asteroids-demo VS space-shooter.c

A game: you could learn how to use a cross-platform library like SDL or you could write your own from scratch. Here's a really simple example of a video game implemented for windows using nothing but native API calls. If you're using linux, it would be a fun exercise to convert that to X11 calls.

I've never used WASAPI, just DirectSound (example), so I can't say much. I managed to get this WASAPI example to work with Mingw-w64 on Windows, though not Wine:

Asteroids (guide to source)

Source: https://github.com/skeeto/asteroids-demo Source guide/walkthrough: https://idle.nprescott.com/2021/understanding-asteroids.html

Example of creating an OpenGL window using Win32 directly: https://github.com/skeeto/asteroids-demo

You can do something like this, but way less polished and stick to one platform: https://github.com/tsherif/space-shooter.c/tree/master

Otherwise study real, mature, well-written C programs. There's a wealth of techniques and tricks that aren't really documented anywhere, but rather picked up from others. Recommendations off the top of my head: BSD utilities, musl, and SQLite. Or simply study the source for your favorite C software. Also, something good posted here recently: The Architecture of space-shooter.c.

I wrote space-shooter.c as a personal challenge to create a game from start to finish in C without using any 3rd-party libraries and wanted to share the source as a reference for anyone who's also interested in this type of game programming. The source code is heavily-commented, and I'm also writing a (still WIP) architecture guide that goes over the design decisions and details I learned about working with OS APIs in C: https://github.com/tsherif/space-shooter.c/blob/master/ARCHITECTURE.md