Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang • Hacker News Board

Re: Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang

#31

Post by csande17 » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

DeathArrow wrote: post #30

As a former game developer, I don't get why the people start from scratch by developing their own rendering engines or even game engines. Using Unity, Unreal or even Godot is helping you to launch your game 100x faster. I know it might be fun to develop your own engine but it will take a lot of time and it still won't be as usable as an engine developed by 100x more engineers.

There are some great titles where the whole game was built around a unique feature provided by a custom engine. It probably wouldn't have been possible to do "Teardown" in Unity, for example; not without making some serious compromises, at least.

Re: Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang

#32

Post by TheApexTheater » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:37 AM UTC

bagels wrote: post #28

haberman wrote: post #19

I think Zig is great and I'm following it with interest. But I think people should be aware that it is not really stable yet, at least in my experience from trying it earlier this year. I ran into a compiler crash: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/7865 . I attempted to fix the compiler crash myself ( https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pull/8372 ), and I found a fix that worked, but apparently it was not the right fi…

Why would they spend the effort on writing the zig compiler in zig?

There are a couple of reasons why creating a self-hosting compiler can be good idea:

1. Shows to others that your language is capable of a project of moderate complexity, as well as display what an "idiomatic" version of writing code is

2. Remove dependencies on parts you can't control (once you rewrite it in Zig, rather than C++, you don't need to worry about new C++ features or deprecations between versions)

3. Writing code in the language helps catch bugs in the language specification and in the compiler's implementation of the language.

These are just the ones off the top of my head, but people with more PL-Design experience may be able to elaborate.

Re: Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang

#33

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:39 AM UTC

bagels wrote: post #28

haberman wrote: post #19

I think Zig is great and I'm following it with interest. But I think people should be aware that it is not really stable yet, at least in my experience from trying it earlier this year. I ran into a compiler crash: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/7865 . I attempted to fix the compiler crash myself ( https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pull/8372 ), and I found a fix that worked, but apparently it was not the right fi…

Why would they spend the effort on writing the zig compiler in zig?

[deleted]

Re: Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang

#34

Post by ari__ » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:51 AM UTC

DeathArrow wrote: post #30

As a former game developer, I don't get why the people start from scratch by developing their own rendering engines or even game engines. Using Unity, Unreal or even Godot is helping you to launch your game 100x faster. I know it might be fun to develop your own engine but it will take a lot of time and it still won't be as usable as an engine developed by 100x more engineers.

I do game development consulting now and then (speedrun mode, leaderboards, randomizers, supporting infrastructure, etc.) and it's really nice to see Godot mentioned here. I don't often make projects from scratch but it is genuinely a pleasure to use.

In regards to developing your own engine - it's almost never more efficient to do so nowadays, but it is almost always significantly more fun. If the author has enough wealth accumulated to quit their job and work on a passion project full time, I imagine they can afford to do something just for fun as the baseline.

Re: Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang

#35

Post by lelanthran » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 5:59 AM UTC

I don't really get the "I Left My Job to write $FOO in $BAR language" reason.

I can understand if someone left their job to write $FOO - you see an opportunity and you take a risk on it. What does the language have to do with it?

To me, taking such a risk, and then adding further risk (using a language you weren't using daily) seems to be a recipe for disaster.

If I were taking a risk (by leaving my job) on a new product, I would do my best to reduce all the other risks (use a familiar and popular tech stack, for one).

Re: Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang

#36

Post by 10000truths » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 6:01 AM UTC

zamalek wrote: post #29

haberman wrote: post #19

I think Zig is great and I'm following it with interest. But I think people should be aware that it is not really stable yet, at least in my experience from trying it earlier this year. I ran into a compiler crash: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/7865 . I attempted to fix the compiler crash myself ( https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pull/8372 ), and I found a fix that worked, but apparently it was not the right fi…

I tried, and enjoyed, Zig. My enjoyment rapidly fell off a cliff when I started getting deeper into the stdlib. It feels like (this may not be true) that people contributed random stuff into it, a bit like C++ prior to Boost. The inconsistency hampered my enjoyment, and I headed back to Rust.

Andrew plans to audit the zig stdlib before the 1.0 release to fix those issues:

https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/1629

Re: Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang

#37

Post by travisgriggs » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 6:18 AM UTC

Is anyone using Zig on embedded micros yet? M0/M3 or so? I do a bit if C code on st micros and Atmel chips, I’d love to have a modernized C in this world.

Re: Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang

#38

Post by pcwalton » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 6:30 AM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #13

Rygu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Zig?

Zig is like C but better. It fixes all the pain points of C without adding any extra complications (Rust - borrow checker, Go - GC, C++ - everything).

Memory safety is a pain point of C, and Zig doesn't fix that. There is no free lunch: you either accept garbage collection or deal with something that resembles the borrow checker.

Re: Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang

#39

Post by dgb23 » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 6:32 AM UTC

TheApexTheater wrote: post #32

bagels wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they spend the effort on writing the zig compiler in zig?

There are a couple of reasons why creating a self-hosting compiler can be good idea: 1. Shows to others that your language is capable of a project of moderate complexity, as well as display what an "idiomatic" version of writing code is 2. Remove dependencies on parts you can't control (once you rewrite it in Zig, rather than C++, you don't need to worry about new C++ features or deprecations between versions) 3. Wri…

Contributions are another one I think. Both the authors and potential collaborators might find it more attractive to use their language of choice. Compilers also tend to pose a variety of challenges that force one to really dig into a language.

Re: Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang

#40

Post by kleiba » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 6:32 AM UTC

DeathArrow wrote: post #30

As a former game developer, I don't get why the people start from scratch by developing their own rendering engines or even game engines. Using Unity, Unreal or even Godot is helping you to launch your game 100x faster. I know it might be fun to develop your own engine but it will take a lot of time and it still won't be as usable as an engine developed by 100x more engineers.

I know it might be fun to develop your own engine

That's it right there. You can spent years pretending to write a game while optimizing your from-scratch engine for features that probably no-one will ever use [1]. But I think it depends on what your goal is.

If it's a small hobby project, and you enjoy the process of writing your own engine (which, granted, can also be a great learning experience), then why not? You're probably in for the fun anyway.

I know some indie devs who learned the hard way that if your goal is in fact to eventually release a game, doing it without using an existing engine can reaaally drag things out.

I think it's tempting: you can get started on a new "engine" pretty easily, and get something up and running in a day or two. But then comes the long tail of adding all the other stuff, which often isn't so much fun.

A lot of the game development process isn't actually programming, so by writing everything from scratch, a programmer can artificially shift the focus into the direction they're more comfortable with.

[1] https://handmadehero.org/