This is an Odin + Raylib game template with Hot Reloading pre-setup. My game projects tend to have some things in common, so I made this template so I can get up and running quicker.
build_hot_reload.bat
will build game.dll
from the stuff in the root directory of this repository. It will also build game.exe
from the stuff in the directory main_hot_reload
. When you run game.exe
it will load game.dll
and start the game. In order to hot reload, make some changes to anything that is compiled as part of game.dll
and re-run build_hot_reload.bat
. game.exe
will notice that game.dll
changed and reload it. The state you wish to keep between reloads goes into the GameMemory
struct in game.odin
.
There is also a build_release.bat
file that makes a game_release.exe
that does not have the hot reloading stuff, since you probably do not want that in the released version of your game.
build_debug.bat
is like build_release.bat
but makes a debuggable executable, in case you need to debug your non-hot-reload-exe.
There are also some additional files with some helpers that I find useful. See Optional files below.
- Copy
raylib.dll
fromyour_odin_compiler/vendor/raylib/windows
to the root of this repo. - Run
build_hot_reload.bat
to compilegame.exe
andgame.dll
. Note: It expects odin compiler to be part of your PATH environment variable. - Run
game.exe
- Make changes to the gameplay code (for example, make changes in the proc
update
ordraw
ingame.odin
) - Run
build_hot_reload.bat
again while game.exe is running, it will recompilegame.dll
game.exe
will reloadgame.dll
but use the same GameMemory (a struct defined ingame.odin
) as before.
The template also supports Linux and MacOS, all mentions of .bat
scripts have an equivalent .sh
script, and the game is built as game.bin
instead of game.exe
.
Unlike Windows, there is no need to copy any Raylib library to the root of this repo.
The Raylib bindings are currently a bit broken regarding shared libraries, there is this PR that is trying to fix it: odin-lang/Odin#3369.
So this will work nicely out of the box when that is corrected & merged, what you should be able to do at the moment as a workaround is go into the vendor/raylib/raylib.odin
file and change the "linux/libraylib.so.500"
to "linux/libraylib.so"
.
There's a project.sublime-project
in case you use Sublime Text. Edit it and make sure the paths to the folders within the Odin compiler directory are correct. I put those as part of my project so I can quickly jump to symbols within core & raylib.
Included there are Debug and Release tasks for VS Code. If you install the CodeLLDB extension, it's possible to Debug the project code with the included Debug task.
A task to build and hot reload is also included, build, run and rebuild with Ctrl+B
or Command Palette
-> Task: Run Build Task
.
Only game.odin
and math.odin
are required to compile the game DLL. You can delete the other files in the root directrory of the repo if you wish. They are there because they contain things I often use in all projects. Most of them have a description at the top of the file, explaining what it contains.
I did a stream where I prototype a game by starting from scratch with this template. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl8EOjOaoXc It is very long, but it's mostly the front part that is interesting with regards to how to use this template.
Ask questions in my gamedev Discord: https://discord.gg/4FsHgtBmFK
I have a blog post about Hot Reloading here: http://zylinski.se/posts/hot-reload-gameplay-code/