A commit-by-commit (hopefully) instructional example of how to make a game
using the dumb frame buffer interface of the Linux Direct Rendering Manager.
The entire game is ~1000 lines of
C99 code with a small x86_64 assembly runtime. No libraries or preprocessor
directives were allowed, even libc.
The intent is for a reader to step through each commit, starting from a basic executable and building up to a double buffered snake/LightCycle game. I also wrote an article going through the development step-by-step.
In order to build the game on an x86_64 Linux machine you will need a C
compiler that supports the C99 standard along with make and binutils
for the as assembler and ld linker.
To run the game you will need a working
/dev/dri/card0 device and a working keyboard device in /dev/input/,
and the game must have permission to access these files.
The game will take over an entire display as well as the system
keyboard, so it will be necessary for you to turn off your window
manager/compositor if you usually run one.
make
sudo ./dumb_cycle
You can also run the game in a virtual machine if you install QEMU and tiger vnc.
make test
The command will download a vm.tar.gz zip file
containing a Linux kernel and a basic initial ram filesystem using
toybox for a simple shell environment. If you want to build the kernel
and toybox yourself a corresponding vm_src.tar.gz is provided.