Wow, my post suddenly went viral! Just opened GitHub a few minutes ago, and saw +17 stars on my project from the last few hours... Anyway, i see a lot of people asking WHY making ky own engine or language. So the main answer is: for fun. it's clearly not going to be even close to a professional engine like godot/unity/modern gamemaker, but this is mine, and the others aren't :)
But i wrote more about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/csharp/comments/1tmcg6j/my_biggest_...
Show HN: C# Game Engine with its own scripting language and IDE
21–30 of 73 posts
Re: Show HN: C# Game Engine with its own scripting language and IDE
#22I think if you're looking for other people to use your game engine, it helps to have one killer feature. I'm not clear what yours is at this point. Even if your killer feature is not something you have yet completely implemented, but it is simply a long-term goal, I think it is worth listing that front and center.
If I'll have an idea for such a "killer-feature", I'll do my best to implement it... :)
Re: Show HN: C# Game Engine with its own scripting language and IDE
#23Apart from "I have fun working on this", which is always legit, what's the point and who's supposed to use it? What'd be the benefit using with or working on it over e.g. Godot, which is, imo, pretty much the open source way to go if you want more than an IDE and libs/code you'd use to make a game. It's also written in C# and offers GDScript as a more lightweight programming language with C# being ready to be used fo…
No successcull game engine is written in c#
Correct, as there is no need. Use frameworks instead: Terraria, Stardew Valley, Celeste.
Re: Show HN: C# Game Engine with its own scripting language and IDE
#24This is a massive undertaking... building a whole language + IDE + engine from scratch is insane. I am curious: what made you go with a custom language instead of just embedding Lua or something? Was it a learning thing, or do you think Exp brings something Lua (or GML) doesn't?
Thanks! so, at first i really used C# for scripting language, so it was like GameMaker-8 but C# instead of GML... but after almost year of development, i was bored. it wasn't exciting anymore, and when i asked myself what would make it exciting again, the answer was "my own language". i don't know why, but it's something i always wanted to build by myself. i had absolutly 0% idea on HOW, but after a break of more than a year, one day i just tried and unlike a few previous times, this time it started clicking, and this what bringed me back to the abandoned game engine
Re: Show HN: C# Game Engine with its own scripting language and IDE
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reminds me of the Tomorrow Corporation (developer of World of Goo) tech demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72y2EC5fkcE Their entire stack is custom (language, compiler, IDE, build system, engine). Has neat features like time-travelling debugging and instant hot-reloading for code and assets.
What's time traveling debugging?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel_debugging
Basically it’s rewinding a process so you can observe changes or twiddle the knobs.
Re: Show HN: C# Game Engine with its own scripting language and IDE
#26To any aspiring game developers out there: If you need AAA-equivalent graphics and are willing to tank the overhead, use UE5. Otherwise, homebrew everything in the language you prefer (use an LLM, make sure you understand the architecture perfectly). Using a half-baked semi-supported game engine which you don't understand will destroy your project sooner or later. The cognitive overhead of understanding someone else'…
As mentioned there are plenty of engines mature and worthy to develop with, like Godot.
Advising to homebrew everything with an LLM just sounds insane to me. Cognitive overhead of what? Using well thought out and standardized libraries that have proper documentation? Creating a new engine with an LLM is only going to achieve the opposite of fully understanding your codebase.
Re: Show HN: C# Game Engine with its own scripting language and IDE
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely not. Replying to the trope that exists in gamedev that "making the game is the only valuable thing, people who make engines are just making excuses". > Firing up godot/unity/unreal eliminates an entire universe of reasons for why you haven't shipped more content today Not everyone wants to "ship content". > brutal exposure when you don't have a creative vision to follow Also assumes everyone must have or f…
> EDIT: And yeah, I'm tired of people collectively shitting on other people's project in HN without even looking at it, or without considering why not having monocultures is good. The person you replied to simply wrote the following, which seems like the opposite of shitting on the project this post is about: "The benefit of engaging with a project like this is that you gain a very plausible set of excuses that can b…
Reducing it to a "plausible set of excuses", among other things, is what I mean by shitting on other people's passion project. Saying that the "firing unity/unreal/godot" is what I mean by preferring monocultures.
EDIT: Writing an engine is difficult and time consuming, but also rewarding in several ways, and requires a completely different skill set from writing a game. It's incredibly patronizing to call it "an excuse".
This is similar to asking someone making an image editor to "just open photoshop, you're making excuses for not working on art".
Re: Show HN: C# Game Engine with its own scripting language and IDE
#28To any aspiring game developers out there: If you need AAA-equivalent graphics and are willing to tank the overhead, use UE5. Otherwise, homebrew everything in the language you prefer (use an LLM, make sure you understand the architecture perfectly). Using a half-baked semi-supported game engine which you don't understand will destroy your project sooner or later. The cognitive overhead of understanding someone else'…
As mentioned there are plenty of engines mature and worthy to develop with, like Godot. Advising to homebrew everything with an LLM just sounds insane to me. Cognitive overhead of what? Using well thought out and standardized libraries that have proper documentation? Creating a new engine with an LLM is only going to achieve the opposite of fully understanding your codebase.
Thank you! That's exactly what I was about to write.
Re: Show HN: C# Game Engine with its own scripting language and IDE
#29Wow, my post suddenly went viral! Just opened GitHub a few minutes ago, and saw +17 stars on my project from the last few hours... Anyway, i see a lot of people asking WHY making ky own engine or language. So the main answer is: for fun. it's clearly not going to be even close to a professional engine like godot/unity/modern gamemaker, but this is mine, and the others aren't :) But i wrote more about it here: https:/…
Thanks for sharing! Great attitude!
Re: Show HN: C# Game Engine with its own scripting language and IDE
#30This is a massive undertaking... building a whole language + IDE + engine from scratch is insane. I am curious: what made you go with a custom language instead of just embedding Lua or something? Was it a learning thing, or do you think Exp brings something Lua (or GML) doesn't?
As somebody else with a game engine that has its own scripting language: AI is incredibly good at making scripting languages with your ideal dream syntax/functionality. It's pretty fun to use it. (No, neither my engine nor my language is worth using and never will be)
I really don't want to use AI for my project. I love writting code by myself, and except for very few specific things, I didn't use it in this project. But for the language i actually didn't use ANY external sources, including google, tutorials, books. wanted to figure it out by myself. so maybe i'm kind of weird in this stuff