WORK IN PROGRESS.
Today it is possible to build cross-platform games and apps using a variety of technologies. Many game engines provide abstractions that compile down to different targets and the web provides multiple cross-platform options.
The caveat with all of these choices is that you either:
-
have to build on top of an existing heavy abstraction such as a game engine
-
produce oversized binaries that are not portable or easily debuggable (browser wrappers)
I want to be able to build cross-platform applications easily and with a tiny footprint.
Where I would like to begin to solve this problem is by creating a stand-alone cross-platform GLES 2.0 compliant window and context. Essentially this is like extracting out the features of WebGL and making them stand-alone. It's important to target direct3D on Windows for example, simply because driver support is better on average. ANGLE will be used as it is in chromium for translating GLES 2.0 to direct3D.
For this to be usable, there will need to be additional cross-platform modules for input and output, and the idea is that these features will be completely modular and included by the user when required.
Finally, there will be an attempt to pair this with Golang, depending on how easy it is to cross-compile Golang for Windows/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS/web.
- Generating solutions on Windows (release)
gn gen out/Release --sln=angle-release --ide=vs2019--args="target_cpu=\"x86\"\ is_clang=false is_debug=false angle_enable_metal=false angle_enable_swiftshader=false angle_enable_vulkan=false"
gn gen out/Debug --sln=angle-debug --ide=vs2019--args="target_cpu=\"x86\"\ is_clang=false is_debug=true angle_enable_metal=false angle_enable_swiftshader=false angle_enable_vulkan=false"