Editing Openai/69676758-d944-8003-a3d4-835e33b4e372 (section)

=== Assistant: Yes. ===
Yes. SDL + Vulkan is sufficient for serious game development.

More precisely:

===== SDL handles all platform-dependent, non-graphics concerns: =====
* Window creation
* Input (keyboard, mouse, gamepads)
* High-resolution timing
* Display enumeration
* Vulkan surface creation (VkSurfaceKHR)
'' Cross-platform portability (Windows, Linux, macOS'')

You do not need to care about:
* DisplayPort
* Window system details
* Native APIs (Win32, X11, Wayland, Cocoa)

SDL already sits at the correct abstraction boundary.

* macOS uses MoltenVK (Vulkan → Metal), which is still fine unless you are doing cutting-edge Vulkan features.

===== Vulkan gives you explicit, low-level GPU control, which is the lowest level that is actually useful for games: =====
* Explicit memory management
* Explicit synchronization
* Predictable performance
* Modern rendering features
* Access to compute

This is exactly where “deep enough” stops.

===== And this is a feature, not a limitation: =====
* No access to scanout
* No control over DP/HDMI
* No display timing beyond vsync/adaptive sync requests
* No OS compositor bypass (except exclusive fullscreen)

Those layers are correctly abstracted away.

===== <syntaxhighlight>Your Game =====
  └─ Your Engine Code
      ├─ SDL (window, input, events)
      └─ Vulkan (rendering, compute)
          └─ GPU driver
              └─ GPU display engine
                  └─ DisplayPort / HDMI

</syntaxhighlight>

You should never cross that Vulkan ↔ driver boundary.

===== Only in edge cases: =====
* You need a full editor UI → add ImGui
* You want audio → SDL_audio or another lib
* You want asset pipelines → separate tooling
* You need console support → proprietary SDKs

Still no need to go lower.

===== For game development: =====

: 

Anything below that is driver, OS, or hardware work — not game development.

If you want, I can sanity-check a minimal Vulkan + SDL project layout or suggest what not to over-engineer early.