Using Scenic for Game Development with Elixir

Jesse Anderson introduces Scenic, a 2D user interface library for creating applications beyond browsers, and tests its capability by building a video game. The workshop covers animations, finite state machines, and alternate input devices. Scenic follows a three-tier architecture: scenes for interfacing, a graph like the DOM to define layouts, and the viewport for directing I/O between the scene and the underlying hardware through drivers. Anderson illustrates the creation of a title screen with Scenic, explains messaging with Scenic.Centre.register, and details frame timing with a pub/sub system for animations. Although Scenic has limitations, such as not supporting sprite sheets yet, Anderson highlights workarounds and expresses the enjoyment of using Elixir for game design, despite its non-ideal status for games. The presentation includes live demonstrations, syntactical examples, and real-world use cases that reflect Scenic's growing potential in the Elixir ecosystem.