The Boxer project draws its name from the boxer engine architecture found in cars, symbolizing efficiency in a compact form. The logo's left and right ends evoke the horizontally opposed pistons of the boxer engine's flat design.

Boxer

Build games fast with a lightweight, cross-platform 2D game library written in C.

Features:

• Asset management and resource loading from .zip, .7z, and other archive formats.
• 2D immediate mode rendering with support for custom shaders and pipelines.
• Image loading and rendering support for .bmp and .png formats.
• Audio loading and playback support for .wav and .ogg formats.
• Read/write support for .ini files.
• Keyboard, mouse, and gamepad input handling.
• Math utilities for vectors, matrices, and transformations.
• An entity-component system (ECS) for flexible game object management.

Todo:

• Immediate mode UI

Prerequisites

Install the following development dependencies (via your package manager or from source):

• node (optional, for documentation generation).
• GNU Make.
• C compiler.
• SDL3 (>= 3.4.2).

Build and Installation

First clone the repository with:

git clone [email protected]:n67094/boxer.git
cd boxer
git submodule update --init --recursive

Build the library with:

make

By default, make install installs the library to /usr/lib and the headers to /usr/include/boxer (requires root). Use PREFIX to install elsewhere:

make install
# or
make install PREFIX=$HOME/.local

Uninstall the library with:

make uninstall

Build documentation with:

make docs

Once boxer is installed on your system, in order to run the demo you may need to update the shared library cache with:

sudo ldconfig

Then you can build the demo with:

cd demo
make
./demo

let's make it roar!

Getting Started

To get started with Boxer, you can:

• Check out the demo directory for code demonstrating how to use the library's features.
• Generate the documentation with make docs to get detailed information on the API and how to integrate it in your projects.

Here is a simple example of how to initialize the library and create a window:

#include <boxer/bxr.h>

// Define the game configuration
static bxr_game_config_t _config = { 0 };

// Allows boxer to get the game configuration
const bxr_game_config_t *
bxr_game_config(void)
{
  _config.name  = "application_name";
  _config.title = "Window Title";

  _config.width  = 160 * 4;
  _config.height = 144 * 4;

  _config.virtual_width  = 160;
  _config.virtual_height = 144;

  _config.fullscreen = false;
  _config.resizable  = false;

  return &_config;
}

void
bxr_game_setup(void)
{
    // Initialize game state here
}

void
bxr_game_update(double delta_ms)
{
    // Update the game logic here.
    // The logic is updated at a fixed timestep depending on the screen refresh rate it's running on
}

void
bxr_game_render(double alpha_ms)
{
    // Render the game here.
    // The game is rendered as many times per second as possible
}

void
bxr_game_teardown(void)
{
    // Clean up game state here
}

Demo

The demo is a simple game that showcases the features of the Boxer library. It includes a title screen, a level with a player character, and basic input handling.

Check out the demo directory for the source code to see how the game is implemented using the Boxer library.

AI Usage Policy

I want this project to remain as human as possible, please check out the AGENTS.md.

Sponsors

Hi everyone, I'm nsix, an indie game developer and open source contributor trying to make a living from my work.

If you enjoy what I create and want to support me, consider becoming a sponsor on GitHub Sponsors. Every bit of support means a lot and is greatly appreciated!

You can also check out my blog at nsix.blog.

License

This project is licensed under the zlib License. See the LICENSE file for details.