I played around with Construct2 a lot once upon a time, but never followed them to 3 because the product got a bit too expensive for me has a hobbyist.
How does this compare to that, besides the obviously nicer cost?
Bitty Engine: An itty bitty game engine
31–40 of 54 posts
Re: Bitty Engine: An itty bitty game engine
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's hundreds or thousands of these indie game engines because, yes!, it is a lot of fun to write them. You'd learn a lot. The #1 tip though is that you're writing a game, or an engine, not both. So commit to doing one of those tasks. Usually you end up with a bunch of toy games and no steam left to want to really polish them into something complete.
> The #1 tip though is that you're writing a game, or an engine, not both. Most of the people who follow this advice will never ship anything. Stop worrying and do what you want. It's okay to reinvent the wheel if you want to learn how to make a wheel, or if you just find it fun.
Or if you need a special wheel adopted to your needs. Because you were annoyed, that the common generic wheels blasted the way you drove them ... but also could not use a expensive high performance wheel, because they come in different sizes.
(But remember, if you want to ship fast, or at all, usually better stay with the common wheels and sizes)
Re: Bitty Engine: An itty bitty game engine
#33I know I'm going to bring down the mood, but that kind of engine should support android as a priority. Godot does it, and it's an awesome alternative to Android Studio. EDIT: although it supports WASM, and I'm curious how well does WASM works on mobile...
Well, the dev thinks different and this is what matters.
And WASM by itself works quite well by now, even on older devices, but not really on stock browsers. The question is more, how will be the whole experience of an autocompiled wasm project with UI? This is hard to get right and debug, if not right.
Re: Bitty Engine: An itty bitty game engine
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's hundreds or thousands of these indie game engines because, yes!, it is a lot of fun to write them. You'd learn a lot. The #1 tip though is that you're writing a game, or an engine, not both. So commit to doing one of those tasks. Usually you end up with a bunch of toy games and no steam left to want to really polish them into something complete.
Do you know of any that use JavaScript/typescript?
2d phaser (photonstorm)
3d babylonjs (microsoft)
Re: Bitty Engine: An itty bitty game engine
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's hundreds or thousands of these indie game engines because, yes!, it is a lot of fun to write them. You'd learn a lot. The #1 tip though is that you're writing a game, or an engine, not both. So commit to doing one of those tasks. Usually you end up with a bunch of toy games and no steam left to want to really polish them into something complete.
Do you know of any that use JavaScript/typescript?
Phaser, as game engine, Pixi.js as a powerful render library (FRVR.com games were made formerly with Pixi.js). You can use Cocos Creator (not Cocos2D-x)
Re: Bitty Engine: An itty bitty game engine
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can confirm; they're real fun. I've got a 7-year side-project I still grind on in the form of a voxel engine. The trick is to start small and have realistic expectations. Your progress will be glacially slow at first, and that's okay. Eventually, if you keep grinding, you'll have something awesome that you love working on. If you want to check out my project there's a link in my bio.
I checked out your side-project. > [ ] Do sound :'D Why bother with sound? Likely a dev would just pull in SDL_Mixer for game sound. Get on with the transparency. ;-)
Mostly for the learning experience of writing an MP3 decoder and WAV mixer
Re: Bitty Engine: An itty bitty game engine
#37Silly question from a web dev who has never written a line of Lua before (or delved into game development). What is it about the language that make it such a good fit for game development? Seems like every time I come across these engines, or read stuff about game development in general, Lua is always the language of choice. Can anyone explain it in a nutshell for me? Thanks
I think it’s because Lua’s C API is very very closely coupled to its native keywords and standard library, so it’s not only built for trivial embedding but also for trivial / mechanical integration. Using the Lua API from within C or C++ is almost like the syntactic language isn’t even there and it’s just a convenient library.
For example:
https://www.lua.org/manual/5.4/manual.html#lua_pushfstring
and:
https://www.lua.org/manual/5.4/manual.html#lua_next
It’s also amazingly semantically simple and dynamic, almost like a Lisp; even though it doesn’t have classes, typelevel programming is pretty straightforward.
It also allows you to easily write and distribute native modules (as shared objects) without needing integration code.
It is also insanely portable.
Re: Bitty Engine: An itty bitty game engine
#38I have been contemplating lately if we need something like either the early days of computer games or the heyday of the Demo Scene, where people make amusements that are meant to run on embedded computers.
I'm not quite sure what that should look like, but in particular making physical puzzles driven by say an STM32 chip could be cool. Especially if you can have it change the rules of the game once you've solved one puzzle.
Anyway, teeny tiny game engines brings that whole line of thinking back up for me.
Re: Bitty Engine: An itty bitty game engine
#39I have been contemplating lately if we need something like either the early days of computer games or the heyday of the Demo Scene, where people make amusements that are meant to run on embedded computers. I'm not quite sure what that should look like, but in particular making physical puzzles driven by say an STM32 chip could be cool. Especially if you can have it change the rules of the game once you've solved one…
> where people make amusements that are meant to run on embedded computers.
I'm glad that PICO-8 exists, which is kinda exactly that. Except that it's not targeting any actual hardware (it's an imaginary retro-system), but it ticks all the other boxes.
Would be interesting to see what you can do in a physical space - your STM32 example still needs some kind of output attached to it, but with a 3D Printer and some other cheap components, you can add whatever I/O you want.
Re: Bitty Engine: An itty bitty game engine
#40I have been contemplating lately if we need something like either the early days of computer games or the heyday of the Demo Scene, where people make amusements that are meant to run on embedded computers. I'm not quite sure what that should look like, but in particular making physical puzzles driven by say an STM32 chip could be cool. Especially if you can have it change the rules of the game once you've solved one…
> where people make amusements that are meant to run on embedded computers. I'm glad that PICO-8 exists, which is kinda exactly that. Except that it's not targeting any actual hardware (it's an imaginary retro-system), but it ticks all the other boxes. Would be interesting to see what you can do in a physical space - your STM32 example still needs some kind of output attached to it, but with a 3D Printer and some oth…
When I was a child, there was a hot second where someone implemented PacMan on an LCD screen.
And I really do mean a hot second, because one boy showed up with one, another couple had one within days, and by the end of the week the school had banned them. As, I'm sure, did most every other school in the country. Now I can play audiobooks on my watch, but no games to speak of.