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Core: an experimental new way to write videogames

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Re: Core: an experimental new way to write videogames

#51

Post by sph »

smellybigbelly wrote: post #46
sph wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After doing functional programming for a while now (6 years of Elixir) it seems obvious to me that it is possible and no more complex than using imperative logic. In fact I would go so far as to say that managing complexity (i.e. state) is much easier to do in a functional style than imperative. Functional is all about transformation of data structures, and a game is nothing more than a function that takes {state, mo…

Could an expert strong man the argument that functional programming languages like Haskell could in theory be more performant than C because of the nice properties of pure functional languages?

CPUs are imperative and pervasively mutable. Languages like Rust are able to have so called zero-cost abstractions that are reminiscent of functional programming (iterators for example) but the thing is abstractions are by nature always slower than the real thing.

But not all games are AAA FPS that require ingenious optimized codepaths to perform well, not in this day and age, so this is why you see commercial games running on "slower" abstractions such as C# (AOT compilation doesn't make it less of an abstraction layer), so you can very well design a commercial game in Haskell or Scheme or Lisp or Clojure if you wish. Nothing stops you, apart from the lack of serious game dev frameworks built in those languages.

It all depends on the compiler, really, and it is asymptotically hard to compile functional languages so they perform as fast as C for example. There is no market for "high performance Haskell or Clojure", so there is no compiler that good either.

Re: Core: an experimental new way to write videogames

#52

Post by seanthemon »

nightowl_games wrote: post #42
Alex-Programs wrote: post #23

Oooh, this is cool. I always like to see different approaches to game dev (despite never having published a game!). So far I've tried - Bevy (Rust ECS engine), which is nice at first but has a lot of problems with its implementation and can become rather messy. I think it's heavily dependent on the game. Part of it will be my own incompetence. - Unity. IMO the system of gameobjects with composed modular components is…

As a professional game dev who has years of experience producing real products in both Unity and Godot, I am totally not with you about your thoughts on Godot vs unity. Godots signals are such a huge step up over Unity's built in classes having a lack of modularity. How do you even make sense of that? Godot vs Unity basically have the same scene/node/component model except Godot does it better imo. Eg) What is the di…

I think the original commenter just really likes "plug and play" solutions with a lot of hand holding which is what Unity is excellent at. The problems come down the line.

Godot is objectively a way way better tool

Re: Core: an experimental new way to write videogames

#53

Post by vasco »

kgeist wrote: post #29

It says game development can be made simple and then throws a whole of jargon at you: clojure vectors, datomics, atoms, transactions, malli schemas... Can someone explain?

Have you considered googling "clojure X", where X is each of those things in commas? Other than datomics which has some result pollution everything else has great first page results.

Re: Core: an experimental new way to write videogames

#54

Post by r-w »

NotAnOtter wrote: post #44
Alex-Programs wrote: post #23

Oooh, this is cool. I always like to see different approaches to game dev (despite never having published a game!). So far I've tried - Bevy (Rust ECS engine), which is nice at first but has a lot of problems with its implementation and can become rather messy. I think it's heavily dependent on the game. Part of it will be my own incompetence. - Unity. IMO the system of gameobjects with composed modular components is…

I'm not that familiar with Godot but the built in language always felt like a misstep. Maybe someone more familiar with it can make a defense. I view 3 users 1. Complete Novice 2. Engineer dabbling in games 3. Professional game designer. For #2, they are more likely to prefer C# as they probably already have experience with it, or otherwise will be familiar with the similar Java language. Also it's a nice resume boos…

Godot lets you use whatever language you want. C# included.

Re: Core: an experimental new way to write videogames

#55

Post by SkiFire13 »

kleiba wrote: post #24
virtue3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the issue with JVM/java was always that when that GC triggers you are just absolutely hosed. C# tends to be a bit more forgiving about when it triggers GC and how. The generational garbage collector in C# will tend to be more reliable or at least I never ran into super huge issues with the places I've used C# for game dev. The JVM GC has this unfortunate effect of having very bad pauses occasionally. And appears to d…

Minecraft is written in Java, it doesn't look like the choice of platform kept it from becoming a success.

If anything using Java made it extremely moddable and is IMO part of the reason why it became a success.

Re: Core: an experimental new way to write videogames

#56

Post by doctorpangloss »

nightowl_games wrote: post #45

As a game dev, this GitHub is comical to me. Bordering on parody of the kind of academic navel gazing that game devs stick their nose up at. Cherry on top is the ugly screenshot.

On the other hand, making things intellectually stimulating: even if you waste 100h making clojure datomics in order to make 1h of level content, 1h>0h, and if it were boring and therefore you wouldn’t make it at all, you’ve come out ahead. The “Jonathan Blow uses Jai” thesis of indie development.

Re: Core: an experimental new way to write videogames

#57

Post by the_gorilla »

kgeist wrote: post #29

It says game development can be made simple and then throws a whole of jargon at you: clojure vectors, datomics, atoms, transactions, malli schemas... Can someone explain?

This is common among programmers. They come up with some insane, convoluted set of rules that they happen to like and then declare it simple and elegant. To anyone on the outside it looks schizophrenic in nature.

Of course it has a component system. I just hope no one sees this mess and thinks that if THIS is considered simple, videogame development isn't for them.

Re: Core: an experimental new way to write videogames

#58

Post by smitec »

Alex-Programs wrote: post #23

Oooh, this is cool. I always like to see different approaches to game dev (despite never having published a game!). So far I've tried - Bevy (Rust ECS engine), which is nice at first but has a lot of problems with its implementation and can become rather messy. I think it's heavily dependent on the game. Part of it will be my own incompetence. - Unity. IMO the system of gameobjects with composed modular components is…

I'd recommend giving Raylib a look if you haven't. I've been working on a couple small ideas using it lately and it feels very aligned to being a game 'engine' for people who come from a more classic software engineering background.

Re: Core: an experimental new way to write videogames

#59

Post by frompdx »

This post has generated a surprising amount of conversation for how little documentation this repo has. Looking at the code this looks more like a project rather than a game engine. The property editor looks interesting. Seems like this post is being upvoted based on the title vs the content.

Re: Core: an experimental new way to write videogames

#60

Post by steeleduncan »

NotAnOtter wrote: post #44
Alex-Programs wrote: post #23

Oooh, this is cool. I always like to see different approaches to game dev (despite never having published a game!). So far I've tried - Bevy (Rust ECS engine), which is nice at first but has a lot of problems with its implementation and can become rather messy. I think it's heavily dependent on the game. Part of it will be my own incompetence. - Unity. IMO the system of gameobjects with composed modular components is…

I'm not that familiar with Godot but the built in language always felt like a misstep. Maybe someone more familiar with it can make a defense. I view 3 users 1. Complete Novice 2. Engineer dabbling in games 3. Professional game designer. For #2, they are more likely to prefer C# as they probably already have experience with it, or otherwise will be familiar with the similar Java language. Also it's a nice resume boos…

Godot has supported C# for a while now. There is no need to use GDScript
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