Chickadee

Chickadee is a game development toolkit for Guile Scheme.

Chickadee provides all the essential tools that parenthetically inclined game developers need to make games in Scheme.

Here is the obligatory “Hello, world” program:

(define (draw alpha)
  (draw-text "Hello, world!" (vec2 260.0 240.0)))

And here's how to draw a sprite:

(use-modules (chickadee graphics sprite))

(define sprite (load-image "chickadee.png"))

(define (draw alpha)
  (draw-sprite sprite (vec2 256.0 176.0)))

Chickadee can render vector paths:

(use-modules (chickadee graphics path))

(define gradient
  (radial-gradient #:start-color tango-light-sky-blue
                   #:end-color tango-dark-sky-blue
                   #:radius 240.0
                   #:origin (vec2 240.0 240.0)))

(define painter
  (let ((filled-circle (with-style ((fill-color gradient))
                         (fill (circle (vec2 240.0 240.0) 240.0)))))
    (translate (vec2 80.0 0.0) (corner-split filled-circle 4))))

(define canvas (make-canvas painter))

(define (draw alpha)
  (draw-canvas canvas))

And it can also render 3D models:

(use-modules (chickadee graphics light)
             (chickadee graphics model)
             (chickadee graphics skybox))

(define model (load-gltf "Suzanne.gltf"))
(define camera-position (vec3 0.0 0.0 3.0))
(define world (make-identity-matrix4))
(define view (look-at camera-position (vec3 0.0 0.0 0.0) (vec3 0.0 1.0 0.0)))
(define projection (perspective-projection (/ pi 3.0) (/ 4.0 3.0) 0.1 5.0))
(define skybox
  (make-skybox
   (load-cube-map #:right "right.jpg"
                  #:left "left.jpg"
                  #:top "top.jpg"
                  #:bottom "bottom.jpg"
                  #:front "front.jpg"
                  #:back "back.jpg")))

(define (draw alpha)
  (with-projection projection
    (draw-skybox skybox view)
    (draw-model model
                #:model-matrix world
                #:view-matrix view
                #:camera-position camera-position
                #:skybox skybox)))

Other features include:

• extensible, fixed-timestep game loop
• keyboard, mouse, and controller input events
• vectors, matrices, bounding boxes, and easing functions
• audio playback
• asynchronous scripting

chickadee sprite by Refuzzle, CC0

Documentation

View the reference manual

Releases

• 2023-05-24 — 0.10.0 — chickadee-0.10.0.tar.gz — GPG signature
• 2022-10-25 — 0.9.0 — chickadee-0.9.0.tar.gz — GPG signature
• 2021-10-07 — 0.8.0 — chickadee-0.8.0.tar.gz — GPG signature
• 2021-04-13 — 0.7.0 — chickadee-0.7.0.tar.gz — GPG signature
• 2020-11-19 — 0.6.0 — chickadee-0.6.0.tar.gz — GPG signature
• 2020-04-08 — 0.5.0 — chickadee-0.5.0.tar.gz — GPG signature
• 2019-06-04 — 0.4.0 — chickadee-0.4.0.tar.gz — GPG signature
• 2018-10-03 — 0.3.0 — chickadee-0.3.0.tar.gz — GPG signature
• 2017-01-26 — 0.2.0 — chickadee-0.2.0.tar.gz — GPG signature
• 2017-01-23 — 0.1.0 — chickadee-0.1.0.tar.gz — GPG signature

Requirements

• GNU Guile >= 3.0.6
• Guile-SDL2 >= 0.8.0
• Guile-OpenGL >= 0.1.0
• libjpeg-turbo
• libpng
• OpenAL
• Vorbis
• MPG123
• Freetype
• GNU Readline

Installation

To install Chickadee with the GNU Guix package manager, run:

guix install guile-chickadee

To build and install Chickadee from source, run:

wget https://files.dthompson.us/releases/chickadee/chickadee-0.10.0.tar.gz
tar xf chickadee-0.10.0.tar.gz
cd chickadee-0.10.0
./configure
make
make install

License

GNU GPLv3+

Git Repository

Chickadee is developed using the Git version control system. The official repository is hosted at https://git.dthompson.us/chickadee.git.

To clone the repository, run:

git clone https://git.dthompson.us/chickadee.git

Community

Real-time discussion for Chickadee can be found on the #chickadee channel on the Libera.chat IRC network

Contributing

Send patches and bug reports to davet@gnu.org.