Jinx VS SFML

Check out jinx https://jamesboer.github.io/Jinx/

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of automated tests where it makes sense. I wrote a scripting language that I use for my personal game projects, and I never would have been able to do it if it weren't for the battery of tests for every feature, error, and corner case I could think of. But games are rarely like other software, with hard rules about what is "correct" or "incorrect". And it would be a nightmare to try to keep up with designers, constantly tweaking and tuning, so what's "correct" is literally a day to day, constantly moving target.

A second trial for you might be Jinx. Depending on your definition of procedural, Jinx is 100% only procedural. https://jamesboer.github.io/Jinx/

Jinx (embeddable scripting language) works as following:

Feel free to look at my own interpreter, written in modern C++. You're welcome to ask me if you have any questions.

I use my own scripting language more like content, especially for things like one-off events and behaviors. Example: scripting special behaviors for a boss fight, or a room with a unique trap in it, or any other sort of one-off behavior that would be overkill for C++, but too complex for most other types of data-driven content. These days, visual scripting also helps to fill in these gaps between content and procedure.

You're welcome to look at my scripting language Jinx, written in modern C++. Just let me know if you have specific questions. Data flow is JxLexer.cpp -> JxParser.cpp -> JxScript.cpp. Most everything else is implementation details. Also, note the parer is pretty complex, mostly because Jinx has a crazily flexible syntax for functions.

Feel free to look at Jinx if you want an example of what I consider a fairly easy-to-use and integrate scripting system. Obviously, I'm a bit biased since I wrote it.

If you're working in UTF-8 internally, you could just write your own UTF-16 to UTF-8 conversion functions to convert strings at API boundaries. I did this in my scripting language because I didn't want to bring in dependencies.

Take a look at SFML. Very easy to get started, and quite capable.

https://www.sfml-dev.org/

As for windows, you'd probably be alright looking into SFML, you can see their Getting Started tutorial for how to install it in your IDE of choice.

SFML (zlib/C++) https://github.com/SFML/SFML

SDL or SFML for drawing. They are both gfx libs but are used differently so read about what you thing suits you better.

Make a game with https://www.sfml-dev.org/ (I used SFML Rust to start learning Rust)

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16) project(CMakeSFMLProject LANGUAGES CXX) include(FetchContent) FetchContent_Declare(SFML GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/SFML/SFML.git GIT_TAG 2.6.0) FetchContent_MakeAvailable(SFML) add_executable(CMakeSFMLProject src/main.cpp) target_link_libraries(CMakeSFMLProject PRIVATE sfml-graphics) target_compile_features(CMakeSFMLProject PRIVATE cxx_std_17)