faiface/pixel

★ 4,529GoAudience · developerComplexity · 2/5Setup · moderate

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Draw sprites
      Handle input
      Render shapes
      Render text
    Tech Stack
      Go language
      OpenGL rendering
      Beep audio
    Use Cases
      2D game dev
      Interactive demos
      Graphics tools
    Audience
      Go developers
      Game hobbyists

mindmap root((repo)) What it does Draw sprites Handle input Render shapes Render text Tech Stack Go language OpenGL rendering Beep audio Use Cases 2D game dev Interactive demos Graphics tools Audience Go developers Game hobbyists

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Build a 2D game or interactive demo in Go using sprites, shapes, and a game loop.

USE CASE 2

Add keyboard and mouse input handling to a Go graphics application.

USE CASE 3

Render many objects efficiently using batch drawing for performance-sensitive 2D scenes.

USE CASE 4

Implement a scrolling camera in a 2D Go game using the Matrix transform type.

Tech stack

GoOpenGLBeep

Getting it running

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires OpenGL development libraries installed on your system before the Go package will compile.

License not mentioned in the explanation, check the repository for details.

In plain English

Pixel is a 2D game library for the Go programming language. It gives developers the building blocks to create windows, draw sprites and shapes, handle keyboard and mouse input, and render text on screen, all without reaching for a heavy game engine. The library was designed to feel like a natural extension of Go's standard library rather than an isolated system with its own rules. Note: this repository has been archived and is no longer actively developed. Continued development has moved to a new project called Pixel2 at github.com/gopxl/pixel. New users are encouraged to go there instead. The original library supports sprites, primitive shapes like circles, rectangles, and lines, optimized batch drawing for rendering many objects at once, and text rendering. It works on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Audio is handled through a companion library called Beep rather than being built in. Geometry operations like moving, scaling, and rotating objects are done through a Matrix type, which also makes it straightforward to implement a scrolling camera. The API was designed to be concise. Drawing a sprite to the window takes one line of code. The library also integrates with Go's standard packages: you use the built-in image package to load pictures, the time package for frame timing, and the standard color types alongside Pixel's own color format. A wiki on the repository contains a multi-part tutorial covering window creation, drawing sprites, handling input, batch drawing, drawing shapes, text, and custom shaders. A separate examples repository shows working demos including a platformer, a lighting effect, a smoke simulation, and a raycaster. The library's core is about 5,000 lines of code and uses OpenGL for rendering, which means OpenGL development libraries must be installed before compiling.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

Using the Pixel library for Go, write code to open a window, load a sprite from a PNG file, and draw it at the center of the screen in a game loop.

Prompt 2

Show me how to handle keyboard input in the Pixel library to move a sprite left and right at a fixed speed.

Prompt 3

Using Pixel's batch drawing feature, write Go code that renders 500 sprites efficiently without causing frame drops.

Prompt 4

Write a simple scrolling camera in Go using the Pixel library's Matrix type so the view follows a moving player.

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