FPLBase

Overview

FPLBase is the lowest level game library we use at FPL taking care of input, rendering, and resource loading (shaders, textures, meshes etc.). It also offers useful functionality for dealing with Android input devices and HMDs, and threaded resource loading.

FPLBase is not meant to be an "engine", in that it doesn't dictate anything about how your game is structured. It is meant to shorten the distance between an empty project and "drawing stuff on screen", by providing the typical minimal functionality you don't get if you work on top of raw OpenGL.

It is also not meant to be a platform abstraction library (like SDL, GLFW, Glut etc). We (optionally) use SDL underneath for that purpose, and we provide a version of the library (fplbase_stdlib) that assumes you set up your own Open GL context.

Other FPL libraries can be used on top of FPLBase, for example FlatUI can provide font rendering and game UIs.

FPLBase is available as open source from GitHub under the Apache license, v2 (see LICENSE.txt).

Why use FPLBase?

• You want to write a cross-platform C++ game or other graphical thing, and you'd prefer something simple to start with instead of buying in to an "engine".
• You'd prefer to not have to deal with writing yet another shader / texture / mesh loader etc.
• You want to be using some of our other libraries with it.

Getting started.

Read Building on how to build for your system, and Introduction on how to use the API.

Supported Platforms and Dependencies.

FPLBase has been tested on the following platforms:

• Android
• Linux (x86_64)
• OS X
• iOS
• Windows

This library is entirely written in portable C++11 and depends on the following libraries (included in the download / submodules):

• OpenGL. Our code is written such that it works well with both ES 2 on mobile, and desktop OpenGL.
• SDL as a cross-platform layer (optional, use fplbase_stdlib if you initialize your own OpenGL context).
• MathFu for vector / matrix math.
• FlatBuffers for serialization.
• WebP for image loading.
• FPLUtil (optional, can be used to build).
• googletest (only in unit tests).

Download

Download using git or from the releases page.

Important: FPLBase uses submodules to reference other components it depends upon so download the source using:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/google/fplbase.git

Feedback and Reporting Bugs

• Discuss FPLBase with other developers and users on the FPLBase Google Group.
• File issues on the FPLBase Issues Tracker.
• Post your questions to stackoverflow.com with a mention of fplbase.