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Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

heaps.io

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Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#31

Post by throwaway82652 »

nine_k wrote: post #29
throwaway82652 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why the Flash runtime is needed or why it matters that it went through a "demise". I was under the impression that you could just export Flash to HTML5 and javascript now? I'm not a flash developer so you'll have to forgive me if this is a dumb question.

(1) The rumors about HTML5 are not exactly true. (2) There are good open-source Flash runtimes. (3) The selling points of Flash were the no-installation experience and really good development tools. Both aspects are somehow lacking today, so the momentum is gone. Maybe someone will produce a great and accessible tool to create comparable HTML5 experiences, and that thing will become popular. But not yet.

What is missing in HTML5? You have WASM and websockets and the WebGL canvas built into every browser now, that seems to replicate just about everything Flash was known for doing? And just to clarify, I mean actually using the same old Flash development tools (apparently it's called Adobe Animate now?)

Or is the issue that the export-to-HTML5 functionality in those tools is just not fully done yet?

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#32

Post by klodolph »

telchior wrote: post #30
klodolph wrote: post #11

You can remember that there was a vibrant community of Flash game developers before the demise of Flash (EOL December 2020, the date of its “demise” is debatable). There’s not really a replacement for Flash and the community kind of fragmented. That said, my impression is that a big chunk of talent from the Flash community went to work on HaXe. These are people who make games and want tools to make game development e…

Because it's not obvious until visiting the Heaps page and clicking through to About: Heaps is built on Haxe. So you're complimenting it, right? (Your comment reads like a non-sequitur criticism if one doesn't know what Heaps is). That said, I agree that Haxe seems to attract a good crowd. I've also worked with some very competent people who primarily used HaxeFlixel.

I'm certainly not going to try to write comments assuming that people don't read linked page, that sounds tiring :-)

You don't have to click on "About Heaps", the landing page mentions HaXe inside the page

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#33

Post by Forgeties79 »

imachine1980_ wrote: post #8
afrodc_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no idea Dead Cells was made in this. That game is incredibly sharp. Need to play around with this as it seems relatively simple.

is really cool, is 3d under the hood, then they make a 2d pixel render over. article of gamasutra about the gaming pipeline of dead cells https://www.gamedeveloper.com/production/art-design-deep-div...

That was an absolutely fantastic read. Thank you for that!

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#34

Post by haxiomic »

hyuuu wrote: post #20

I really wish Haxe would just take off in the application development world, it had so much potential to be what Typescript has become with the benefit of transpiling to different languages. We theoretically could have had 1 single programming language for a full application with JS front end, Django server, C++ workers, the best of all worlds.

I use both haxe and typescript extensively. I yearn for what haxe could do to the js world! For example, I’m currently building a website in typescript and next.js. Next.js introduces extra tooling that generates code based on filepaths and things. It’s all very clever and complex, but this sort of thing is trivial in haxe - you just mark code to run at compile time and no extra tooling is needed.

When writing haxe web projects, there’s so much less cruft:

- only one system to import modules (import X)

- one call to haxe.exe to compile and one output file

- no strange js implicit typing (and no === operator) and so on

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#35

Post by cpeterso »

irskep wrote: post #24
redundantly wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have anything to add, just that I'd really like to know how it stacks up against Godot. I plan on learning Godot soon, curious if I should choose something else instead.

I've half-learned both. My impression is that Godot is more like a framework (but more so) with prescribed ways of doing things, with lots of custom languages and formats, and Heaps is more like a library you use in a codebase that belongs to you a bit more. From an ability-to-ship-games perspective, starting out, I'd go with Godot. Putting together a game's architecture from scratch with a library like Heaps sounds…

This blog post on the Haxe website about Shiro Games’ technology stack shows House many other tools and libraries they needed to build their commercial games. On their architectural diagram, Heaps is just one of a dozen boxes.

https://haxe.org/blog/shirogames-stack/

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#36

Post by nine_k »

throwaway82652 wrote: post #31
nine_k wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) The rumors about HTML5 are not exactly true. (2) There are good open-source Flash runtimes. (3) The selling points of Flash were the no-installation experience and really good development tools. Both aspects are somehow lacking today, so the momentum is gone. Maybe someone will produce a great and accessible tool to create comparable HTML5 experiences, and that thing will become popular. But not yet.

What is missing in HTML5? You have WASM and websockets and the WebGL canvas built into every browser now, that seems to replicate just about everything Flash was known for doing? And just to clarify, I mean actually using the same old Flash development tools (apparently it's called Adobe Animate now?) Or is the issue that the export-to-HTML5 functionality in those tools is just not fully done yet?

Isn't the scene isn't there any more, or is it?

Is Adobe Animate free (or easy to crack) so that an interested kid would just start with it and some tutorial, and could make something moderately cool in an afternoon?

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#37

Post by __ryan__ »

I first discovered Haxe nearly a decade ago when seeking alternatives to Microsoft XNA. It was extremely influential in my learning programming. Lots of half-finished games and projects. Haxe is dear to my heart, but I haven’t touched it in a while. A couple of opinions:

- Haxe is held back by not being self-hosted [0].

- TypeScript is the ideal syntax for Haxe.

0: https://github.com/HaxeFoundation/haxe/issues/6843

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#38

Post by tkp »

noduerme wrote: post #10
nullfish wrote: post #2

I've written a couple side project games in Heaps and I'm a big fan. If you're familiar with Pixi.js, Heaps and it's language, Haxe, will feel very similar. Haxe is a pretty cool language, it's similar to TypeScript but compiles to native binaries for almost all major game consoles. Heaps was apparently the framework behind Dead Cells if that says anything about the level of polish you can accomplish with this set of…

Pixi.js has been a lifesaver for generating interactive art/data pieces since the death of AS3, which used to be my main bag. I remember messing around with HaXe ten years ago or so, the main problem being most of the fl. graphics APIs were not ported at that time and the idea of rewriting my own GUIs and game engines built on those didn't make much sense. I'm not sure it does now, either. If this had a 1:1 naming sy…

Heaps has it's own API, but other Haxe frameworks[1][2] reimplement the flash API. Some tools[3][4] help to convert AS3 source code to Haxe, and the typing and compiler are helpful to identify issues. So depending on the size and dependencies, conversion can be easy once you get past the main language differences.

[1] https://www.openfl.org/ [2] https://github.com/haxenme/NME [3] https://github.com/HaxeFoundation/as3hx [4] https://github.com/innogames/ax3

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#39

Post by strken »

klodolph wrote: post #32
telchior wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not obvious until visiting the Heaps page and clicking through to About: Heaps is built on Haxe. So you're complimenting it, right? (Your comment reads like a non-sequitur criticism if one doesn't know what Heaps is). That said, I agree that Haxe seems to attract a good crowd. I've also worked with some very competent people who primarily used HaxeFlixel.

I'm certainly not going to try to write comments assuming that people don't read linked page, that sounds tiring :-) You don't have to click on "About Heaps", the landing page mentions HaXe inside the page

I read the word "Haxe" on the front page and still had no idea what language Heaps was written in, because I didn't know Haxe existed until today.

Re: Heaps: A free, open-source and cross-platform game engine

#40

Post by logo4poop »

If you are new to the Haxe or game development world I would advise against Heaps as the documentation is pretty bare bones. Haxeflixel [0] is one that is prominently recommended for good reason. Heaps is still great regardless and I have used it for a few private projects. [0] https://haxeflixel.com/
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