Prerequisites

Before you start building games for Nethercore ZX, you’ll need to set up your development environment.

Choose Your Language

Nethercore ZX games are compiled to WebAssembly. You can write games in several languages:

Language	Best For
Rust	Full ecosystem support, best tooling
C/C++	Existing codebases, familiar to game devs
Zig	Modern systems programming, C interop

This guide shows setup for each language. Pick one and follow its setup instructions.

Language Setup

Install Rust

Install Rust using rustup:

Windows/macOS/Linux:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Or visit rustup.rs for platform-specific installers.

Add WebAssembly Target

After installing Rust, add the WASM compilation target:

rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown

Verify Installation

# Check Rust version
rustc --version

# Check WASM target is installed
rustup target list --installed | grep wasm32

You should see:

a rustc ... version line
wasm32-unknown-unknown in the installed target list

Install wasi-sdk

wasi-sdk provides a clang toolchain configured for WebAssembly:

macOS (Homebrew):

brew install wasi-sdk

Linux/Windows:

Download from wasi-sdk releases:

# Linux example (adjust version as needed)
wget https://github.com/WebAssembly/wasi-sdk/releases/download/wasi-sdk-24/wasi-sdk-24.0-x86_64-linux.tar.gz
tar xzf wasi-sdk-24.0-x86_64-linux.tar.gz
sudo mv wasi-sdk-24.0 /opt/wasi-sdk

Windows (manual):

Download the Windows release from GitHub
Extract to C:\wasi-sdk
Add to PATH or set WASI_SDK_PATH environment variable

Get the Nethercore Header

Download zx.h from the Nethercore repository:

# From the nethercore repo
cp include/zx.h your-game/

Or add the include path to your build.

Verify Installation

# Check clang version
/opt/wasi-sdk/bin/clang --version

You should see:

Target: wasm32-unknown-wasi

Install Zig

macOS (Homebrew):

brew install zig

Linux/Windows:

Download from ziglang.org/download:

# Extract and add to PATH
wget https://ziglang.org/download/0.13.0/zig-linux-x86_64-0.13.0.tar.xz
tar xf zig-linux-x86_64-0.13.0.tar.xz
export PATH=$PATH:$(pwd)/zig-linux-x86_64-0.13.0

Get the Nethercore Bindings

Copy the native Zig bindings from the Nethercore repository:

cp include/zx.zig your-game/

Or declare the FFI imports directly in your code (see examples).

Verify Installation

zig version

You should see:

0.x.y

Code Editor (Optional but Recommended)

Any text editor works, but we recommend one with language support:

VS Code with rust-analyzer extension
RustRover (JetBrains IDE for Rust)
Neovim with rust-analyzer LSP

Optional: Nethercore CLI

The nether CLI tool provides convenient commands for building and running games:

cargo install --path tools/nether-cli

This gives you commands like:

nether build - Compile your game
nether run - Run your game in the player
nether pack - Package your game into a ROM file

Next: Your First Game

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Nethercore ZX API Reference