zig-gamedev VS LearnOpenGL

Two game frameworks in the making: https://github.com/michal-z/zig-gamedev & https://github.com/hexops/mach

I did a hangman game, I'm doing a file compression tool next. I asked bing chat to recommend beginner projects for zig and that's what it told me. It also suggested a cli calculator and a cli text editor, but I didn't want to do that. My next thing will be something using https://github.com/michal-z/zig-gamedev

This repo may be useful. It isn't an engine or a renderer, but rather a collection of useful libraries if you do end up writing your own tools. https://github.com/michal-z/zig-gamedev

Something like vulkano in Rust or zig-gamedev in zig might be a much more enjoyable approach: They're similarly bare metal languages but have a lot of advantages over C++ (borrow checker's safety, simpler syntax). However, they're not commonly used by big studios.

I've been working on a gamedev project in zig, using zig-gamedev. It has many libraries you can use, though my game is 2D. Feel free to check out my project if you want to see how I set things up. https://github.com/foxnne/aftersun

Language-level guarantees of memory safety are not critical to all low-level programmers, and sometimes this is fine!

Developers of games, compilers, digital audio workstations, video editors, and live performance software (such as openFrameworks) likely don't rank memory safety as their top concern.

Zig is already an attractive choice for those domains because it offers:

- Great compile times compared to C++/Rust, and future plans to implement hot reloading as a core part of the tooling: https://www.jakubkonka.com/2022/03/16/hcs-zig.html

- The ability to reason about where data exists in memory: https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#Where-are-the-byte...

- Good readability and learnability, especially if you have a C/C++ background.

- Comptime that enables clean generics, compile-time reflection and general metaprogramming as a happy side-effect: https://kristoff.it/blog/what-is-zig-comptime/

- Better tooling than C/C++. The ability to cross-compile Zig and C/C++ from one machine lets you set up much more stable and reproducible build environments already. You can clone zig-gamedev and have the demos working with just three commands on Windows/macOS/Linux, for example, and two of those three are cloning the repo and changing to the directory: https://github.com/michal-z/zig-gamedev (to build you will need the latest copy of Zig from the 'masters' section for your platform at https://ziglang.org/download/ )

We should all be careful about insinuating that memory unsafe languages should not exist. I see “friends don't let friends use memory-unsafe languages” on social media and feel sick. It's much healthier to embrace the melting pot of Zig, Odin, D, Beef, Vale, Hare, Lobster, Jai, C3, Val, Roc and all the rest and see what new ideas and trade-offs they bring.

Also worth noting that new languages tend to take time to develop their own philosophies to memory safety (Vale's approach is only just now emerging, for example: https://verdagon.dev/blog/making-regions-part-1-human-factor ). Zig's story might not be great now ( https://www.scattered-thoughts.net/writing/how-safe-is-zig/ ), but then it's not Zig's priorty at the moment, and Zig's full story is not yet written.

Also recommended: LearnOpenGL [1] and Vulkan Guide [2]

[1]: https://learnopengl.com/

I want to begin game development as a hobby, but I'm unsure where to start. I did follow through https://learnopengl.com/ a few years ago, and while it was a very interesting experience, I imagine I would need to use an existing engine to be productive.

Do you recommend any books and tutorials aimed at experienced programmers with 0 knowledge of game development/design?

- Game development - Unity3D project based learning in C#: https://learn.unity.com/ - Graphics - There was another user on r/GraphicsProgramming the other day (who teaches Computer Graphics at his university) that linked their lecture series for the entry year of their course here: https://tamats.com/learn/realtime-graphics/ - Project based learning: https://github.com/ssloy/tinyrenderer/wiki - Rendering API tutorials: https://vulkan-tutorial.com/, https://learnopengl.com/

If u want to make 3D game, you'll probably want to learn some 3D shader graphic stuff. OpenGL is a good start. https://learnopengl.com

LearnOpenGl.com

Possibly a smidge outdated.

Goes from blank window to rendering 3d meshes with advanced lighting techniques (HDR, SSAO and more).

Heped me understand shader pipeline, so I recommend it.

https://learnopengl.com

and then https://learnopengl.com/

I'm reading the guest article about frustum culling on learnopengl.com and there's a video demonstrating how it works and for debug purposes they have a bunch of spheres turning red or green which I assume means they're being culled or not so my question is if I wanted to do this do I have to make a mesh for whatever bounding volume shape or is there a specific method for something like this?