Intro to 2D Gamedev with Mach Engine

Day 0 - Optional Workshops (Tue) • 09:30 • Duration: 6h

Description

In this introduction to 2D gamedev, we’ll cover everything you need to make simple 2D games in Zig using Mach!

No previous gamedev experience is required. In the morning 2-hour session we’ll briefly touch on the basics and more intermediate concepts:

• Introduction to modern graphics APIs
• What shaders are and how to work with them
• 2D sprite rendering
• Audio rendering
• Working with an entity component system
• Connecting the pieces together

Then after a casual break for lunch, we’ll have more learning and open development time for working on your own 2D game.

By the end, participants will have the basic foundations of a 2D game and a clear idea of how to continue building it!

Those already familiar with gamedev who wish to learn more about Mach, advance beyond the group a bit and/or work on a low-level 3D game instead may do so.

Requirements

• General programming experience
• Basic experience with writing Zig code
• One of the following:
  • macOS laptop
    • macOS 11+
    • Apple Silicon or Intel
  • Windows laptop
    • Windows 10+ (7 may work, but will require testing ahead of time.)
    • DirectX 11 or greater
  • Linux laptop
    • Wayland or X11
    • Functional Vulkan drivers
    • Modern ‘Desktop’ distribution preferred
    • Fancy nixOS and other special setups can work fine, but may require a bit of testing/debugging in advance

Before the workshop, you will be asked to build and run a hardware-check application we provide to confirm graphics/audio/input are working with Mach on your system.

Instructor