fae 0.3.1

A simple and fast 2D rendering crate with optional window creation and text rendering functionality.
Documentation

Fae

Fae is a simple, performant and compatible 2D rendering crate with optional window creation functionality and text rendering. Its main design goals are simplicity and performance while supporting older/low-end target platforms. The base crate which implements the rendering functions only depends on OpenGL and std. Optional features exist for ttf rendering and window creation, rusttype and glutin/glfw respectively. The crate supports OpenGL 2.1+ and OpenGL ES 2.0+ contexts, but will do some optimizations if a 3.3 or ES 3.0 context is available.

Important note

The crate is currently under development, and I wouldn't recommend it for any kind of usage yet. Especially since the API is currently oriented so it fits the backend of the crate, instead of being easy to use, and that will definitely change in the future. It's on crates.io mostly so I don't have to come up with another name :)

Cargo features

  • The glutin feature implements the window mod, which allows for easy window creation using glutin, with all the required OpenGL context wrangling done for you.
  • The glfw feature is an alternative to the glutin feature, implementing the same API. Please see the Glfw notes section before using.
  • The text feature implements the text mod, which has functionality for drawing strings. Fonts are provided in the form of .ttf files shipped with your application. The glyph rendering is done by rusttype, which this feature adds as a dependency, as well as unicode-normalization. A lightweight version of this feature is planned, where you can use bitmap fonts to conserve executable size and performance.
  • The png feature implements the Image::from_png function, which allows you to load images from PNG data. This is a very convenient feature, but not necessarily a requirement for using the crate, so it's optional.

Glfw notes

The GLFW feature exists as an option since the examples built with it are about 0.5x the size of the executables built with glutin (on Linux, Windows has no benefit and I don't think macOS has either), but I wouldn't recommend it. Glutin is better in almost all ways: better HiDPI support, less CPU utilization, and it's written in Rust.

Since GLFW does not do any HiDPI scaling on Linux by itself, this crate sets the scaling factor to the first non-0 of these env variables:

  • QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR
  • QT_SCALE_FACTOR
  • GDK_SCALE
  • ELM_SCALE

Notes

  • You can force the crate to use an OpenGL 2.1 context by setting the FAE_OPENGL_LEGACY environment variable. This is intended for making sure that builds work in both legacy and modern modes, though of course, if there are visual differences between the modes (aside from fps), they should be considered a bug in this crate. Make an issue! Example usage: 
    FAE_OPENGL_LEGACY=1 cargo run

Issues

I keep a to-do list in [[ISSUES.md]], but if your concern isn't listed, feel free to open GitHub issues.

License

The fae crate is distributed under the MIT license.