A simple game experiment written in Go and Ebitengine.
This project can possibly be used as a reference to get you started with Go game development, especially if you are interested in using the fantastic Ebitengine game engine.
IMPORTANT: This is still very much WIP... I'll be expanding it over the next few weeks, schedule permitting. This is probably going to form the basis of one of my talks in the future...
You can see a demo at https://ewaldhorn.github.io/bouncies/
The number one question I've received after some of my talks (list here: https://nofuss.co.za/about/) from fellow or aspiring Go developers is: "Can I write a game with Go?".
Yup. Absolutely! Go is a general-purpose language and can most definitely be used to write games. A special bonus is the brilliant Ebitengine project that provides Go with a fantastic 2D game engine that works across multiple platforms.
But why do any game development at all? It's not just fun, because game development can challenge you in different ways. Especially when you have to do a bunch of work really quickly to keep the framerate up! Games deal with concurrency, event sequencing, constant data updates and user input, to name but a few things.
I often use game development to learn new strategies and techniques, because the feedback is instant and visual. This makes it easier to experiment and see the effect of what I'm doing and turns dry theory into something fun and practical.
The idea is to out-bounce your enemy with your Bouncers. You and the enemy both have a base from where bouncers will spawn over time. A base can store up to six bouncers, ready to be deployed. Bases have shields which are depleted by enemy bouncers hitting it and replenished by friendly bouncers. Shields also regenerate over time.
Ebitengine supports a variety of platforms, and for this game, I am mainly using WASM as my target platform. Testing is often done as a desktop app and I then also test via the browser in the WASM form.
The default task test command runs the game as a desktop app. It's really handy
to have different options available.
I used a variety of technologies to make this all happen:
| Tech | Where | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Go | https://go.dev/ | Development language of choice |
| Ebitengine | https://ebitengine.org/ | Great 2D engine, with WASM support |
| Task | https://taskfile.dev/ | Build tool of choice |
| GoLangCILint | https://golangci-lint.run/ | Go linter for code cleanup |
For convenience, I have a Task file. This helps save me from having to remember commands. Instead, Task does that for me!
Run task to see a list of available tasks. Some are:
| Task | Action taken |
|---|---|
| buildproduction | Builds a production WASM binary, minus debug information |
| buildwasm | Builds the WASM project |
| clean | Removes the './bin/' folder |
| default | Lists available tasks |
| lint | Runs the 'golangci-lint' tool on the source code |
| run | Runs the files in the ./bin/ folder as-is, no build steps envoked. On port 9000 |
| runwasm | Runs the project in WASM on port 9000 |
| setupexecjs | Copies the wasm_exec.js and html files to the './bin/' folder |
| test | Runs the desktop project |