Rapidly prototype a simple 2D game, pixel-based animations, software renderers, or an emulator for your favorite platform. Then add shaders to simulate a CRT or just to spice it up with some nice VFX.
`pixels` is more than just a library to push pixels to a screen, but less than a full framework. You're in charge of managing a window environment, event loop, and input handling.
requests a low power (aka integrated) GPU by default. If the examples are not working for any reason, you may try setting the `WGPU_POWER_PREF=high` environment variable to see if that addresses the issue on your host machine.
You should also try to keep your graphics drivers up-to-date, especially if you have an old Intel integrated GPU. Keep in mind that some drivers and GPUs are EOL and will not be supported.
You may want to use the `RUST_LOG` environment variable (see [`env_logger`](https://docs.rs/env_logger) for full documentation) to gain additional insight while troubleshooting the examples. `RUST_LOG=trace` will spew all logs to `stderr` on debug builds:
```
$ RUST_LOG=trace cargo run --package minimal-winit
```
And also on release builds when default features are disabled:
The [`minifb`](https://crates.io/crates/minifb) crate shares some similarities with `pixels`; it also allows rapid prototyping of 2D games and emulators. But it requires the use of its own window/GUI management, event loop, and input handling. One of the disadvantages with the `minifb` approach is the lack of hardware acceleration (except on macOS, which uses Metal but is not configurable). An advantage is that it relies on fewer dependencies.
There is a more recent project called [`softbuffer`](https://github.com/john01dav/softbuffer). It provides similar capabilities to what `pixels` offers, but is intentionally limited to software-only (not hardware-accelerated) rasterization.
