Game development on Alpine Linux

Game development is possible on Alpine Linux.

Learning curve

For programmers, it's strongly recommended that you use a game engine if you are starting video game programming which will handle most of the low level setup. If you have advanced knowledge in programming, you should see the multimedia section and 3D libraries section.

For artists, see Tools used to work with or create art assets section.

Software libraries used in game development

Game engines

• PLIB - plib -- game engine
• Blender - blender -- a 3D modeler and animator with a game engine
• Minetest - minetest -- both a game engine and a game

Multimedia libraries

• Simple DirectMedia Layer - sdl-dev -- has input, audio, video, joystick support (use 2.0 instead)
• Simple DirectMedia Layer 2.0 - sdl2-dev -- has input, audio, video, opengl, touch screen, game controller support
• SFML (Simple and Fast Multimedia Library) - sfml-dev csfml-dev -- has input, audio, video, networking, opengl support
• OpenAL Soft - openal-soft-dev -- can be used for 3D sound for 3D games
• GLFW - glfw-dev -- To create OpenGL context quickly with input support
• FreeGLUT - freeglut-dev -- To create OpenGL context quickly with input support
• PyOpenGL - py-opengl -- OpenGL on Python

3D libraries

• OpenGL Mathematics - glm-dev - for 3D calculations to transform, rotate, scale stuff

Rendering and loading assets

• OpenSceneGraph - openscenegraph-dev -- can be used to load 3D models and handle complexities of rendering a 3d scene

Fonts

• FTGL - ftgl-dev -- to display text in OpenGL

Tools used to work with or create art assets

• GIMP - gimp -- could be used to create 2D sprites
• Audacity - audacity -- could be used to slice sound assets
• Inkscape - inkscape -- could be used to make vector 2D art assets
• Blender - blender -- can be used to create 3D assets or models