Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

noelberry.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 225 posts

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#71

Post by roflcopter69 »

I see `dotnet watch` being mentioned for code hot reload which is such a great feature for quickly iterating on a game. Not having to restart the whole game just because one has changed a few if statements and values really helps staying in the flow.

But I'm still not too enthusiastic about having GC in C# which is why ideally I'd like to start making a small 2D game just with SDL3 and C++ but how could I get this nice hot reload workflow there? I don't have the money to pay for expensive proprietary tools like https://liveplusplus.tech so what can I do? I guess there's the "game as dynamic library" trick from Handmade Hero (see https://www.youtube.com/shorts/seWAIURXxH0) so maybe that would work good enough? Maybe https://github.com/fungos/cr would do most of what's needed here?

Also, how does one even do modern C++ these days? Is it possible to have big C++ code bases that still compile fast these days? Is CMake 4 good™ now? Are modules really there yet? I rely on clangd as LSP for working with C++ but I read that clangd still fundamentally struggles with C++ modules https://chuanqixu9.github.io/c++/2025/12/03/Clangd-support-f... and it's so bad that there has even been some effort going into making a new C++ LSP https://github.com/clice-io/clice

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#72

Post by andai »

direwolf20 wrote: post #56
samiv wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Also - study the code of the likes of Carmack. Consider that he produced the likes of the quake engines in only a couple of years. Reflect long and hard on the raw simplicity of a lot of that code." Also says something about the accumulation of complexity. At that time Carmack (and his team) were able to create a state of the art engine in a few years. Now consider the task today, if you were to create a state of th…

But you could create Quake.

Quake is peak graphics anyway. We hit diminishing returns after that ;)

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#73

Post by ps173 »

Reading this I realized even for someone who just wants to make games that are fun for him, I find engines very less rewarding to work with. I always loved game libraries that provided utilities to build things but hated do everything ones ( love2d supremacy ). It's great to see experienced and accomplished professionals validating my take :)

I saw this documentary on how celeste was made [1], which completely inspired me and got me into indie game dev community. Unfortunately I haven't made any games as of now that I would proudly showcase but the seed that your effort put is still there and one day I will get back to making games. Thanks a lot for making celeste I absolutely love it! ---- 1. https://youtu.be/MSKOQr_YS-U?si=AGzl5ILzxkoIB-j9

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#74

Post by neonsunset »

roflcopter69 wrote: post #71

I see `dotnet watch` being mentioned for code hot reload which is such a great feature for quickly iterating on a game. Not having to restart the whole game just because one has changed a few if statements and values really helps staying in the flow. But I'm still not too enthusiastic about having GC in C# which is why ideally I'd like to start making a small 2D game just with SDL3 and C++ but how could I get this ni…

.NET also now has an (amazing) alternate low-pause/effectively pauseless GC: https://github.com/VSadov/Satori

Builds: https://github.com/hez2010/Satori/releases

how to use? do self-contained publish (but not single file), replace 3 files in the folder with the one from Satori release you can check if it's in use with GC.GetConfigurationVariables().ContainsKey("SatoriGC")

It is a far, far superior experience to touching anything C++.

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#75

Post by andai »

socalgal2 wrote: post #54
abcde666777 wrote: post #8

My experience with making your own engine vs using an off the shelf solution - the former can be viable and even superior on the condition that you know what you're doing . That is if you've built entire games or engines before, or have enough experience with the internals of one. Otherwise it can be a dangerous fool's errand on which many projects go to die. My younger naive self can attest to this, he loved trying…

I see making a game engine as the illusion of progress on making a game. Making a game engine is fun and relatively easy. You have a check list of things to do. Each of them the solutions are relatively well known. so you do them and make tons of progress. You get a window open, then you get a triangle up, then you get a texture loaded, then you get some basic text for debugging, then you read the keyboard for input,…

Randy (funny gamedev guy from YouTube) said in a recent video that he realized he'd spent the last ten years making engines to avoid the creative terror of action making a game. I'm paraphrasing slightly, but that's what it came down to.

"I thought if I made a really good engine, making a game would be the easy part!" I had similar thoughts when I was younger. Surely if I just upgrade my tools, the hard part will become the easy part!

Jonathan Blow says making engines is easy, because enginedev only takes a relatively small part of development — the game itself takes way more time and energy.

So his argument is, in the grand scheme of things, the engine is not that much work. (Since you're gonna spend ten years working on the game anyway, of course ;)

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#78

Post by dxuh »

roflcopter69 wrote: post #71

I see `dotnet watch` being mentioned for code hot reload which is such a great feature for quickly iterating on a game. Not having to restart the whole game just because one has changed a few if statements and values really helps staying in the flow. But I'm still not too enthusiastic about having GC in C# which is why ideally I'd like to start making a small 2D game just with SDL3 and C++ but how could I get this ni…

I quite like modern C++, so I really tried to make it work for gamedev, but I think you can't really do it. You can use all the modern C++ features that are not in the standard library though! I am working on a little game the last few months and after a while I just decided to not use any of the C++ standard library (I just use a few C headers) and make my own Vector, Array, Span, String, FlatMap. And using those the game compiles really fast. If I touch a header that is included almost everywhere (the big game state struct), I can compile and link (mold) in ~300ms. If I touch player.cpp I compile in 250ms. That is mostly good enough for me, but I am thinking about the "game code as dynamic library" thing myself.

I always thought CMake was good enough. I use FetchContent for all external dependencies and git submodules + add_directory for all internal dependencies. It took me a while to figure out that this was the simplest thing that works reliably though. I have used vcpkg and conan extensively and have completely given up on them.

I don't use C++ modules, because afaik they are still mostly broken. Without modules clangd works wonderfully and has been working wonderfully for a few years. I really, really like it. I think it can be done! I am missing reflection though, but if I would really want to use it, I'd probably just use clang -ast-dump instead of the new reflection functionality.

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#79

Post by [deleted] »

MasterScrat wrote: post #27
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is Noel Berry, creator of Celeste. They don't shout about it, but with that pedigree, I'm confident they'll be staying well away from AI.

Why would a game development pedigree correlate with rejecting AI? As Carmack said: > AI tools will allow the best to reach even greater heights, while enabling smaller teams to accomplish more, and bring in some completely new creator demographics.

[deleted]

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#80

Post by krapp »

socalgal2 wrote: post #54
abcde666777 wrote: post #8

My experience with making your own engine vs using an off the shelf solution - the former can be viable and even superior on the condition that you know what you're doing . That is if you've built entire games or engines before, or have enough experience with the internals of one. Otherwise it can be a dangerous fool's errand on which many projects go to die. My younger naive self can attest to this, he loved trying…

I see making a game engine as the illusion of progress on making a game. Making a game engine is fun and relatively easy. You have a check list of things to do. Each of them the solutions are relatively well known. so you do them and make tons of progress. You get a window open, then you get a triangle up, then you get a texture loaded, then you get some basic text for debugging, then you read the keyboard for input,…

Yeah don't end up like me with a folder full of library code, "tests", "prototypes" and a dozen implementations of the Tiled API but no game.

For certain personality types I think making an engine can make it very easy to get distracted and wind up in the weeds of something you don't actually need, overoptimizing, fence-painting etc. Using an engine can help with self-discipline and focus on the end rather than the means, although then you need to make sure you don't just wind up with a ton of mostly finished tutorial projects and no game.

Post reply on HN