retro-game-dev

A collection of retro video games I want to make, developed using the Banjo API.
This project also serves as a playground to drive Banjo’s ongoing development and test its features across different targets.

Table of contents

• Build for Web
• Build for Linux
• Build for Windows
• Selecting which games to build

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Build for Web

Web builds are powered by the Emscripten WebAssembly framework.

Requirements:

• CMake >= 3.21
• Emscripten SDK

Create a folder for building the project, and change to that directory.
The rest of this guide will assume you are using a .build_web/ folder directly under the root of this project.

For example:

mkdir .build_web && cd .build_web

First, make sure you installed and activated Emscripten:

git clone https://github.com/emscripten-core/emsdk.git
cd emsdk

./emsdk install latest
./emsdk activate latest
source ./emsdk_env.sh

cd -

Run CMake with Emscripten enabled and build the project:

emcmake cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBANJO_CONFIG_EMSCRIPTEN_BACKEND=ON
cmake --build . -j

When the build completes, index.html, the .js, and .wasm game files will be in your build directory.

Testing with a local server

Option 1 – emrun (recommended for Emscripten testing):

emrun is included with the Emscripten SDK and automatically sets the correct MIME types for .wasm and .js files.

From your build directory, run:

emrun --port 8000 index.html

Add --no_browser flag to avoid auto-opening of your default browser.

Then visit:

http://localhost:8000/index.html

Option 2 – Python HTTP server (simple, works without Emscripten active):

python3 -m http.server 8000

Then open http://localhost:8000/index.html in your browser.

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Build for Linux

To build native Linux executables with ALSA and X11 enabled (always on for Linux builds):

Requirements:

• CMake >= 3.21
• GCC or Clang toolchain
• Development packages for ALSA and X11

From the project root:

mkdir .build_linux && cd .build_linux
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBJ_FEATURE_X11=ON -DBJ_FEATURE_ALSA=ON
cmake --build . -j

The compiled game binaries will be in the .build_linux/ folder.

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Build for Windows

To build native Windows executables with Win32 and MME enabled (always on for Windows builds):

Requirements:

• CMake >= 3.21
• Visual Studio (MSVC) or MinGW-w64 toolchain

Using Visual Studio (MSVC):

mkdir .build_win
cd .build_win
cmake .. -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBJ_FEATURE_WIN32=ON -DBJ_FEATURE_MME=ON
cmake --build . --config Release

Using MinGW-w64 (from MSYS2 shell):

mkdir .build_win && cd .build_win
cmake .. -G "MinGW Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBJ_FEATURE_WIN32=ON -DBJ_FEATURE_MME=ON
cmake --build . -j

Binaries will be placed in the .build_win/ folder.

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Selecting which games to build

Each discovered game has a GAME_<name> CMake option (default: ON).
To disable building a specific game:

cmake .. -DGAME_pong=OFF

Only enabled games will be built and appear in the index.html game list for Web builds.