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You see, for the past several years I have used many programming languages and many more game frameworks and libraries. Programming languages like Java, C#, C++, and even, sadly, JavaScript (I know...). Game frameworks like LWJGL, SDL2, Raylib, MonoGame, SFML, and many more. Essentially, I have seen it all. Out of all of them, I think SDL2 was closer to what I was looking for, though, Raylib was the one I used the most at the beginning. And the reason I liked SDL more was because it was more"lower-level" than Raylib or SFML. Additionally, it had that C-style of programming that I have always been fond of. However, despite that, I decided to go against any of these libraries.
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CodeRabbit
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Out of all of these, the first category--the operating system dependencies--is probably the one I thought about the most. Since SDL was out of the picture, I saw GLFW as a potential choice for handling window creation and input. An obvious choice, by many. And, seeing how I already had used it before, I thought it was obvious to me as well. Yet, there was a feeling I did not need it. After all, I decided from the start that I would only support Windows and Linux. Not for any particular reason other than I use Linux on a daily basis and Windows has the bigger market. I did not have a Mac machine lying around somewhere (poor. I'm poor, basically). And as for consoles, well, that was a long stretch. I did not see the possibility of me ever needing to port my games to consoles. At least not for the time being. And so, that means I only had to deal with the Win32, X11, and Wayland APIs. I say it as though it is an easy affair. It is not. Far from it. Especially if you had never dealt with these APIs before and had to start learning them, which was my case. So, instead, I picked a middle ground. I would use GLFW but I would design my API in such a way that would be easier to switch away from it in the future if needed. I'll write a more in-depth article about the window system and whatnot in the future.
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LWJGL
LWJGL is a Java library that enables cross-platform access to popular native APIs useful in the development of graphics (OpenGL, Vulkan, bgfx), audio (OpenAL, Opus), parallel computing (OpenCL, CUDA) and XR (OpenVR, LibOVR, OpenXR) applications.
You see, for the past several years I have used many programming languages and many more game frameworks and libraries. Programming languages like Java, C#, C++, and even, sadly, JavaScript (I know...). Game frameworks like LWJGL, SDL2, Raylib, MonoGame, SFML, and many more. Essentially, I have seen it all. Out of all of them, I think SDL2 was closer to what I was looking for, though, Raylib was the one I used the most at the beginning. And the reason I liked SDL more was because it was more"lower-level" than Raylib or SFML. Additionally, it had that C-style of programming that I have always been fond of. However, despite that, I decided to go against any of these libraries.
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As for math, that was the easiest choice as of yet. No doubt, GLM is a "gold standard" at this point. For OpenGL it is, at least. But, like with a lot of the other APIs, I decided to build a wrapper around it rather than directly reference the library in the engine's code. And for physics, well, I had not come upon that answer just yet. I did try to make my own physics logic at some point. And while it was, surprisingly, successful, I wanted more than just a simple physics layer. I wanted something more complex and, more importantly, faster than my implementation. I have not decided upon a physics library yet. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
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And, finally, resource loaders. I have worked with many resource loaders in the past. That's to say that I know my way around them. For image loaders, I decided to go with the obvious stb_image. It is small, easy to use, and has only a single header. Meaning, like MiniAudio, I can easily integrate it into the engine. Besides that, it supports a wide array of image formats. Even HDR which was surprising. Audio file loaders are next. For this one, I decided to use a few small libraries. Specifically, the Mp3 and WAV loaders from dr_libs and the OGG loader from STB once again (Sean Barret to the rescue!) Each of these are a single-header library as well. Once again, very small and very easy to integrate. As for 3D models, I decided to use a huge dependency named ASSIMP. For me, that was a very hard sell. ASSIMP is huge but it supports plenty of 3D model formats. And besides that, none of the resource loaders are going to be present in the engine itself. But, rather, there is going to be a separate tool--one that I dubbed NBR (Nikola Binary Resource)--that would take only the minimum required data from these loaders and save it into a binary file (.nbr) which then would be read accordingly by the engine.
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You see, for the past several years I have used many programming languages and many more game frameworks and libraries. Programming languages like Java, C#, C++, and even, sadly, JavaScript (I know...). Game frameworks like LWJGL, SDL2, Raylib, MonoGame, SFML, and many more. Essentially, I have seen it all. Out of all of them, I think SDL2 was closer to what I was looking for, though, Raylib was the one I used the most at the beginning. And the reason I liked SDL more was because it was more"lower-level" than Raylib or SFML. Additionally, it had that C-style of programming that I have always been fond of. However, despite that, I decided to go against any of these libraries.
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assimp
The official Open-Asset-Importer-Library Repository. Loads 40+ 3D-file-formats into one unified and clean data structure.
And, finally, resource loaders. I have worked with many resource loaders in the past. That's to say that I know my way around them. For image loaders, I decided to go with the obvious stb_image. It is small, easy to use, and has only a single header. Meaning, like MiniAudio, I can easily integrate it into the engine. Besides that, it supports a wide array of image formats. Even HDR which was surprising. Audio file loaders are next. For this one, I decided to use a few small libraries. Specifically, the Mp3 and WAV loaders from dr_libs and the OGG loader from STB once again (Sean Barret to the rescue!) Each of these are a single-header library as well. Once again, very small and very easy to integrate. As for 3D models, I decided to use a huge dependency named ASSIMP. For me, that was a very hard sell. ASSIMP is huge but it supports plenty of 3D model formats. And besides that, none of the resource loaders are going to be present in the engine itself. But, rather, there is going to be a separate tool--one that I dubbed NBR (Nikola Binary Resource)--that would take only the minimum required data from these loaders and save it into a binary file (.nbr) which then would be read accordingly by the engine.
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InfluxDB
InfluxDB high-performance time series database. Collect, organize, and act on massive volumes of high-resolution data to power real-time intelligent systems.
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Audio is another similar issue to graphics. There are plenty of audio APIs out there. Different APIs support different audio cards. I, however, had made up my mind on this one a long time ago. I decided to use MiniAudio, which is the audio library used by Raylib under the hood and one that I used plenty of times before. It is a single-header library that is super easy to integrate.
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Socrates
Socrates is a simple, single-file math library specifically made for game/game engine development (by FrodoAlaska)
The implementation code would effectively be copied into the translation unit and then compiled normally. I love these kind of libraries. They are usually easy to use, very easy to integrate, and a lightweight dependency overall. I even created a library or two in the same vain just for fun. But why am I talking about single-header libraries now? Besides the fact that most of my dependencies are single-header, I wanted to somewhat imitate the spirit of single-header libraries while avoiding the need to jumble all my code into one header file. While it is convenient to have all the code in one place and, once again, it would be very easy to integrate by other folks, but, seeing how I am already an unorganized person, I will refrain from the complexity that comes with such a design. Instead, I wanted to have separate translation units for every module, but keep the idea of a single-header file for the definitions. Let me explain.
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You see, for the past several years I have used many programming languages and many more game frameworks and libraries. Programming languages like Java, C#, C++, and even, sadly, JavaScript (I know...). Game frameworks like LWJGL, SDL2, Raylib, MonoGame, SFML, and many more. Essentially, I have seen it all. Out of all of them, I think SDL2 was closer to what I was looking for, though, Raylib was the one I used the most at the beginning. And the reason I liked SDL more was because it was more"lower-level" than Raylib or SFML. Additionally, it had that C-style of programming that I have always been fond of. However, despite that, I decided to go against any of these libraries.
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The implementation code would effectively be copied into the translation unit and then compiled normally. I love these kind of libraries. They are usually easy to use, very easy to integrate, and a lightweight dependency overall. I even created a library or two in the same vain just for fun. But why am I talking about single-header libraries now? Besides the fact that most of my dependencies are single-header, I wanted to somewhat imitate the spirit of single-header libraries while avoiding the need to jumble all my code into one header file. While it is convenient to have all the code in one place and, once again, it would be very easy to integrate by other folks, but, seeing how I am already an unorganized person, I will refrain from the complexity that comes with such a design. Instead, I wanted to have separate translation units for every module, but keep the idea of a single-header file for the definitions. Let me explain.
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Nikola
A cross-platform framework for window creation, input handling, and rendering using OpenGL 4.5+ (by FrodoAlaska)
Currently, as I'm sure you can tell, the engine is still in its infant state. It can do a lot. Currently, it can open a window, accept input, render pixels, load models, and images, and render them even. But there is still a long way to go. For example, audio and fonts are still not fully implemented. While things like entities are not even a thing yet. However, if you are interested, I do have some interesting showcases on my website. You can also go to the engine's repo to check the code for yourself if you are interested.
