Defold: cross-platform game engine • Hacker News Board

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#61

Post by rpdillon » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 2:48 PM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #38

progbits wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but seems like the only addition is preventing you from selling a game engine based on it. So you can sell a game, but not an engine. I wonder where a game with built-in editor ranks. Seems fair, but sadly not OSS. I wonder why they think it's necessary?

> Seems fair, but sadly not OSS. Which of their license changes makes you feel sad and why? Were you planning to sell their editor?

The current license makes it unclear whether it would be a violation to distribute a commercial game that has a built-in map editor.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#62

Post by xandrius » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 2:51 PM UTC

bentt wrote: post #31

I remember when Unity first appeared and what it felt like to read its materials, its pitch. It was like... whoa, this might actually be something. This feels similar. Sometimes you can just tell by the communications and the spirit of the language that the team has the goods. The fact that they have such comprehensive multiplatform export right now is big. One of Godot's biggest hurdles has been console support. My…

Exactly, read Lua and got out instantly.

Games are complicated beasts, something along the lines of C# help massively the development and the avoidance of bugs.

Python, Script and Lua are not languages I'd wish to switch to from the coziness of C#. I'd consider Go or Java (although not as hip as it used to be).

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#63

Post by hombre_fatal » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 2:53 PM UTC

synergy20 wrote: post #50

is Teal widely used? https://github.com/teal-language/tl Teal to lua is what typescript to javascript

No. But I've used it for Pico-8 development. I had to write a tool that turned it into mygame.tl into a mygame.p8 cart on save though.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#64

Post by ksymph » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 2:57 PM UTC

383toast wrote: post #49

Does anyone know if Defold can be used without the UI? Eg. just running it as a library or using scripting to do everything the game engine UI can do. Purpose is just to try to get an AI to generate code with it.

In theory yes, data is just stored in json and there's a CLI utility [1] for building. It's pretty awkward though.

[1] https://defold.com/manuals/bob/

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#65

Post by ksymph » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 2:59 PM UTC

pk-protect-ai wrote: post #52

Looking into the code ... Wow ... This is not C++, it is C with classes ... https://github.com/defold/defold/blob/dev/engine/dlib/src/dm... Any reasons to use these wrappers instead of modern C++ capabilities?

There's a great post on that by the lead Defold dev: https://defold.com/2020/05/31/The-Defold-engine-code-style/

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#66

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 3:01 PM UTC

noodletheworld wrote: post #33

jbverschoor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For small scripts. Lua is a huge minefield

That seems kind of unfair. There are things that aren't great about lua, and I'm not going to pretend they're not. buuuut... - It's really perfectly ok if you use competently. - There are large complex systems and games built using it (eg. factorio) that show that scaling it is both pragmatic and possible. - It has a big active community. When you compare it some other scripting solutions (boo, unityscript) that were…

[deleted]

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#67

Post by ksymph » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 3:05 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #17

Am I correctly understanding that this is a for-profit endeavor that’s relying solely on donations?

It's also being funded by a number of corporate sponsors. As I understand it, a studio or publisher will fund the development of a specific feature, while general development is mostly just spare time and donations.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#68

Post by vednig » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 3:08 PM UTC

A game engine that's opensource and supports Linux. Love it

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#69

Post by zerr » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

Related: code-oriented C++ 2D game engine - Axmol Engine. It's an actively maintained Cocos2D-x fork: https://axmol.dev

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#70

Post by robterrell » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 3:30 PM UTC

pk-protect-ai wrote: post #52

Looking into the code ... Wow ... This is not C++, it is C with classes ... https://github.com/defold/defold/blob/dev/engine/dlib/src/dm... Any reasons to use these wrappers instead of modern C++ capabilities?

In the game industry, "C-like C++" is the norm. Games often don't use modern C++ features like exceptions, RTTI, multiple inheritance, etc. for very good reasons.