How to develop golang games

As a modern programming language, Golang (also known as Go) has been widely used in game development and has been favored by game companies and game developers. Golang has become the first choice of more and more game developers because of its efficiency, reliability and easy maintenance. At the same time, its concurrent programming features are of great benefit to the development of game engines. This article will discuss how to use Golang for game development from the basic knowledge of Golang game development, game engine construction and game resource management.

1. Basic knowledge

1. Programming environment

The installation of Golang is very simple. You only need to download the corresponding installation package from the official website and follow the prompts to install it. Can. Compared with other programming languages, Golang does not have many IDEs, but there are some commonly used development tools, such as Visual Studio Code (VS Code), GoLand, LiteIDE, etc. These tools provide a good programming environment for Golang.

2. Language features

The features of Golang mainly include the following points:

a. Concurrent programming: Golang’s coroutine can efficiently Utilizing multi-core processors is particularly important for the creation of game engines;

b. High execution efficiency: Because Golang uses static compilation, its execution efficiency is higher than other dynamic programming languages;

c . Dependency management: Golang comes with dependency management tools, which can simplify dependencies in the entire game development process;

d. Simple syntax: Golang’s syntax is designed to be simple and easy to understand, allowing novice developers to quickly master it. related information.

3. Package Management Tool

In terms of package management in Golang, the officially provided tool is go mod. This tool can easily integrate and manage applications and dependent packages, and resolve dependency conflicts, which is especially important for game developers. For specific operations on using go mod, please refer to the official documentation.

2. Game engine construction

The game engine is the core of a game, which includes the main logic, rendering, animation and physical simulation functions of the game. Below we will introduce how to use Golang to develop a simple 2D game engine.

1. Engine initialization

First, we need to figure out the basic composition of the game engine. A game engine mainly consists of two parts: initialization and looping. In the initialization part, we need to perform a series of operations, such as initializing the game window, renderer, resource manager, etc. In the loop part, we need to handle player input, update game state, render screen, and resource management in each loop.

The following is a simple game engine initialization example:

package game

import (
    "github.com/veandco/go-sdl2/sdl"
)

type GameEngine struct {
    Window   *sdl.Window
    Renderer *sdl.Renderer
}

func (ge *GameEngine) Init() error {
    err := sdl.Init(sdl.INIT_EVERYTHING)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }

    ge.Window, err = sdl.CreateWindow("My Game", 0, 0, 800, 600, sdl.WINDOW_SHOWN)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }

    ge.Renderer, err = sdl.CreateRenderer(ge.Window, -1, sdl.RENDERER_ACCELERATED)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }

    return nil
}

In this example, we use a struct GameEngine to describe the basic properties of the game engine. In the Init() function, we initialize the SDL2 game engine, create an 800x600px window, and use RENDERER_ACCELERATED to initialize the renderer.

2. Game Loop

The game loop is the most important part of the game engine. We need to process player input, update game state, render images and resource management in each loop. Here is a simple game loop example:

package game

import (
    "github.com/veandco/go-sdl2/sdl"
)

func (ge *GameEngine) Run() {
    var event sdl.Event
    running := true

    for running {
        for event = sdl.PollEvent(); event != nil; event = sdl.PollEvent() {
            switch e := event.(type) {
            case *sdl.QuitEvent:
                running = false
            }
        }

        /* 游戏更新操作 */

        /* 绘制游戏画面 */
        ge.Renderer.Clear()
        /* ... */
        ge.Renderer.Present()
    }
}

In this example, we use a for loop to maintain the main loop of the game engine. In the PollEvent() function, we check whether there is a player input event (such as a key press or mouse click, etc.) and handle it accordingly when it occurs. Next, we performed the game update operation and drew the game screen.

3. Resource Management

In the process of game development, the management of various resources is very important. Golang provides some tools to help us perform resource management operations. Here, we introduce a common method: use go-bindata to generate a binary file and read resources from it. This approach is simple to use, easy to maintain, and adapts well to the needs of different platforms and environments.

The following is an example of resource management using go-bindata:

package game

import (
    "encoding/base64"
    "io/ioutil"
    "os"
)

func loadResource(path string) ([]byte, error) {
    f, err := os.Open(path)
    if err != nil {
        return nil, err
    }
    defer f.Close()
    return ioutil.ReadAll(f)
}

func decodeAsset(asset string) ([]byte, error) {
    return base64.StdEncoding.DecodeString(asset)
}

func (ge *GameEngine) LoadImage(path string) (*sdl.Texture, error) {
    f, err := loadResource(path)
    if err != nil {
        return nil, err
    }

    bytes, err := decodeAsset(string(f))
    if err != nil {
        return nil, err
    }

    surface, err := sdl.LoadBMP_RW(sdl.RWFromConstMem(bytes))
    if err != nil {
        return nil, err
    }

    defer surface.Free()

    texture, err := ge.Renderer.CreateTextureFromSurface(surface)
    if err != nil {
        return nil, err
    }

    return texture, nil
}

In this example, we use a loadResource() function to read resources from a file . Next, we used the DecodeString() function in the base64 package to encode the resource file into a binary file. Finally, we use the LoadBMP_RW() function in SDL2 to load the binary file into the surface and create the texture resource and return it.

Summary

In this article, we introduced the basic knowledge of Golang game development, the construction of game engine and the management of game resources. Although Golang is still immature in the field of game development compared to other programming languages, its efficiency, reliability and easy maintenance, as well as the advantages of concurrent programming, make it the first choice of more and more game developers. We hope this article can provide some reference for developers to learn Golang game development, and continue to explore and innovate on this basis.

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