Show HN: 2D Game engine and editor for Windows and Linux

#1

Post by ensiferum » Wed, Mar 09, 2022, 10:37 PM UTC

Hello HN,

Just wanted to show this little 2D game engine that I've been working on for some time (around 2 years on the editor part, longer on some of the components).

It's quite full featured but obviously this a project of such magnitude already that the work never really ends. That being said it's definitely already at a point where games can made and published. The editor runs natively on Windows and Linux using Qt5. The games can run on both Win and Linux as well as on WASM with WebGL.

Feature wise there's a bunch of the stuff you'd expect.

Audio, graphics, scripting, animation+entity+gameplay systems, physics and UI are all there. Scripting is through sol3 + Lua, physics with Box2D. Audio, graphics, UI and game play stuff is all done by me.

License is currently GPL.

Source code is on github https://github.com/ensisoft/gamestudio

Some games are available on my site at https://ensisoft.com/games.html

Show HN: 2D Game engine and editor for Windows and Linux
github.com

Re: Show HN: 2D Game engine and editor for Windows and Linux

#2

Post by lostgame » Wed, Mar 09, 2022, 11:49 PM UTC

Any chance for MacOS support? If you’ve got Linux support it shouldn’t be too difficult?

Re: Show HN: 2D Game engine and editor for Windows and Linux

#3

Post by lazypenguin » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 12:11 AM UTC

Fantastic work, I would be curious to hear more about your experience writing the editor in Qt. Tooling is such a hard part of game development and not many people talk about it. How was using Qt? Were you happy with the decision? Any issues?

Re: Show HN: 2D Game engine and editor for Windows and Linux

#4

Post by riidom » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 12:32 AM UTC

How big are games exported for web? I am currently looking for something that exports to html5, but Godot builds are at least 20MB with heavy optimizing (I'm ignoring the size of assets here). Then there is Phaser3 of course, but I have my troubles with it, partially the docs, partially because JS.

I used to write quite a bit of Lua in the past, so the choice of language is mostly welcome, and if your binary sizes are nicely small, I only have to wait for the support of grid-based top-down.

Since you have some example games, how big are their downloads?

Re: Show HN: 2D Game engine and editor for Windows and Linux

#5

Post by karanbhangui » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 1:10 AM UTC

riidom wrote: post #4

How big are games exported for web? I am currently looking for something that exports to html5, but Godot builds are at least 20MB with heavy optimizing (I'm ignoring the size of assets here). Then there is Phaser3 of course, but I have my troubles with it, partially the docs, partially because JS. I used to write quite a bit of Lua in the past, so the choice of language is mostly welcome, and if your binary sizes ar…

also check out bevy https://bevyengine.org/

Re: Show HN: 2D Game engine and editor for Windows and Linux

#6

Post by smoldesu » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 1:48 AM UTC

lostgame wrote: post #2

Any chance for MacOS support? If you’ve got Linux support it shouldn’t be too difficult?

They'd need to support a second graphics API, which is certainly non-trivial. The licensing permits anyone to do the work themselves if it's that big of an interest, though.

Re: Show HN: 2D Game engine and editor for Windows and Linux

#7

Post by wly_cdgr » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 2:17 AM UTC

Amazing work. I have to ask, however: what does your engine do better (or plan to do better in the future if it's not there yet) than any of the existing 2D engines, like GMS2, Defold, etc? That is, why should a developer consider choosing your engine?

Re: Show HN: 2D Game engine and editor for Windows and Linux

#8

Post by wly_cdgr » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 2:22 AM UTC

riidom wrote: post #4

How big are games exported for web? I am currently looking for something that exports to html5, but Godot builds are at least 20MB with heavy optimizing (I'm ignoring the size of assets here). Then there is Phaser3 of course, but I have my troubles with it, partially the docs, partially because JS. I used to write quite a bit of Lua in the past, so the choice of language is mostly welcome, and if your binary sizes ar…

Defold may be a good choice for your needs: Lua, small build sizes

Re: Show HN: 2D Game engine and editor for Windows and Linux

#9

Post by alophawen » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 2:25 AM UTC

wly_cdgr wrote: post #7

Amazing work. I have to ask, however: what does your engine do better (or plan to do better in the future if it's not there yet) than any of the existing 2D engines, like GMS2, Defold, etc? That is, why should a developer consider choosing your engine?

So here OP is showing what he managed to build, and you have to ask how his project is better than some of the most established projects in that field?

You are demotivating OP who never claimed to compete with what you brought up.

Grow up.

Re: Show HN: 2D Game engine and editor for Windows and Linux

#10

Post by wly_cdgr » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 2:37 AM UTC

alophawen wrote: post #9

wly_cdgr wrote: post #7

Amazing work. I have to ask, however: what does your engine do better (or plan to do better in the future if it's not there yet) than any of the existing 2D engines, like GMS2, Defold, etc? That is, why should a developer consider choosing your engine?

So here OP is showing what he managed to build, and you have to ask how his project is better than some of the most established projects in that field? You are demotivating OP who never claimed to compete with what you brought up. Grow up.

? I am just politely asking a perfectly reasonable question that anyone who embarks on a 2+ year project needs to spend a solid chunk of time thinking about & trying to give OP a chance to practice articulating their value prop vision. After explicilty acknowledging how impressive their work is.

Presumably OP is an adult and is not just posting for backpats but (also) to get constructive feedback.

So, no, YOU grow up.