Intro to cross-platform 2D game programming with SDL (try! Swift Tokyo Hack...
Event Information
Description
Overview:
My name is Eric Wing. I am giving the “Swift on Android” talk for try! Swift 2017.
I’m offering to teach a workshop on the fundamentals of building a cross-platform 2D game with Swift, for those who would like to come to the try! Swift Hackathon, but may not wish to compete in the actual project competition.
Disclaimer: I’m putting this together rather last minute, so things may feel rough and ad-hoc.
I will teach how to use SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer), the ultimate cross-platform middle layer foundation library for games, a staple in the video game industry for over 15 years.
I am targeting about 4-5 hours, though as I said, I’m putting this together kind of last minute so it might end up being shorter (or longer).
I expect to cover:
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The game event loop
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User input events
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Loading and showing textures with SDL_gpu
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A very basic introduction to shaders with GLSL
I will also talk about cross-platform, i.e. how to make this same code work on Mac, iOS, SteamOS/Linux, Raspberry Pi (Raspbian), and Android. (We are trying to get at least one Linux machine to we can play with, but that is pending.)
I am also happy to talk about any other game dev or cross-platform development questions you may have (some of which may come from my Swift on Android talk). And assuming there will be time left over, you may use the free time to start writing your own game.
Additional Notes:
We will be using Swift, however, please be aware that we will be using really basic Swift. I will not be doing any best practices with Swift. Most of our focus will be calling SDL APIs which are in C, so the code we write will be embarrassingly basic Swift.
This is meant to be a gentle introduction. So I’m trying to keep things easy and light. Prior game development experience is not required.
I hope you come away with an understanding of how game engines fundamentally work, so you can then go on and build any game you want, any way you may want.
Equipment Requirements:
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Users are expected to bring their own Macs, with Xcode 8 already installed. Please also install the Command Line Tools for Xcode (downloadable through the Apple Developer site).
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Alternatively, Linux machines may also work. Only Ubuntu 16.10 and SteamOS have been tested, though others may work. Please pre-install the C and C++ development tools and the Swift for Linux compiler. If you bring Linux, please build/install Steam-Runtime before you come. This will increase the chances things actually work. (I will explain what Steam-Runtime is about at the workshop.)
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Note: If you wish to do Android development, it currently requires Linux. In addition, please pre-install both the Android SDK and Android NDK. Android Studio is optional.
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I am investigating creating a pre-made VirtualBox image with Ubuntu and development environment pre-installed. If you wish to try Linux or Android with this, please come with VirtualBox already installed on your system.
To help things along, we will be using Blurrr SDK (https://blurrrsdk.com) which provides pre-built libraries for SDL and deals with managing cross-platform build systems. I will provide access to the SDK to attendees.
Attendees: please watch for additional download instructions just prior to the conference.
Extra Information:
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Sorry, I only speak English, so I am unable to offer the workshop in Japanese.
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The planned room has enough space for 20 people. Since we expect most guests to be participating in the actual Hackathon, we are not expecting this to fill up. However, in the unlikely case this does and you cannot get a ticket, please notify me and we will re-evaluate the room situation.
Links:
SDL_gpu: https://github.com/grimfang4/sdl-gpu
ALmixer: http://playcontrol.net/opensource/ALmixer/
OpenAL: https://www.openal.org
Steam-Runtime: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime
VirtualBox: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/VirtualBox
Android SDK: https://developer.android.com/studio/index.html
Android NDK: https://developer.android.com/ndk/index.html
Blurrr SDK: https://blurrrsdk.com
