Today ended up being a much bigger update than I originally planned. The original goal was simply to improve audio playback and make the application a little easier to use, but it gradually turned into a complete overhaul of the project. Earlier versions of Anukrama were entirely terminal-based and focused mainly on functionality rather than presentation. While they worked well enough for testing and practicing verses, they did not really feel like a finished Nintendo Switch application. As I continued working on the project, I decided it was time to build a proper interface. I started by experimenting with a few graphics libraries, but that quickly became frustrating due to dependency problems, linker errors, and build issues that consumed far more development time than expected. After spending a considerable amount of time trying to make those libraries cooperate, I eventually decided to take a different approach and build the rendering system myself using the Switch framebuffer along with FreeType for font rendering. This ended up being a much better solution because it gave me direct control over how text and graphics were displayed. One of the most important improvements from this change was proper Unicode support. Earlier versions struggled with Sanskrit transliteration characters, often displaying missing glyphs, incorrect symbols, or unreadable text. The new rendering system finally allowed me to render Unicode properly, which means verses and prompts can now appear correctly on screen. During the process I also redesigned the entire user interface, added larger text, created menu screens, introduced animated backgrounds, improved readability, added color-coded sections, and included a “Made by Aashvik Goel” credit within the application. Looking back, the difference between the original terminal version and the new interface is much larger than I expected when I first started making changes. The audio system also received significant improvements during this update. The application now supports separate prompt and answer recordings, allowing users to hear a prompt before revealing the complete verse. Implementing this required converting recordings into the correct PCM format, debugging playback issues, testing different audio configurations, and tracking down several recordings that did not behave as expected. While a small number of recordings still need additional work, the overall system is now much more reliable. Alongside the audio improvements, I added multiple study modes to make practice sessions more engaging. There is now a Solo Practice mode as well as a pass-and-play VS Mode where two players can take turns answering verses and earning points. Another major focus was testing on actual hardware rather than relying entirely on emulation. Although Ryujinx was extremely useful throughout development, I regularly installed builds directly onto my Nintendo Switch to verify that rendering, controls, performance, and audio behaved correctly on the real device. This helped uncover issues that would have been easy to miss in an emulator and made the project feel much more like a genuine homebrew application. By the end of this development cycle, Anukrama had gained a completely new rendering engine, proper Unicode support, improved audio playback, multiple study modes, a full menu system, animated visual effects, and a far more polished overall presentation. What originally started as a simple terminal-based study tool has now begun to feel like a complete Switch application designed specifically for practicing Bhagavad Gita verses.
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