Ever since the Switch got hacked, developers have been hard at work creating sysmodules in order to add functionality like DualShock 3/4 controller support, f.lux-like screen overlays and much more but until now, there’s been no elegant solution to display on-screen menus within games similar to what the PSVita can achieve. However, that has now changed since developer WerWolv has just released Tesla which is a 3-part solution letting developers display temporary menus while a game is running! Tesla allows for pretty nice in-game screen front-ends so we’ll probably be getting some interesting stuff making use of it!
According to its GBATemp release thread, Tesla consists of 3 parts namely:
NX-ovlloader which is nx-hbloader in sysmodule form
It runs in background and has the ability to load OVL files (NRO overlays)
Tesla Menu which is a piece of software similar to hbmenu
Its main use is that of letting you choose which overlays to run
Libtesla which is a development library allowing for the easy creation of in-game menus
This library takes care of layer creation, UI drawing and the general user experience
With the above software, developers can now create in-game overlays which allow on-the-fly changing of sysmodule settings, applying cheats, playing music in background, outputting rendering statistics (FPS) and much much more. Without a doubt, this is something that will allow developers to reach into other aspects of Switch homebrew creation so it may become an integral part of the Switch scene going forward!
You may read more about Tesla and how it works by checking out its GBATemp Thread.