KappaDuck.Quack 0.4.0-alpha.20260118213523

Quack! 🦆

Quack! is a fast, lightweight, and code-first 2D/3D game engine built on SDL and its extensions (SDL_image, SDL_mixer, SDL_ttf). It is designed for modern .NET 9+ games and desktop apps, providing a clean and flexible API that abstracts low-level platform details.

Quack! offers a wide range of features, including:

• Rendering 2D/3D graphics using SDL's rendering API (SDL_renderer and SDL_gpu)
• Window management and event handling
• Input handling for keyboard, mouse, and game controllers
• Audio playback and management
• And much more!

Quack & SDL compatibility

Quack! is shipped with native binaries of SDL and its extensions. Below is a compatibility table showing which versions of SDL are used in each Quack! release.

⚠️ During active development, SDL dependencies may be updated frequently. ⚠️

Cross-platform support

Quack! currently supports Windows and Linux.

The API is designed to be cross-platform thanks to SDL's abstraction layer, making porting to other platforms straightforward.

Other platforms such as Android or WebAssembly may be supported in the future, but there are no immediate plans.

Installation

Quack! is available on NuGet. Install it via the .NET CLI:

dotnet add package KappaDuck.Quack -v 0.3.0

or add it directly to your .csproj file:

<PackageReference Include="KappaDuck.Quack" Version="0.3.0" />

You can also install via the NuGet Package Manager in your Visual Studio or JetBrains Rider.

Usage

A minimal example creating a resizable window and handling quit events:

using KappaDuck.Quack.Events;
using KappaDuck.Quack.Graphics.Rendering;

using RenderWindow window = new("Quack! Playground", 1080, 720)
{
    Resizable = true
};

while (window.IsOpen)
{
    while (window.Poll(out Event e))
    {
        if (e.RequestQuit())
        {
            return;
        }
    }
}

More examples can be found in the Examples directory.

Development & Playground

You can build Quack! from source or run quick experiments using a playground file.

Prerequisites

• .NET 9.0 SDK
• .NET 10.0 SDK

The SDK includes everything needed to build and run .NET applications.

Setup

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/KappaDuck/quack.git
cd quack

2. Install SDL and its extensions

Windows

dotnet ./SDL3/setup.cs

Linux

chmod +x ./SDL3/setup.cs
./SDL3/setup.cs

The setup script installs SDL and all required extensions. On linux, you only need to make it executable once.

Build & Run

Open the solution in your preferred IDE (e.g., Visual Studio, Rider, VS Code).

Most IDEs do not support running single-file scripts directly, so you'll need to run the playground file from the command line.

VS Code provides intellisense but cannot run the playground file directly.

Playground file (quack.playground.cs)

The playground allows you to experiment with windows, input, rendering, and more without modifying the main source code.

Create a file named quack.playground.cs at the root of the repository with the following content:

This file is ignored by git, so it's safe to use for your experiments.

#!/usr/bin/env dotnet

// Ignore the warning about missing copyright header in this file
#:property NoWarn=IDE0073
#:property TargetFramework=net10.0-windows
#:property IncludeNativeLibs=true
#:project src/KappaDuck.Quack

using KappaDuck.Quack.Events;
using KappaDuck.Quack.Graphics.Rendering;

using RenderWindow window = new("Quack! Playground", 1080, 720)
{
    Resizable = true
};

while (window.IsOpen)
{
    while (window.Poll(out Event e))
    {
        if (e.RequestQuit())
        {
            return;
        }
    }
}

Run the playground

Windows

dotnet ./quack.playground.cs

Linux

chmod +x ./quack.playground.cs # only needed once
./quack.playground.cs

Credits

Quack! draws inspiration from and leverages the following projects:

• SDL
• SDL_image
• SDL_ttf
• SDL_mixer
• LazyFoo
• Sayers.SDL2.Core
• SDL3-CS
• SFML