txtquad is a simple vulkan renderer built to do one thing: render "game jam" style 3D text in the most straightforward way possible.

Surprisingly, you can do a lot with just "text":

txtquad supports a custom format that essentially boils down to a square, ASCII-indexed binary bitmap. The font file is encoded as a pbm, and WYSIWYG.

Doodling your own fonts is easy, as long as you're in the market for monospace. Or, you can draw sprites, and render those instead. The font I made for the above gif can be found here.

Getting Started

The instructions below are for linux. For macos and windows, see PLATFORMS.md.

Dependencies:
    libglfw.so    3.3.2
    libvulkan.so  1.2.x

This project uses clang, git LFS, and the ninja buildsystem. You will additionally require the vulkan headers + libs, and glslc.

1. ./bootstrap to download, build, and install glfw3 into ./ext
   • This also grabs the font from the link above and installs it into ./assets if a font doesn't already exist at that location
   • Additionally, this clones the headers https://github.com/acgaudette/alg and https://github.com/acgaudette/acg (previously in-tree dependencies) into ./ext/include
2. ./runex to build and launch ./bin/demos
   • This will build ./bin/libtxtquad.so as a side effect
   • Alternatively, running "ninja so" in the root dir will build the .so by itself

Configuration

• Library settings can be found in ./config.h
• See the $config var in ./build.ninja to adjust compiler flags and switches (the lib is compiled in debug mode by default)
• Runtime configuration is possible via the txt_cfg struct (see below)

Usage

• Link against libtxtquad.so in your app
• Set up an assets directory containing the font and the compiled shaders, or just softlink the one from the repo (./assets)
  • The default shaders are compiled into here along with the demos

API

txtquad_init(struct txt_cfg)

• Call this from your main function to boot up the engine
• See the struct definition in ./txtquad.h for more details regarding configuration

txtquad_start()

• Call this to pass control from your app to the engine

txtquad_update(struct txt_frame, struct txt_buf*)

• Implement this callback, it's called once per frame by the engine
• Grab your animation data from the txt_frame
• Write to the txt_buf* to render stuff (it's just a pointer to a blob of static memory)

Notes

• glfw is compiled statically into the binary by default
• libtxtquad resolves user callback symbols at runtime via weak linking. You must implement txtquad_update(), otherwise the lib will panic.
• There is one example executable, but five demos, including a benchmark. The demo selection can be controlled at compilation time by a define, or the $demo var in ./build.ninja
• See ./extras/ for useful txtquad extension code.

Using the input module

• Include inp.h in your application's source
• When compiling txtquad, define INP_KEYS for keyboard, mouse, and gamepad press/hold/release polling support, and/or INP_TEXT for a text entry callback
  • These defines are compiled into the binary by default (see ./build.ninja)
• See ./inp.h and ./examples for API usage
  • You must implement inp_ev_text() if libtxtquad is compiled with INP_TEXT, otherwise the lib will panic.
• You will also need the glfw header as a dev dependency in order to use the key/button macros