How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it June 5, 2024
tl;dr: I learned some Vulkan and made a game engine with two small game demos in 3 months.
The code for the engine and the games can be found here: https://github.com/eliasdaler/edbr
This article documents my experience of learning Vulkan and writing a small game/engine with it. It took me around 3 months to do it without any previous knowledge of Vulkan (I had previous OpenGL experience and some experience with making game engines, though).
The engine wasn’t implemented as a general purpose engine, which is probably why it took me a few months (and not years) to achieve this. I started by making a small 3D game and separated reusable parts into the “engine” afterwards. I can recommend everyone to follow the same process to not get stuck in the weeds (see “Bike-shedding” section below for more advice).
Preface
I’m a professional programmer, but I’m self-taught in graphics programming. I started studying graphics programming around 1.5 years ago by learning OpenGL and writing a 3D engine in it.
The engine I wrote in Vulkan is mostly suited for smaller level-based games. I’ll explain things which worked for me, but they might not be the most efficient. My implementation would probably still be a good starting point for many people.
Hopefully, this article will help make some things about Vulkan clearer to you. But you also need to be patient. It took me months to implement what I have today and I did it by cutting corners in many places. But if a self-taught programmer like me can build something with Vulkan, then so can you!
Learning graphics programming
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