Top 10 Libraries for Game Development in Golang

Top 10 Libraries for Game Development in Golang

If you search the Internet for ‘Golang game development ’, you will hardly find any results. That’s because only recently developers have started taking an interest in Golang for game development. Thanks to the availability of several libraries, packages and engines, you can design 2D and 3D games without much hassle. Thanks to Golang’s CSP-style concurrency, and parallelism, developers are finding the language handy.

Now, let us delve into the libraries.

1. engo

  • Engo is compatible with Linux, Windows and macOS, and it is also congruent with Android and iOS (provided you have Golang 1.4). The open-source, cross-platform 2D game engine also has web support (wasm).
  • You will get access to two important packages: github.com/EngoEngine/engo/common and github.com/EngoEngine/engo. 
  • The features for generating windows, launching the game, setting up an OpenGL environment, and managing input are all included in the top-level engo package. It is intended for usage with Systems created in accordance with the standards listed in github.com/EngoEngine/ecs. 
  • ECS implementations of popular game development systems, such as a RenderSystem or CameraSystem, are included in the ‘common’ package.

2. Termloop

  • If you prefer to work from the terminal, then you can use the Go engine Termloop, which has been created on top of Termbox. You get a simple render loop for creating games. And the engine is aimed at making the development process easier for the developers. 
  • If you wish to keep track of the breaking changes, then you should be active on Changelog. To install it, you will have to type ‘go get -u github.com/ JoelOtter/ termloop’
  • You have features like mouse and keyboard input. There are render timers, collision detection, debug logging, built-in entity variations like rectangles, frame rate counters, etc.

3. Oak

  • Oak is a game engine that offers control over multiple windows running at the same time, scene control, and propagates common events to assess game logic
  • To install it, you have to type ‘go get -u github.com/oakmound/oak/v4’. When it comes to image rendering, you can manipulate it using interface render.Modifiable. 
  • You get to enjoy built-in Renderable types that cover Composite, Sprite, primitive builders, Colorbox, Bezier, history tracking, etc. 
  • You get options like mouse handling, audio support, joystick support, and particle system. The event handler comes in handy when you develop a game and the 2D physics system provides various vector types.

4. G3N

  • G3N is cross-platform, which means it is supported on Linux, Windows and macOS. The 3D game engine has integrated GUI with different widgets. You also get access to 3D spatial audio, courtesy OpenAL.
  • You get geometries support, orthographic and perspective cameras. And the OpenGL game engine provides you with animated sprites and animated frameworks. 
  • Developers love the GLSL shaders (vertex, geometry and fragment shaders). One also gets to enjoy the physics engine and HiDPI displays support. 
  • You can load image textures from PNG, JPEG and GIF files. And you will definitely enjoy the model loader feature which comes with options like Wavefront OBJ, COLLADA and gITF.

5. Nano

  • Nano is a lightweight and extremely powerful game server networking library that offers a wide array of libraries and tools, and a robust core network architecture. This helps the developers minimize redundant tasks, like repetitive network programming. 
  • The library was designed for development of real-time games, mobile games, social games, etc. The application consists of a Components collection, which essentially is a bundle of Handlers. 
  • Developers can easily create distributed game servers. This is because the library consists of a distributed system solution (built-in). Component.Handler helps in accessing a service and the handler is called during client request. 

6. Ebitengine

  • If you wish to develop 2D games, then you can use this open-source game library. Its powerful API helps you design the game in a short time and deploy it on multiple platforms. 
  • The rendering operation in Ebitengine takes place in the form of drawing one picture above another. This is because everything (screen, offscreen items, data from image file) are represented in the form of an image. 
  • Developers do not need to use a C compiler on Windows, as Ebitengine is implemented in pure Go. The library works on desktops (Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD), web browsers and mobiles (iOS and Android).

7. GarageEngine

  • GarageEngine is a 2D game engine that is based on OpenGL. The engine is Component/Entity based and consists of a lot of features like Depth Layers, Scenes, Texture packing, Sprites, Font, etc. 
  • Developers might notice some resemblance with Unity3d as there are GameObjects, Transform, Components, Coroutines, Scenes, etc. 
  • In order to install it, you need the glfw&glew libraries and for Windows, you should use mingw. For Linux, you should use sudo apt-get update. 
  • It is imperative that you clean and polish Atlas, Font, Tree Behaviors, and fix bugs in Coroutines. You get support for multiple cameras and auto-batching.

8. Azul3D

  • Azul3D is simply a 3D game engine that is cross platform. This means that it is supported on Linux, Windows, and macOS. Furthermore, you get access to 3D audio using OpenAL. 
  • It is great for 2D and 3D games, as well as non-game interactive applications. However, unlike JMonkey, Unity, the engine does not provide much more than programming packages. 
  • Since Azul3D is written in Golang, it is able to provide support for multithreading rendering. Also, Azul3D has an added benefit of players who love simulated games, controlled by the goroutines.

9. raylib-go

  • If you love videogames programming, then raylib-go will be helpful. This simple library was designed by developers inspired by the XNA framework and Borland BGI graphics. 
  • The library finds application in embedded systems, graphic applications, tools development, prototyping and education. 
  • It is available for platforms like Ubuntu, Fedora, macOS, Windows, Android and Raspberry Pi. And for the installation process, you have to type go get -v -u github.com/gen2brain/raylib-go/raylib You need all the dependencies too when you install Raylib, and Windows users require Mingw-w64. 
  • The project also has a converter, for which you need to use the ‘goimports’ tool.

10. Pitaya

  • If you prefer clustering support, and iOS, Android and Unity client libraries, then you should use the lightweight and swift game server framework Pitaya. The server framework is best suited for distributed multiplayer games. 
  • In order for it to work, you need Go>=1.10. For service discovery, you need etcd. For sending and receiving grpc or rpc implementations, you have to use nats.
  • Pitaya has support for reporters like statsd and Prometheus, Websocket acceptors, and TCP. Moreover, it allows binding sessions to different users, and applications to highlight the handlers.

These are the top 10 libraries that you can use to develop 2D and 3D games. However, it boils down to your requirements. However, if you are a Golang developer, then it is highly suggested that you learn the installation of the libraries and coding from scratch. Then, you won’t have to resort to typing ‘Golang game development company’ every time you face an issue.