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24a2: An ultra-minimalist game engine

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Re: 24a2: An ultra-minimalist game engine

#31

Post by quietbritishjim »

harkal wrote: post #27

I find that any game created with this game engine ends up being far more code-heavy and complex than it would be without using it. In my mind, this invalidates the argument of using an ultra-minimalist game engine at the first place...

Perhaps I've missed the point, but I'd always expect a "minimalist" framework of any type contain less code in itself but require more application code. That's practically the point.

You have to write more boilerplate, but at least you know what all that code is doing because the framework is so easy to understand. By contrast, a more heavyweight framework lets you wrote less boilerplate because there's a helper function for every situation, but then your application code is filled with lots of magical calls into the framework, so to understand your code you need to look at a different bit of the framework documentation for every line.

That's not to I say I think either is better or worse, just that those are the expected trade offs.

Re: 24a2: An ultra-minimalist game engine

#32

Post by jstanley »

Wow, this is fantastic, what a great idea.

I've spent the morning knocking up a little Space Invaders clone, it's the most fun I've had programming in ages. It's at https://incoherency.co.uk/24invaders/ and the logic is mostly done, just got some graphics work to do.

I got into programming as a teenager by making shitty games, first with Blitz Basic, and then with the Allegro C library.

My favourite parts of the Allegro community were the annual "speedhack" in which people create a game over a weekend, and the informal "screenhack" in which you create a game that must fit in 80x25 characters of C code. 24a2 brings back all the joy of those challenges for me.

Re: 24a2: An ultra-minimalist game engine

#33

Post by jstanley »

harkal wrote: post #27

I find that any game created with this game engine ends up being far more code-heavy and complex than it would be without using it. In my mind, this invalidates the argument of using an ultra-minimalist game engine at the first place...

What complexity do you think this engine adds?

It isn't forcing you to do any extra work, it just saves you from having to worry about setting up a canvas, listening for input, or running a timer. That's literally all it does. And it gives you a neat aesthetic with the grid of dots.

Re: 24a2: An ultra-minimalist game engine

#35

Post by harkal »

esperent wrote: post #28
harkal wrote: post #27

I find that any game created with this game engine ends up being far more code-heavy and complex than it would be without using it. In my mind, this invalidates the argument of using an ultra-minimalist game engine at the first place...

Of the two example games that come with the engine, skiing is 113 lines long and snake is 158 lines long. Both include comments and don't make any attempt at a brief style of coding, so their lengths seem reasonable to me. What games have you seen that you feel are too code heavy, written using this engine?

"Code heavy" of course in a relative sense. You can definitely make a snake game with the same aesthetic in less that 158 line, and you won't need to carry along the engine. I would also argue that the plain javascript version will be easier to understand as you will not need to understand what the engine is doing.

Re: 24a2: An ultra-minimalist game engine

#36

Post by prvc »

derefr wrote: post #7

I feel like, rather than having no sound at all, the ability to output a PC-speaker-like beep (i.e. turn on/off a fixed-frequency, fixed-amplitude square wave channel) might be nice. No parameters because otherwise you might get distracted trying to trick it into sounding vaguely musical ;) I’ve also always wanted to see something like this but with emoji for the “graphics.” (Emoji are, after all, the standard graphi…

That would defeat the purpose of being minimalist, don't you think?

Re: 24a2: An ultra-minimalist game engine

#37

Post by nazgulsenpai »

jstanley wrote: post #32

Wow, this is fantastic, what a great idea. I've spent the morning knocking up a little Space Invaders clone, it's the most fun I've had programming in ages. It's at https://incoherency.co.uk/24invaders/ and the logic is mostly done, just got some graphics work to do. I got into programming as a teenager by making shitty games, first with Blitz Basic, and then with the Allegro C library. My favourite parts of the Alle…

I was a teen also fiddling around those BASIC game programming engines like Dark and Blitz Basic. That was so much fun.

All of my memories of Allegro mostly revolve around DJGPP. What an interesting piece of software that was.

Re: 24a2: An ultra-minimalist game engine

#38

Post by smabie »

kqr wrote: post #23

I have no idea if this is any good compared to existing game engines, but the limits imposed by its simplicity certainly tickle my creativity. If nothing else, it could be a great prototyping space. One question: have you considered making it mobile friendly somehow? Given that all of the examples require arrow keys, it's a bit hard to demo on a phone.

It can only render a 24x24 grid of dots, of course it "sucks" compared to existing game engines..

Re: 24a2: An ultra-minimalist game engine

#39

Post by kqr »

smabie wrote: post #38
kqr wrote: post #23

I have no idea if this is any good compared to existing game engines, but the limits imposed by its simplicity certainly tickle my creativity. If nothing else, it could be a great prototyping space. One question: have you considered making it mobile friendly somehow? Given that all of the examples require arrow keys, it's a bit hard to demo on a phone.

It can only render a 24x24 grid of dots, of course it "sucks" compared to existing game engines..

I meant more in terms of architecture, extensibility, etc. I noticed it uses rather procedural updates -- maybe other game engines use more functional updates? I have no idea.

Re: 24a2: An ultra-minimalist game engine

#40

Post by andrewnc »

I just made my first game[0] with the engine!!

It was a pretty painless experience. Granted it encourages globals (and JavaScript is not my favorite) but it was pretty great.

Maybe with an additional array/matrix library it would be perfect.

[0] https://andrewnc.github.io/games/pal_game.html

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