Go Library Support for Apps and Games.

The library support to be able to ship applications and games written in Go is not at the same level as that enjoyed by back-end web development. My current work as a game developer, and aspiring application creator depends on

packages supporting game development.
packages supporting a cross-platform GUI.

These are library issues, nicely separate from the Go language. My experience of using Go for game development is that the Go language is great - no changes necessary.

Writing Games in Go.

(1) What I wanted to do:

I wanted to write and ship games using Go.

(2) What I actually did:

I wrote a game engine using Go (https://github.com/gazed/vu) which allows me to create games using Go. This involved:

writing device layer go bindings for macOS, iOS, and windows to get access to the display and user input.
writing OpenGL, and OpenAL go bindings.
writing a vector, matrix, and quaternion math library in Go.
porting some of Bullet Physics to Go.
writing a basic asset import library.
writing the game engine layer.

Then I wrote games using Go, eg: http://jewelofkings.com.

In order to publish I wrote a packaging script (python this time) to be able to ship to the macOS app store, the iOS store, and windows 10 app store.

(3) Why that wasn't great.

For each of the above bulleted items I was hoping that there was already a package available. A package that had been produced, reviewed and used by many developers. My preference is to not depend on packages created by one or two developers - including those I write myself. My packages haven't been reviewed by anyone else and, unlike the go library packages, there can be no expectation of ongoing support.

Writing Applications in Go.

(1) What I want to do:

I want to use Go to write and ship desktop applications such as tools to help with game development like http://www.angelcode.com/products/bmfont and eventually a game level editor.

(2,3) What I actually did, and why that wasn't great.

This hasn't happened yet because it relies on an underlying cross-platform GUI. I've looked at a few strategies and attempted a few implementations but failed at finding a Go-based approach that I can do by myself in a reasonable time frame. I'm looking for something similar to other cross-platform examples available using other languages:

Java: AWT, SWT, Swing.
C/C++: Qt, GTK+, wxWidgets.
Javascript, HTML5, CSS: Chromium Embeded Framework.
Custom OpenGL based UI like Blender.