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Game Jam 2 Results

wasm4.org

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Re: Game Jam 2 Results

#41

Post by hota_mazi »

vanderZwan wrote: post #20
bluGill wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't difficult, but it is friction. You hit compile and a few seconds later you get an error that is unrelated to the change you wanted to test. I agree with all those errors once those changes are for production, but sometimes I wish the compiler would just shut up and let me test the actual change I just made to ensure it works. Commenting out a few variables isn't always easy either. Every try to add const to…

> It isn't difficult, but it is friction. Only until getting rid of unused variables becomes a habit before you hit the compiler. Which is a good habit to have anyway.

Good habit, maybe, but it shouldn't cause a compilation failure.

Add to that the snowball effect: you comment out a variable, compile, and you get another error because commenting out variable a made variable b unused. Rinse and repeat.

It's a huge and totally unnecessary time sink.

It should be opt-in, so that it's a warning by default, and then, when I'm ready to push my code, I could run some --strict mode that would force me to clean up my code.

Re: Game Jam 2 Results

#43

Post by kristoff_it »

cardanome wrote: post #6
rcarmo wrote: post #2

26 or so data points, but still interesting. I myself have become enamored with Zig's relative simplcity and straightforwardness, although some of my friends keep telling me to do Rust instead.

For me Rust is a language that I would absolutely love to work with in a professional context. The type system and borrow checker have your back and help you make changes to the code without fear of accidentally introducing any regressions. For private lone-hacking projects though it feels way too complex and opinionated. Here Zig definitely gets closer to what I need, though sadly it made unused variables an compile…

The current plan is for `zig fmt` to have an optional flag that makes it automatically fix unused variables.

Re: Game Jam 2 Results

#45

Post by Tepix »

The harsh restrictions sure spur creativity!

On the other hand, is the SNES "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past" style everyone's favourite pixel art style, or is it just me? Without tricks it did 256 colours of of 4096 in Mode 7. You can't do art that's as pretty with four colours. Is it a restriction that's too harsh or are we ok with games that just aren't very pretty?

Re: Game Jam 2 Results

#47

Post by kristoff_it »

dom96 wrote: post #23
gorjusborg wrote: post #11

It would be awesome to understand the reasons zig was utilized. My guess is that it is about the language tooling, but it would be nice to hear from the authors themselves.

My guess is it comes down to how much the Zig community (in particular I've seen Zig's VP of community mention it) has advertised it.

Yeah, I did. The previous WASM-4 Jam had Zig and C tie at the top followed by Rust. Other languages also had more representation than in this last one, maybe also because of a greater overall number of entries (44 total).

https://youtu.be/7ydnjX999kk?t=894

I also think that there is a correlation between the majority of participants being from Europe and Zig. At the moment almost all our meetups are in Europe.

Re: Game Jam 2 Results

#48

Post by xedrac »

rcxdude wrote: post #26
cardanome wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me Rust is a language that I would absolutely love to work with in a professional context. The type system and borrow checker have your back and help you make changes to the code without fear of accidentally introducing any regressions. For private lone-hacking projects though it feels way too complex and opinionated. Here Zig definitely gets closer to what I need, though sadly it made unused variables an compile…

It is a truly bizarre decision for a language which aims to have a fast change->compile->run cycle, since it can basically double the time the compile cycle takes.

Yeah, I would like a flag that makes the compiler as loose as possible, maybe something like "-fprototype". Then when I'm ready to get serious about correctness, I can remove the flag and be all pedantic.

Re: Game Jam 2 Results

#49

Post by TakeBlaster16 »

kristoff_it wrote: post #43
cardanome wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me Rust is a language that I would absolutely love to work with in a professional context. The type system and borrow checker have your back and help you make changes to the code without fear of accidentally introducing any regressions. For private lone-hacking projects though it feels way too complex and opinionated. Here Zig definitely gets closer to what I need, though sadly it made unused variables an compile…

The current plan is for `zig fmt` to have an optional flag that makes it automatically fix unused variables.

That's just going to result in people committing unused vars to their repos. People are already doing that now after adding '_'s by hand. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32753079 It's going to get even more common when underscores are automatically added all over your project without user input and you have no chance of remembering where they all were.

If the goal of not having warnings is to increase code quality, it's actually doing the opposite.

I don't understand this insistence on working around the problem by layering on tooling, instead of just fixing the problem to begin with.

Re: Game Jam 2 Results

#50

Post by Existenceblinks »

necovek wrote: post #17

Other notable things from the game jam other than Zig being the most popular: it's mostly developers aged 15-24 (hopefully they split that up into 15-19 and 20-24 next time around), and mostly from Europe. WASM-4 seems to be a technically limited "console" (64kb of RAM, 160x160 console), so it's even more of a niche than just doing game dev for WASM.

If I were a Zig advocate I would advertise [Z]ig as the programming of future starting from gen Z, new blood of developers.
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