DISCLAIMER! This library is not going to be worked on as frequent anymore. If you want fork it and work on it you are more than welcome.

My game library: Nexa

A simple game library to make game development in the Julia programming language easy.

My goal:

My goal for this project is to make a simple library to easily make games in Julia. Something like raylib, not too bloated, very easy to use, very powerful, and can make just about anything.

Why am I making this?

Well the julia game dev ecosystem is super scarce and there are only a few libraries that are actually good.

GameZero:

It's simple but you can only use one file and doesn't really seem to be good for large scale projects.

JulGame:

Its pretty good so far. The main thing that loses me is the fact that it has a required editor. I am not a big fan of that because I want something more like a "game framework" instead of a "game engine" meaning I don't really want an editor like unity or something.

Bplus:

It is really well made but it is very low level and I want something that's easier for someone to get into.

Getting Started

To use Nexa.jl you first have to have Julia installed. Once you have that installed go into a command line and type julia. You should see this:

If you don't see that. Check your PATH if you are on windows. Once you have that opened though type ] and you should see this:

This is the Julia package manager. Once you are here you need to type add https://github.com/SabeDoesThings/Nexa.jl this will add Nexa.jl to your packages. To create a new Nexa project just go into a directory you want and go back into the command line and do the same thing and do generate <name of project> Once you have that you need to activate your project. To do that you need to do activate . and you should somthing like this (<project name>) pkg > instead of the julia version. If you do have that just do the same command as before. add https://github.com/SabeDoesThings/Nexa.jl this will add Nexa.jl to your project. To open up a window just go into your file in the src folder and you can copy this code to open up a window.

using Nexa # loads in the Nexa library

# Runs only when the program started
function on_run()
end

# Run every frame
function update(dt::Float64)
end

# For rendering things to the screen
function render(ctx::Nexa.Context) # the ctx::Nexa.Context is needed for the library to use the low level rendering side of things
end

# The Nexa.start function takes in 7 arguments
Nexa.start(
    on_run,           # The function ran right when the program has started
    update,           # Called every frame
    render,           # For rendering things to the screen
    "Simple Window",  # The title of the window
    1280,             # The width of the window
    720,              # The height of the window
    false             # whether or not the window is resiable or not
)

And with that just do julia <file name>.jl and you should see this:

Congratualtions! You just made your first window in Nexa.jl. If you want more example usage of Nexa.jl visit the examples folder.