Intro to 2D Gamedev with Mach Engine -
Hello everyone! Hope your travels are going well, we're just a few days away from the Mach workshop! š
Location: UNAHOTELS Scandinavia Milano (https://maps.app.goo.gl/efofN3Po91jSbvCYA), registration opens at 09:00 https://sycl.it/agenda/
Some items you may want to bring:
1. Your laptop and power adapter; remember that we'll be running your GPU and compiling code for 3-6 hours on this day, so battery life might not last you the whole time. š
2. A pair of headphones (optional) - there will be ~15 people all playing chaotic sound effects on their laptops, so a pair of headphones can let you unveil your chaos when you choose.
I'll have few extra earbuds and imperial->metric power adapters available in case anyone needs them.
Confirming your hardware works with Mach (can be done at the workshop or before)
1. If you run macOS, guaranteed to work. If you run Windows, great chances you are fine as well.
2. If you run Linux or want to check ahead of time, feel free to install the right Zig version (https://machengine.org/about/zig-version/) and run the hardware check
zig build run-hardware-check.
3. If you run a stranger linux distribution like nixOS and plan to use that during the workshop, you can familiarize yourself with https://machengine.org/about/nixos-usage/ and mach-flake (which I hear is pretty great)
We'll have time at the start to help folks get setup on their machines, so if you can't get to it before the workshop no worries. If someone's hardware does not work with Mach for some reason, I may ask you to pair up a bit with someone else and have two people treat the experience as a bit of a gamejam š this will be a very free-form workshop.
Keep tabs on this thread - if you have questions feel free to ask them here, we will use this thread for discussion and to share links during the workshop.
Most importantly, please come excited to experiment and learn! This is going to be a really free-form workshop ( š
) and very interactive, so be prepared to ask a lot of questions - we have a very wide audience attending with quite different backgrounds, so what we go over and cover is going to be adjusted heavily based on everyone's comfort level. Additionally, we'll be using some pretty experimental Mach APIs and functionality - so there's gonna be some 'we'll do it live!' energy here. I expect it to be a bit bumpy, but a ton of fon š LETS GOOO!
17 Replies
Thanks for the set up info! The hardware test did run for me on Windows, until I tried to close it, then it crashed š
I did hear sound and everything worked besides that.
Excited for the workshop!
I ran hardware_check on my M3 Mac and it seemed fine. But it does occasionally crash on closing. See you at the workshop!
GitHub
GitHub - hexops/sycl24: Software You Can Love 2024 workshop
Software You Can Love 2024 workshop. Contribute to hexops/sycl24 development by creating an account on GitHub.
i see instructions to run
zig build run-hardware-check and zig build run-core-textured-cube. in what repo/dir do i run those?Main directory of the GitHub.com/hexops/mach repo
I've added one more power strip to the one you already had
Hopefully that helps
Friendly reminder to the people who have an electronic badge to not mess with it yet to avoid inadvertently bricking it (somebody bricked their badge already).
@slimsag maybe read this for everybody out loud if possible, thanks!
Thanks everyone for attending! I hope you all learned a few interesting things at least and maybe continue poking at step-06 to make your own game š
I can already think of several things Iād improve in the workshop structure, I know the front was a bit dense and the latter half was a bit quick - but it means a ton to me I got the opportunity to hold it with all of you!
If anyone has feedback on things I could do to improve in the future Iām all ears and would greatly appreciate thoughts/suggestions š
And thanks again @kristoff for giving me the opportunity to do this!
thank you for the great workshop Steven! I learned a lot!
Hello Machanists! The conference and workshop is long over - but that doesn't have to be the end of your time with Mach or gamedev in Zig š
Announcing Lord of Zero
Myself and @foxnne are working on a game titled Lord of Zero (based loosely around the Nintendo Switch title Kingdom New Lands) using all of the knowledge we went over in the workshop, and with original artwork, music, and sound/level design by the both of us. This will happen in two phases.
Phase 1: The 'MVP' game (unfinished preview video attached)
the goal here is to make the game functionally complete (similar to the video below, but with monsters and knights, a basic day/night cycle, etc.), using Pixi for sprite rendering and LDTK for level creation, a custom music soundtrack (https://slimsag.bandcamp.com/album/lord-of-zero), etc.
This will aim to be 'as minimal a codebase as a complete game can be' - somewhere around 1-2k lines of code. If you want to make your own sidescroller, this could be a great launchpad for you to really put all the things we went over in the workshop into practice!
Once this is ready for you to dive into, I will announce this in the Mach discord (see below).
Phase 2: The 'showcase game'
Once the MVP is done, me+foxnne will likely continue work on it, add some additional functionality and stuff - and make it a proper showcase of what kind of games you can make using Zig, Mach, and Pixi today.
This will be a long-lived project, possibly released on Steam, etc. and will be developed in the open, and released on GitHub as open source as well.
How to get notified
Since this SYCL channel will be archived soon, to get notified you can join the Mach discord (https://discord.gg/XNG3NZgCqp) - both the MVP and showcase versions will be announced in the
#announcements channel there https://discord.com/channels/996677443681267802/996688886216523907 which generally only has a few notifications per year.
Additionally, you can follow us developing it in the open in the #lordofzero channel there.
Motivation
After the workshop, I got the opportunity to get feedback from a ton of people on what I could've done better (and whew, let me tell you, I learned a lot) - the primariy thing I wish I could've done better retrospectively was enable us to get to the fun parts of actually making games with higher-level APIs much sooner (there was so much there we ended up not having time to get into) and without spending a bunch of time deep-diving on how things work under the hood. I have multiple ideas for how I could do that way better in the future, so it was a real learning experience for me.
The good news is, all you who attended already got that deep dive on how things work under the hood, and how working with the ECS at a high level looks, and we have the power of the internet so I can share knowledge with ya'll from across the world :wrench: My hope is this benefits all of you who participated in the workshop specifically and wanted to go even further and, if not, at least ends in a genuinely fun Zig game you can play later š
Attached is a little pre-release video of the MVP version of the game that we're working on šKingdom New Landswait you mean this game?
I didn't know it was on switch
great game
Yes! One of my favorite games of all time š
oh wow your soundtrack is lovely
I'm getting amped up
Haha! Thanks :wrench: - I've been trying to figure out how to compose music in that style for a while now, I am pretty sure when I picked up piano / started trying to compose like 2 years ago my commit frequency on github dropped substantially š