avdl

avdl - Abstract video-game development language

This is a high level programming language for making video games.

The idea behind it, is that a game is described using the language in an abstract way, similar to how an image file describes the pixels of an image. Then it's the compiler's responsibility of compiling that into an actual executable game for specific platforms.

The current plan for the license, is to keep the compiler itself and all modifications to it free and open-source, but any game made with it will be completely owned by the user that made it, and it's their choice to monetize it or not.

Platforms

avdl currently can only be compiled for Linux. However it is possible to compile for Windows using Linux-emulated tools (like Cygwin).

Games made with this language can currently be compiled for:

• Linux (Not handling dependencies at the moment)

Platforms planned:

• Windows (It's possible to currently cross-compile to it, but it's not straightforward)
• Android (It's possible to compile an .apk, but there are a few steps that haven't been automated yet)

As the language is still growing, it can currently transpile source files to the C programming language, which can then be manually compiled for the desired platform. This is mostly for advanced users that know what they are doing.

Games made with this language

These are games made by me, using avdl, to get an idea of what the language can do.

• Rue - Itch.io | GameJolt | Google Play

• The king is gone - Steam | Itch.io | GameJolt | Google Play

• Shuffled Nightmares - Steam | Itch.io | GameJolt | Google Play

Available on these Linux Distros

You can find this project packaged for the following Linux distributions:

Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS

Add the Personal Package Archives (PPA) to your system, then update repositories and install:

add-apt-repository ppa:darkdimension/avdl
apt-get update
apt-get install avdl

Note: These commands require root permissions, usually aquired with the sudo command.

Arch Linux

You can find this project in the Arch User Repository (AUR). Make sure to install the dependencies listed here:

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/avdl/

Using the command line, move to an empty directory and run:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/avdl.git
makepkg
pacman -U avdl-<version>-<arch>.pkg.tar.zst

Note: The command pacman -U needs root permissions, as it is used to install packaged from a local file.

How to compile and install manually

This project currently supports only compilation for Linux out of the box. I've managed to compile it manually for Windows, but the process is not automated yet.

Dependencies

To compile this project, you will need the following dependencies:

• make - to build the project
• gcc - used to compile this project and to aid the compilation process of avdl projects
• freeglut - used for windowing
• sdl2 and sdl2_mixer - used for audio
• glew - used for advanced opengl functionality

There's a different process to get the dependencies, depending on your operating system. Here's some examples:

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

On a clean install, you will need to install the following packages to get everything you need:

apt install git make gcc freeglut3-dev libglew-dev libsdl2-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev

Arch Linux

Use the following command to get the required packages:

pacman -S freeglut glew sdl2 sdl2_mixer make gcc

Compilation

On a linux system, simply execute the following lines from the terminal, while you are at the project root directory:

make
make install

The default install location is /usr/local. To change that, apply a custom prefix value like below:

make prefix=/usr
make prefix=/usr install

Documentation

There is a new tutorial that explains the basics here: https://darkdimension.org/avdl.html

For how to use avdl through the command line, together with arguments, see the man page at manual/avdl.1. You can do so with man manual/avdl.1 from the project's root directory, or if you have the project installed, you can run man avdl instead.

About the language's syntax, there is currently some documentation in doc/avdl.texi which when installed can be viewed with info avdl. As this project is becoming more stable, the documentation there will become more up to date.