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Accidentally making a language, for an engine, for a game

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Re: Accidentally making a language, for an engine, for a game

#61

Post by boredtofears »

Townley wrote: post #19

It's interesting that this phenomenon is much more prevalent in game development, as opposed to (for example) web development: some people build their own web development frameworks, but it seems like every game dev tries to make an engine at some point. My theory why: good web frameworks consider developer experience to be of paramount importance, and invest heavily into examples, documentation, and API improvements…

Making a game is at least an order of magnitude harder than making a website. Web apps are constrained by the protocols upon which their built (mostly the lifecycle of HTTP requests). Games are gigantic state machines that also require complicated rendering cycles. Unity and godot et el ARE good developer experiences in that they remove much of the complicated stuff even if the abstractions they use require them to be a bit clunky.

Re: Accidentally making a language, for an engine, for a game

#62

Post by pjmlp »

tikhonj wrote: post #24
arduinomancer wrote: post #15

I don’t get why are programmers so obsessed with the tools they use for the job? More than any profession

Why are musicians so obsessed with their instruments? Just use the right tool for the right job, don't call yourself a "pianist" or a "drummer", call yourself a musician .

That is what being a music composer is all about actually, not siloing oneself in a instrument category.

Re: Accidentally making a language, for an engine, for a game

#63

Post by jfoutz »

onion2k wrote: post #55
Centigonal wrote: post #46

I don't know what it is about game development that really brings out the yak shaving in people. One time, about 8 years ago, I backed a game called Nowhere[1] by a very talented programmer. The original premise was an alien life simulator. Well, it's been eight years, and development is still going strong! The developer is currently working on the String implementation for the programming language he invented[2], wh…

which is eventually going to be used to write the game At what point do you stop believing that?

Shhh. The man of La Mancha has a windmill that must be faced.

I mean, never. But sometimes people just need to make stuff, and that's super cool. They're doing no harm, let them enjoy their fantasy.

Re: Accidentally making a language, for an engine, for a game

#64

Post by gary_0 »

pjmlp wrote: post #58

> These languages are mostly fine... but C# is slow,.... First of all, it is a matter of which implementation we are talking about. Second, all major implementations wouldn't have had any issue dealing with the demos shown on the blog. I guess it was a good learning process about compilers for the author.

C# is very fast on average, but due to its runtime/GC it won't give you the consistent performance you need for game engine internals, which is what they meant by "slow".

Re: Accidentally making a language, for an engine, for a game

#65

Post by pkaye »

Centigonal wrote: post #46

I don't know what it is about game development that really brings out the yak shaving in people. One time, about 8 years ago, I backed a game called Nowhere[1] by a very talented programmer. The original premise was an alien life simulator. Well, it's been eight years, and development is still going strong! The developer is currently working on the String implementation for the programming language he invented[2], wh…

Now I know how to get funding to develop a cool programming language!

Re: Accidentally making a language, for an engine, for a game

#66

Post by sitkack »

mathgladiator wrote: post #14

There should be a competition of yak shaving. I've writing a Rust based canvas engine, with content via my own IDE, the runtime is fed data via WebSocket using my own API protocol, web proxy routing through a streaming and distributed load balancer using a new protocol, landing on my back-end platform running my own language, writing deltas to my own data store. https://www.adama-platform.com/ Why? For board game glo…

Holy Moly, this is Board Game Erlang!

Re: Accidentally making a language, for an engine, for a game

#67

Post by csande17 »

onion2k wrote: post #56
quickthrower2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That many react apps look like that is not a react thing but a design thing. You can make a react app that looks like HN. Or like a game!

You can make a React app that's wildly different to all the others, but if you follow "best practises", and you learned from the same tutorials, and you're using the same component libraries as other React devs your app will probably drift towards looking and working like other React apps unless you make a conscious choice to stop that happening.

Yeah, one difference between React and, say, Unreal Engine is that Unreal Engine is the brand for the whole package while React is the brand for one of the core components. ("I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as React is, in fact, React/Redux/Tailwind...")

Once you've bought into the whole ecosystem, you get an "engine" that wants your app to look and work a certain way just like how Unreal wants your game to look and work a certain way. You can customize it however you want, but every decision you don't make is made for you by the engine.

And even when you are making the decisions, the engine is always there, nudging you in a certain direction by making some things easier than others.

Re: Accidentally making a language, for an engine, for a game

#68

Post by KronisLV »

Centigonal wrote: post #46

I don't know what it is about game development that really brings out the yak shaving in people. One time, about 8 years ago, I backed a game called Nowhere[1] by a very talented programmer. The original premise was an alien life simulator. Well, it's been eight years, and development is still going strong! The developer is currently working on the String implementation for the programming language he invented[2], wh…

This is a lot like what a YouTuber by the name of Randy has been doing: he decided to create his own game engine instead of using something like Godot/Unity/Unreal and it's been quite the adventure.

His main YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RandallThomas/videos

His secondary YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RandytheSequel/videos

Of course, he still has nothing close to an actual game and the progress he's made in a year is visually similar to what i threw together in a month in Unity for a freelance client once. Though admittedly, he's probably learnt a bit more about how game engines work by creating his own and it's been quite the educational experience, as well as something that actually has gained him a nice following of people who support him towards more videos.

But that's still not very conductive to shipping finished games. It's very much the same as people whose games tend to balloon in scope, another thing that's as damaging to finishing a product in a reasonable amount of time as writing your own engine is.

I do suspect that not everyone has the utilitarian approach to game development that i or other people like me have: who just pick Godot/Unity/Unreal for every single project of theirs without ever caring much about the inner workings of everything. Then again, i'm the kind of person for whom, for example, adding graphical effects to their game consists of utilizing pre-made shaders instead of learning to use the shader language properly and all that.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but those are wildly different mindsets.

Re: Accidentally making a language, for an engine, for a game

#69

Post by mwill »

KronisLV wrote: post #68
Centigonal wrote: post #46

I don't know what it is about game development that really brings out the yak shaving in people. One time, about 8 years ago, I backed a game called Nowhere[1] by a very talented programmer. The original premise was an alien life simulator. Well, it's been eight years, and development is still going strong! The developer is currently working on the String implementation for the programming language he invented[2], wh…

This is a lot like what a YouTuber by the name of Randy has been doing: he decided to create his own game engine instead of using something like Godot/Unity/Unreal and it's been quite the adventure. His main YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RandallThomas/videos His secondary YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RandytheSequel/videos Of course, he still has nothing close to an actual game and the progr…

In case you missed it, some further context, his website now reads:

    I’ve decided to shelve Arcane (a video game I’ve been “working on” for 7 years) so I can practice shipping smaller games first
    I’ve been sending out a personal changelog every Sunday
    I’ve started using Unity so I can hone my design & prototyping abilities
    I scrapped my old custom website with this WordPress one
    I’ve transitioned to having writing (this site) be my main communication medium since I’m not the biggest fan of chasing the YouTube algorithm

Re: Accidentally making a language, for an engine, for a game

#70

Post by KronisLV »

mwill wrote: post #69
KronisLV wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a lot like what a YouTuber by the name of Randy has been doing: he decided to create his own game engine instead of using something like Godot/Unity/Unreal and it's been quite the adventure. His main YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RandallThomas/videos His secondary YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RandytheSequel/videos Of course, he still has nothing close to an actual game and the progr…

In case you missed it, some further context, his website now reads: I’ve decided to shelve Arcane (a video game I’ve been “working on” for 7 years) so I can practice shipping smaller games first I’ve been sending out a personal changelog every Sunday I’ve started using Unity so I can hone my design & prototyping abilities I scrapped my old custom website with this WordPress one I’ve transitioned to having writing (th…

Yep, that is actually the eventual outcome for many of these grandiose projects.

Nonetheless, i hope that his further pursuits are more successful or at least fulfilling for himself!

Who knows, maybe he'll be able to create interesting content about Unity some time in the future, like Sebastian Lague and others make: https://www.youtube.com/c/SebastianLague/videos (if he ever feels like doing more YouTube content)

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