Shy

Aims to be an intuitive, opinionated and solid foundation for game development and creative coding written in V with which you can easily build and distribute small to medium sized 2D games or applications.

The shy project works both as a V module and a standalone CLI tool.

Games made with Shy

Puzzle Vibes (Source)

Targets

Please note that export and developing/building/running from some of these platforms are still work-in-progress, but we aim to support a wide range of targets like the following:

Windows, macOS, Linux, Raspberry PI, Android, Web (WASM/emscripten) and likely more.

Highlights

• Get your creative ideas up and running relatively quick.
• Rich examples directory.
• Live coding and runtime experimenting via V's -live flag.
• Animation and timer system - built right in.
• Easy timers with shy.once(...) or shy.every(...).
• 2D shape drawing with several levels, layers of control and performance.
• 2D shape collision detection.
• 3D capable (via sokol_gfx.h)
• Multiple, runtime switchable, render modes (immediate, UI, step).
• Visually tested for graphic regressions.
• Fairly sub-system agnostic. Bring your own ECS, physics engine etc.
• [WIP] Assets system for easy loading (and freeing) of all kinds of assets: binary blobs, images, music, sounds etc.
• [WIP] Export to different platforms via the shy export command.
• [WIP] Intuitive Qt/Widgets/QML (scene graph) inspired ui module supporting custom UI items.
• [WIP] ... much more :)

Currently known downsides

The following points may turn you away from using shy at this point in time so use shy at your own risk and expense.

• ~100% Deterministic behaviour is [WIP].
• Multi-window rendering support has relatively low priority and may never be supported.
• The shy.ui module's design goals can not currently be met 100% due to very-hard-to-reproduce bugs in the V compiler - mileage may vary until these bugs are squashed.
• Exporting of finished games, for real world distribution, can currently be complex. It has high priority to get the exporters working as painless as possible but it takes time.
• No visual editor(s), at the moment. Hopefully it'll come quick when the ui module matures.
• Export currently requires to be done from the target platform(s).
• Documentation is far from complete. Use the examples for guidance.
• C code vs. V code ratio leans towards C - this will improve over time as more and more functionality becomes available in V

Install

Dependencies

shy currently depend on sdl and vab official V modules.

sdl

Due to V's package management being in it's infancy it is recommended to install the sdl module via git:

git clone https://github.com/vlang/sdl.git ~/.vmodules/sdl
v ~/.vmodules/sdl/setup.vsh # this will try and detect the system installed version of SDL2

on Windows via cmd.exe:

git clone https://github.com/vlang/sdl.git %HOMEPATH%/.vmodules/sdl
git -C %HOMEPATH%/.vmodules/sdl checkout 2.26.0

The sdl dependency is needed for the default backend. It will likely be moved to be part of another backend or opt-in once shy matures but for now you'll need the SDL2 library at build and runtime.

vab

v install vab

vab is used by shy export and does not require you to have Java nor the Android SDK/NDK installed. shy export need only vab to be installed as a module.

However if you intend to export your shy creations to the Android platform the aforementioned dependencies are thus needed at runtime for vab to work.

Unix (Linux, macOS)

git clone git@github.com:Larpon/shy.git ~/.vmodules/shy
v ~/.vmodules/shy # Builds the `shy` CLI tool

Windows

git clone git@github.com:Larpon/shy.git %USERPROFILE%/.vmodules/shy
v %USERPROFILE%\.vmodules\shy # Builds the `shy` CLI tool

Symlink (optional)

You can symlink shy to your $PATH so it works as a global shell command.

sudo ln -s ~/.vmodules/shy/shy /usr/local/bin/shy

Shell tab completion (optional)

You can install tab completions for your shell by following the instructions here.

Gamepad / Controller support

To enable game controller support shy needs to be built with SDL2 version >= 2.26.0 in addition to the compile flag -d shy_gamepad.