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GUI demos

Source: vignettes/articles/gui-demos.Rmd
gui-demos.Rmd

rdyncall can call real C GUI and graphics libraries directly from R, including interactive SDL3 windows, audio/visual examples, OpenGL rendering, and raylib drawing loops.

SDL3 Snake

The SDL3 Snake demo opens a window, polls keyboard input, updates game state in R, and renders each frame through wrappers generated from SDL3.dynport.

demo("SDL", package = "rdyncall", ask = FALSE)

The demo generates a temporary DynPort package for SDL3, uses the generated SDL_FRect aggregate type, passes a raw buffer to SDL_PollEvent(), and reads keyboard state from SDL_GetKeyboardState().

SDL3 audio

The SDL3 audio demo combines a small visual window with planar audio buffers. It prepares low-level audio structs and feeds sample data into an SDL3 audio stream from R.

demo("SDL_audio", package = "rdyncall", ask = FALSE)

This example shows how rdyncall can pass aggregate pointers, raw sample buffers, and runtime-managed native resources through a C API that owns audio playback.

SDL3/OpenGL raster

The SDL3/OpenGL raster demo opens an SDL3 window with an OpenGL context and renders a Mandelbrot raster. It is a compact example of using rdyncall for a graphics pipeline rather than only individual scalar function calls.

demo("SDL_raster", package = "rdyncall", ask = FALSE)

The raster demo exercises SDL3 window creation, OpenGL context setup, native buffer uploads, and a timed render loop controlled from R.

raylib recursive tree

The raylib recursive tree demo draws animated branch geometry with raylib. The R side generates branch endpoints and passes raylib aggregate values such as Vector2 and Color by value.

demo("raylib", package = "rdyncall", ask = FALSE)

This demo highlights aggregate-by-value calls, generated geometry in R, and a foreign drawing loop managed through raylib.

raylib Rtinycc recursive tree

The raylib Rtinycc recursive tree demo keeps the same control-panel shape but compiles the recursive tree renderer with Rtinycc. R owns the window loop and slider state, while the compiled renderer calls raylib drawing functions through function pointers resolved by rdyncall.

demo("raylib_tinycc", package = "rdyncall", ask = FALSE)

This variant shows how a demo can combine three layers in one loop: R for UI state, rdyncall for native symbol binding, and Rtinycc for a small compiled renderer that still draws through the same raylib API.

What these demos exercise

Demo Native library rdyncall features
SDL3 Snake SDL3 renderer and events dynport(), generated aggregate types, raw event buffer, keyboard state, event loop
SDL3 audio SDL3 audio and renderer aggregate pointers, raw audio buffers, native resource cleanup
SDL3/OpenGL raster SDL3 and OpenGL shared-library discovery, OpenGL context setup, raster buffer upload, timed rendering
raylib recursive tree raylib aggregate by value, generated R geometry, drawing loop, downloaded native library
raylib Rtinycc recursive tree raylib and Rtinycc native function pointers, aggregate by value, compiled renderer, drawing loop

Together, the demos show rdyncall operating at the boundary where R code owns the application logic while C libraries own windows, renderers, audio streams, and graphics contexts.

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