scaffold

scaffold is a minimal starter template for building a game on top of skele and stk. It is not an engine of its own, it is the smallest working skeleton that wires the two together: a fixed-timestep game loop, hot-reload polling, and three build targets (software client, OpenGL client, headless server) sharing one game module.

Copy this repository to bootstrap a new game and start filling in src/game.c.

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Key Features

• Three binaries from one game module: software client, OpenGL client, and headless server, all calling the same game_init/game_tick/game_shutdown contract
• Fixed-timestep accumulator loop wired to skele_tick_ns, correct across variable frame times
• stk hot-reload wired in from the start, polled every loop iteration
• Static or dynamic linking against skele/stk via LINK_TYPE
• Cross-platform build (Linux, BSD, macOS, Windows, Raspberry Pi 5 GL auto-detect)

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Quick Start

Building

# Unix (Linux/BSD/macOS)
./build.sh debug release

# Windows
build.bat debug release

Builds three binaries into bin/{debug,release}:

• <game>_client - software rendering client
• <game>_glclient - OpenGL client
• <game>_server - headless server, no video/input linked

Set LINK_TYPE=dynamic (default static) to link against shared libskele/libstk instead:

./build.sh LINK_TYPE=dynamic debug release

Running

./build.sh run     # software client
./build.sh run_gl  # OpenGL client

Installation

./build.sh install

Installs to /usr on Linux, /usr/local on BSD/macOS by default. Use PREFIX to customize:

./build.sh PREFIX=$HOME/.local install

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Usage

Starting a New Game

1. Rename GAME_NAME in config.mk (used to name the built binaries).
2. Implement game_init, game_tick, and game_shutdown in src/game.c.
3. Add any additional source files to GAME_SRCS in config.mk, they are compiled into all three binaries.

The Game Contract (include/game.h)

uint8_t game_init(void);   /* return 0 to abort startup */
void game_tick(void);      /* called once per simulation tick */
void game_shutdown(void);  /* called once on exit */

This is the entire surface a game needs to implement. Rendering, input, windowing, and hot-reload are all handled by the client main.c files calling into skele/stk, not by the game module itself.

Client Loop (software and GL)

Both src/client/main.c and src/gl_client/main.c follow the same pattern: init clock and signal handling, set up stk, init skele, init the game, then run a fixed-timestep accumulator loop polling input and stk each frame before presenting. They are kept as separate files so each can diverge independently as you add renderer-specific setup (window flags, GL context options, and so on) without one client's changes leaking into the other.

Server Loop

src/server/main.c runs the same accumulator pattern without any video/input calls, calling only stk_poll() and game_tick() each iteration, then sleeping out the remainder of the tick.

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Project Status

Very early. This is a starter template, not a finished project. game.c ships as an empty stub (game_init returns success, game_tick/game_shutdown do nothing). No automated tests.

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License

BSD 3-Clause License

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Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please ensure code follows C99 standard and works across all supported platforms.