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How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it (2024)

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Re: How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it (2024)

#21

Post by rudedogg »

gyomu wrote: post #11
tombert wrote: post #4

My opinions of Vulkan have not changed significantly since this was posted a year ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40601605 I'm sure Vulkan is fun and wonderful for people who really want low level control of the graphic stack, but I found it completely miserable to use. I still haven't really found a graphics API that works at the level I want that I enjoyed using; I would like to get more into graphics prog…

To this day, the best 3D API I’ve used (and I’ve tried quite a few over the years) is Apple’s SceneKit. Just the right levels of abstraction needed to get things on the screen in a productive, performant manner for most common use cases, from data visualization to games, with no cruft. Sadly 1) Apple only, 2) soft deprecated.

RealityKit is pretty cool and the replacement it seems. Still Apple only though, and I find the feedback loop slow/frustrating due to Swift

I find SDL3 more fun and interesting, but it’s a ton of work to to get going.

Re: How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it (2024)

#22

Post by nodesocket »

I am fascinated with 3D/Gaming programming and watch a few YouTubers stream while they build games[1]. Honestly, it feels insanely more complicated than my wheelhouse of webapps and DevOps. As soon as you dive in, pixel shaders, compute shaders, geometry, linear algebra, partial differential equations (PDE). Brain meld.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@tokyospliff

Re: How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it (2024)

#25

Post by HexDecOctBin »

thegrim33 wrote: post #8
tombert wrote: post #4

My opinions of Vulkan have not changed significantly since this was posted a year ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40601605 I'm sure Vulkan is fun and wonderful for people who really want low level control of the graphic stack, but I found it completely miserable to use. I still haven't really found a graphics API that works at the level I want that I enjoyed using; I would like to get more into graphics prog…

SDL 3.0 introduced their GPU API a year or so ago, which is an abstraction layer on top of vulkan/others, might want to check it out. Although after writing an entire engine with it, I ended up wanting more control, more perf, and to not be limited by the lowest common denominator limits of the various backends, and just ended up switching back to a Vulkan-based engine. However, I took a lot of learnings from the SDL…

SDL GPU is extremely disappointing in that it follows the Vulkan 1.0 model of static pipelines and rigid workflows. Using Vulkan 1.3 with a few extensions is actually far more ergonomic beyond a basic "Hello, World" than using SDL GPU.

Re: How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it (2024)

#26

Post by engeljohnb »

ryandrake wrote: post #13
tombert wrote: post #4

My opinions of Vulkan have not changed significantly since this was posted a year ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40601605 I'm sure Vulkan is fun and wonderful for people who really want low level control of the graphic stack, but I found it completely miserable to use. I still haven't really found a graphics API that works at the level I want that I enjoyed using; I would like to get more into graphics prog…

As someone who did OpenGL programming for a very, very long time, I fully agree with you. Without OpenGL being maintained, we are missing a critical “middle” drawing API. We have the very high level game engines, and very low level things like Vulkan and Metal which are basically thin abstractions on top of GPU hardware. But we are missing that fun “draw a triangle” middle API that lets you pick up and learn 3D Graph…

If I were starting a new project, would it be unwise to just use OpenGL? It's what I'm used to, but people seem to talk about it as if it's deprecated or something.

I know it is on Apple, but let's just assume I don't care about Apple specifically.

Re: How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it (2024)

#27

Post by attheicearcade »

foltik wrote: post #20
simonask wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`wgpu` in Rust is an excellent middle ground, matching the abstraction level of WebGPU. More capable than OpenGL, but you don’t have to deal with things like resource barriers and layout transitions. The reason you don’t is that it does an amount of bookkeeping for you at runtime, only supports using a single, general queue per device, and several other limitations that only matter when you want to max out the capabi…

Could you say more about which extensions you’re referring to? I’ve often heard this take, but found details vague and practical comparisons hard to find.

Not the same commenter, but I’d guess: enabling some features for bindless textures and also vk 1.3 dynamic rendering to skip renderpass and framebuffer juggling

Re: How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it (2024)

#28

Post by diath »

tombert wrote: post #4

My opinions of Vulkan have not changed significantly since this was posted a year ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40601605 I'm sure Vulkan is fun and wonderful for people who really want low level control of the graphic stack, but I found it completely miserable to use. I still haven't really found a graphics API that works at the level I want that I enjoyed using; I would like to get more into graphics prog…

If you want something like SDL but for 3D, check out Raylib.

Re: How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it (2024)

#29

Post by rabf »

engeljohnb wrote: post #26
ryandrake wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who did OpenGL programming for a very, very long time, I fully agree with you. Without OpenGL being maintained, we are missing a critical “middle” drawing API. We have the very high level game engines, and very low level things like Vulkan and Metal which are basically thin abstractions on top of GPU hardware. But we are missing that fun “draw a triangle” middle API that lets you pick up and learn 3D Graph…

If I were starting a new project, would it be unwise to just use OpenGL? It's what I'm used to, but people seem to talk about it as if it's deprecated or something. I know it is on Apple, but let's just assume I don't care about Apple specifically.

OpenGL is still be the best for compatibility in my opinion. I have been able to get my software using OpenGL to run on Linux, Windows, old/new phones, Intel integrated graphics and Nvidia. Unless you have very specific requirements it does everything you need and with a little care, plenty fast.

Re: How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it (2024)

#30

Post by raincole »

anvuong wrote: post #12

Vulkan was one of the hardest thing I've ever tried to learn. It's so unintuitive and tedious that seemingly drains the joy out of programming. Tiny brain =(

I think anyone who ever looked at typical Vulcan code examples would reach the same conclusion: it's not for application/game developers.

I really hope SDL3 or wgpu could be the abstraction layer that settles all these down. I personally bet on SDL3 just because they have support from Valve, a company that has reasons to care about cross platform gaming. But I would look into wgpu too (...if I were better at rust, sigh)

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