Vulkan2D

Vulkan2D

Vulkan2D is a 2D renderer using Vulkan and SDL3 primarily for C games. VK2D aims for an extremely simple API, requiring no Vulkan experience to use. This project initially started out aiming to be a more feature complete drop-in replacement for the SDL renderer, but since then has grown in scope. Vulkan2D requires C++20, C11, and Vulkan 1.2+.

Features

• Intuitive API built on top of SDL3
• Very fine-grained camera control
• Direct access to Vulkan (at your own risk)
• Hardware-accelerated 2D light and shadows
• High-performance sprite batching
• Simple and user-friendly shader interface
• Only requires Vulkan 1.2

Documentation

Check out the documentation website.

Vulkan2D headers are all Doxygen commented and the documentation website is automatically generated from them (this also means the documentation will likely show up in your editor of choice!).

Usage

The only officially supported way to use VK2D is via add_subdirectory. For the least painful and most out-of-the-box way to use VK2D, include as a Git submodule and use add_subdirectory in your CMakeLists.txt file.

git submodule add --recursive https://github.com/PaoloMazzon/Vulkan2D.git

add_subdirectory(Vulkan2D/)
add_executable(my-game main.c)
target_link_libraries(my-game PRIVATE Vulkan2D)

If you want to use your own SDL version instead of whatever's latest (which VK2D defaults to) then you can do so with

set(VK2D_BUILD_SDL OFF)
add_subdirectory(Vulkan2D/)

You may also disable shader support entirely by supplying

set(VK2D_DISABLE_SHADERS ON)
add_subdirectory(Vulkan2D/)

This is an option because compiling Slang is a lengthy process and for projects that don't require them this can save users a significant amount of time.

Example

SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_EVENTS);
SDL_Window *window = SDL_CreateWindow("VK2D", 800, 600, SDL_WINDOW_VULKAN);
SDL_Event e;
VK2DRendererConfig config = {
    .msaa = VK2D_MSAA_8X, 
    .screenMode = VK2D_SCREEN_MODE_IMMEDIATE, 
    .filterMode = VK2D_FILTER_TYPE_NEAREST
};
vk2dRendererInit(window, config, NULL);
vec4 clearColour;
vk2dColourHex(clearColour, "#59d9d7");
bool stopRunning = false;
 
// Load your resources
 
while (!stopRunning) {
    while (SDL_PollEvent(&e)) {
        if (e.type == SDL_EVENT_QUIT) {
            stopRunning = true;
        }
    }
 
    // Draw your things
 
    vk2dRendererPresent();
}
 
vk2dRendererWait();
 
// Free your resources
 
vk2dRendererQuit();
SDL_DestroyWindow(window);
SDL_Quit();

To run the examples in the examples/ folder, build the CMakeLists.txt file with the flag -DVK2D_BUILD_EXAMPLES:BOOL=ON.

Roadmap

• Texture readback
• Stability improvements
• Remove or improve 3D
• API lock