For the broader story behind the project - what Triangle is, where it’s going, and why I’m making it - check out the triangle endeavour or the devlog archive. This post is about the how.

🧩 Core Systems So Far

At this stage, Triangle supports:

• Basic player movement and shooting (Asteroids-style).
• Procedurally generated asteroid fields per sector.
• Material drops (iron ore) from destroyed asteroids.
• Automatic recipe unlocking when new items are picked up.
• Smelting system that converts ore to ingots.
• Unlocking and queuing up constructors using the crafting menu.
• A basic UI for crafting and inventory.
• Configurable keyboard mappings using TOML.

That’s the visible layer. Below the surface, the codebase has carved out some space for more ambitious systems.

🗂️ Code Structure Overview

Here’s a quick tour of the key directories and their purpose:

blit/

Handles all the 2D rendering abstractions - bounding boxes, shapes (including triangle fans 😉 and circles), and canvas drawing. Wraps raylib for better namespacing and type control.

phys/

Physics system. body.zig implements basic movement, collisions, and inertia. Still minimal, but usable.

combat/

Still early - only bullet is implemented, and is used to destroy asteroids. Placeholder for upcoming systems like health, damage, and targeting.

items/

This module forms the backbone of the crafting system. Items are tied to recipes, and recipes are triggered via pickups or crafting actions. There’s a lot more to unpack here - likely its own devlog soon.

notifier/

Manages in-game UI feedback. When you pick something up or unlock a new recipe, this is what shows it. Notifiers are scoped - one for inventory, one for crafting - and show up on either side of the screen.

ship/

This module contains the ship related logic, including movement, and the logic for constructing smelters and other buildables. Eventually this will handle assembly chains.

asteroid

These files should be refactored into its own module, and should contain the asteroid itself, as well as sector, a chunk of space - asteroids, entities, bullets, etc. This is the closest thing to a “level” in Triangle. It’s procedurally generated, and you can eventually travel from one sector to the next.

diag/

Code to support diagnostics & logging

game/

This module should get a bit of refactoring as well, moving some of the files from the root into its own module

• config: Takes care of user control bindings and input overrides via a TOML config file.
• notifier: supports collecting notifications across multiple channels.
• save: Just scaffolding for now - no save/load logic yet, but it’s a placeholder to group serializable components together.
• context: container struct to support dependency injection.

ui/

Holds in-game panels like crafting and inventory. Needs cleanup and consolidation.

🧪 What’s Missing

A lot of the systems are stubbed out, but not yet wired in. For instance:

• power is empty (future energy system)
• The canvas currently wraps raylib without adding much - that will likely change as UI complexity grows.

🧶 Threads I’ll Pull Next

These are the next things I’ll either build or record:

• Improving the coding structure. I’d like to improve organisation and am considering extracting a re-usable library out of it, mainly so I can tinker with other smaller game projects.
• A rudimentary menu system
• A build+deploy system to generate early test builds
• Possibly a contact/feedback form directly in-game or on the site

I’ll be releasing this in what I’m calling a “Sprout” build - a playable seed, a form of extremely early access. Feedback and collaboration is really important to me and I want to get this out there as soon as there is the tiniest spark of “life.”

If you’d like to follow the journey, you can watch the video devlog