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

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

#111

Post by [deleted] »

ddrdrck_ wrote: post #82
_vvhw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, we've written several thousand lines of code in Zig for a new financial accounting database called TigerBeetle [1], and all we've seen were two compiler bugs. The first was already fixed a few hours before we reported it, and the second was not a showstopper and something we could easily work around. On the other hand, because Zig has incredible velocity, we're also seeing that std lib contribution…

For the sake of curiosity, did you consider Rust, and if yes why did you consider it was not suitable for your needs ? I know Zig and Rust are quite different languages, but it is my understanding that they share the same low-level approach without sacrificing safety

[deleted]

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

#112

Post by mbrodersen »

lelanthran wrote: post #35

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 pro…

Agree. If you want to create games for a living then you need to think game design/business first and tools second. The hardest part of doing games is coming up with compelling game designS that people actually want to pay $ for. Tech is very low on the list of what’s important.

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

#113

Post by mbrodersen »

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.

100% agree. I don’t know why you were downvoted. I assume that some people hate it when you dare to talk reality. I have run my own successful game biz for 5+ years and have written more than one commercial game engine that was used to release commercial games on consoles and PC. And I 100% agree with you. Unity (for example) will make you at least 10 times more productive than writing a 3D engine from scratch.

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

#114

Post by mbrodersen »

cyber_kinetist wrote: post #88
kleiba wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, though I’ve also seen people do the same thing inside of existing engines, for example trying to use Unity but become so frustrated with its design so much that they begin to spending their time building their own external systems and tools. It seems more of a mindset problem than what engine you actually use (whether you build your own or not). If you have some amount of self-discipline and implement your cust…

Unity is used more than any other game engine in the world to release successful commercial games. If you can’t figure out how to use Unity to make commercial games then the problem is you not Unity. I have released commercial games using 3D game engines I wrote from scratch years ago before Unity existed. I would never recommend doing that today when Unity is available and so easy to use compared with having to write everything from scratch.

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

#115

Post by mbrodersen »

meheleventyone wrote: post #48
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.

It depends, writing a very targeted engine for your game isn’t necessarily that much slower than using a general purpose engine off the shelf. The problems usually start when people are more interested in writing the engine than making a game. Then they gravitate towards all sorts of fun technical problems that would be useful in a general purpose engine but not really for their specific set of problems. I’ve also se…

Have you ever written a 3D engine from scratch used for a commercial game that needed to work on Xbox, PlayStation and PC? I have. You clearly haven’t. I would highly recommend using Unity or some other off-the-shelf game engine instead. However I do agree with your next point. People think that the 3D engine is the game. That is 100000% wrong. Top selling games often have unimpressive tech. Amazing “games” that are actually more like tech demos fail to sell.

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

#116

Post by michal-z »

mbrodersen wrote: post #113
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.

100% agree. I don’t know why you were downvoted. I assume that some people hate it when you dare to talk reality. I have run my own successful game biz for 5+ years and have written more than one commercial game engine that was used to release commercial games on consoles and PC. And I 100% agree with you. Unity (for example) will make you at least 10 times more productive than writing a 3D engine from scratch.

It depends on many factors. You are describing your experience and then extrapolate for everyone. My game will be pretty small, not fully 3D. I don't need 90% of Unity features and Unity bugs :)

Before making my decision to go with Zig I've built small game in UE5 (https://michalziulek.itch.io/upacman). I've also used UE5 and Unity at AMD. I simply don't like those engines.

Different people have different approaches and mindsets. I'm much faster building my small, minimal codebase that does only what I need. Also, I'm improving my low-level programming skills and experimenting, doing things differently than most people (not using Unity) might lead to very original game.

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

#117

Post by meheleventyone »

mbrodersen wrote: post #115
meheleventyone wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends, writing a very targeted engine for your game isn’t necessarily that much slower than using a general purpose engine off the shelf. The problems usually start when people are more interested in writing the engine than making a game. Then they gravitate towards all sorts of fun technical problems that would be useful in a general purpose engine but not really for their specific set of problems. I’ve also se…

Have you ever written a 3D engine from scratch used for a commercial game that needed to work on Xbox, PlayStation and PC? I have. You clearly haven’t. I would highly recommend using Unity or some other off-the-shelf game engine instead. However I do agree with your next point. People think that the 3D engine is the game. That is 100000% wrong. Top selling games often have unimpressive tech. Amazing “games” that are…

Sure if you shift the goal posts by adding more detail to the context then the situation is different. There's a reason the first two words of my reply were "it depends".

Please don't make assumptions about my experience based on that though. It's pretty impolite before I'm even able to respond to the new criteria and makes you look like you're not actually responding in good faith.

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

#118

Post by skocznymroczny »

Shadonototra wrote: post #86
skocznymroczny wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be personal preference. I worked with OP at Intel during the early days of Vulkan and he was the go-to person for anything Vulkan related, so he's certainly familiar with the API.

Well, that is not a pragmatic approach to make games, specially for indies, to just target one graphics API, that limits the audience you can reach We solved this issue already with WebGPU, it uses what ever is native to the platform you target.. https://devlog.hexops.com/2021/mach-engine-the-future-of-gra... Everyone wins

I am using WebGPU from D, it's an interesting solution and works well, but it has some drawbacks. First of all, because you have to match so many APIs, it only offers a common subset of functionality. Secondly, because it's primarily a Web API, it has a lot of validation, which wouldn't be needed for a desktop application. Thirdly, while it's still a low-level API, it doesn't offer the kind of control that AAA engine devs would like. It takes care of synchronization , memory management, transition barriers. AAA devs would prefer manual control over that.

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

#119

Post by littlestymaar »

Shadonototra wrote: post #102
pcwalton wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memory safety also adds reliability, by catching bugs statically that you didn't catch during (automated or manual) testing. It's the same argument as for static typing. It's of course true that some developers may judge the tradeoffs differently for their individual projects—that's why they're tradeoffs! But there are benefits to memory safety that go beyond security.

the only memory safety gamedev needs are bound checking and use after free protections everything else is just bloat and noise that hurts iteration time and even if one would still value them, you'd need to check only once for whatever memory check you want to run, when you build your allocators for example, and not at every builds, and you could even write the logic yourself and have a debug allocator to ensure memo…

> the only memory safety gamedev needs are bound checking and use after free protections

Probably if your game is single-threaded …

Rust's raison d'être was type-check thread-safety, and even if we don't talk about this aspect much anymore it's still the domain where it has no competitors (Pony could have been, but didn't get traction).

And it's invaluable.

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

#120

Post by mbrodersen »

meheleventyone wrote: post #117
mbrodersen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever written a 3D engine from scratch used for a commercial game that needed to work on Xbox, PlayStation and PC? I have. You clearly haven’t. I would highly recommend using Unity or some other off-the-shelf game engine instead. However I do agree with your next point. People think that the 3D engine is the game. That is 100000% wrong. Top selling games often have unimpressive tech. Amazing “games” that are…

Sure if you shift the goal posts by adding more detail to the context then the situation is different. There's a reason the first two words of my reply were "it depends". Please don't make assumptions about my experience based on that though. It's pretty impolite before I'm even able to respond to the new criteria and makes you look like you're not actually responding in good faith.

It is quite obvious to me from your comments that you have zero experience writing commercial 3D games. However if I am wrong then you are welcome to elaborate.
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