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Yes, the web version is made with SDL (and OpenGL).

On Android and iOS I found the touch input latency of SDL to be too high, so I use the native APIs there.

Interesting, did you use the sdl opengl wrapper or native opengl? Did you make your own renderer? Did you find it hard to implement?

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I use the native OpenGL API on all platforms.

I did make my own renderer. A renderer for PewPew is not too hard: culling is simple, no lights or shadows. Hardest part was probably drawing 3D lines :-)

What is a little bit annoying is that any new effect, like Depth of Field or Lens Flare take several hours to implement, whereas in a premade engine my understanding is that it’s one click away and the quality can be better than what I achieve.

Wow, I see. This looks amazing by the way, I thought it had lights. How long did it take for you to make your renderer? Do you know if it is feasible for a team of two to make a 2d renderer with ray tracing lights?

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Making the renderer is an iterative process. I started with just drawing lines, then progressively added all the different effects (bloom, chromatic aberration, etc…). You can get a renderer in a week of full time work, but then there are endless improvements you can make. Even today the renderer of PewPew Live could be improved in a lot of ways.

It’s totally doable to do a 2D renderer with ray tracing lights. 2D simplifies many many things!