projects.
Pascal plugins use explicit Lua 5.1 and Solar2D Native bindings. The shared development system can build native dependencies and make their outputs available without rewriting the engine in Pascal or claiming direct access to arbitrary C++ classes.
Explore the native build and plugin boundary
Platform readiness
Engine source, build configurations, and a desktop simulator do not establish that every application has been packaged and tested on every destination. Android emulator workflows are documented. iOS device behavior remains unverified in the current development environment, and Linux native text editing has known limitations.
The current UI API is Lua; a Nexus Script UI layer is not supplied. Native Pascal debugging and Lua debugging are separate integrations, without seamless cross-language stepping.
Platform support Android development setup
For examples, explore the control gallery and customer form.
Foundations and attribution
Gear builds on Solar2D/Corona's Lua runtime integration, rendering, display objects, physics, multimedia, and platform implementations. Nexus maintains the engine independently and connects that foundation with its application controls, native plugin integration, and development workflows.
Original engine and component notices remain applicable; see the attribution information.