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Anyway, I've been working on a game part time for a while. I've maintained open source libraries for gamedev for almost 20 years, made many smaller games, and worked on many games as a contractor, but this is maybe the first big game that I'm really proud to call mine. :)
Veridian Expanse is a sci-fi exploration/crafting game with twin stick shooter elements that's heavily inspired by games like Terraria and Subnautica. It's not done yet, this demo is a bit of an early access type of situation, but there's enough solid content for a few hours of fun.
Since you all are fellow Linux users and like options, here are some to play it. :)
It's written from scratch in C using a handful of libraries. I'm pretty proud of the game's lighting. Normal mapped sprites lit by hundreds of lights in every frame with soft shadows and reflections, all while running smoothly on something as simple as a Raspberry Pi.
Anyway, I'd love if people gave it a try. Also, I'm dying for someone to tell me they compiled it and played in on OpenBSD, or Haiku or something like that. It's a big part of why I wanted to release it with the source code available. :D
source-code$ make -j DRIFT_SDL3=1cc -std=gnu11 -0s -DNDEBUG -I . -I src -I ext/tracy/public -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/include/fribidi -I/usr/include/libdrm -I/usr/include/libdecor-0 -DDRIFT_SDL3 -c -o src/base/drift_app.o src/base/drift_app.c
make: cc: No such file or directory
I am pretty sure fribidi, libdrm and libdecor-0 are installed. Running ARM64 Debian 14 (Testing). Vulkan is not available, so I cannot run the rpi64 build.
Using SDL v3.4.8 -> src/base/drift_app.c:589Loading additional gamepad mappings. -> src/base/drift_app.c:625
Disabling threads when rendering with OpenGL... Need to fix this. -> src/base/drift_app.c:637
DriftApp no threads -> src/base/drift_app.c:408
Aborted
Sounds like you have to fix that thread-issue? Device is running with GLES2 if that matters, but also tried to force (currently unsupported) GLES3 with same issue. Testing it on purpose not on my main PC, because tried to make it work on a special device as you wished.
Last edited by PlayingOnLinuxphone on 17 May 2026 at 6:11 pm UTC
The "DriftApp no threads" should really say it's running on a single thread. Not really a bug, just a fallback because there isn't really a cross platform compatible way to do threaded GL rendering AFAIK.
I tried it right now, because GNOME 50 software is also running on GTK4 and therefor GLES3. Forcing the app being rendered in GLES3 (and not in software rendering) works for this kind and is making their apps super smooth ... with a few artifacts from time to time. My hope was it works similar in case I cannot start your game, but doesn't look like. Once it works, I will come back to post it.