Create your own game engine but don't use it (2017)

Re:Create your own game engine but don't use it (2017) by seba_dos1 on Saturday February 09, 2019 @10:56AM (#19122881)

I started in 2012 by making a 2D game as a university assignment using Allegro 5. Some time later, when I started game jamming, I decided to reuse some of its code. After a few games done this way I've separated the common code into an engine.

Now I'm at 36 games made with it, and I even have proper CI and containerized toolchains for cross-compiling on GNU/Linux for Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux (using either Steam Runtime or Flatpak), Android, Maemo 5 (Nokia N900), PureOS (Librem 5), Emscripten (asm.js/WebAssembly) and Steam Link. The engine also works fine on Raspberry Pi and FreeBSD (there's just no toolchains yet), and I'm looking forward to port it to iOS, DragonBox Pyra, Sailfish, Nintendo Switch and UWP (Windows 10/Xbox One), neither of which should be hard, I just need some time and/or devices. The only significant platform that would need some larger effort that I identified is Playstation.

Some of this stuff wouldn't be possible at all when using Unity or Unreal, or would have been much harder when using Godot.

Having said that, I probably wouldn't start writing a full-blown 3D engine if writing a 3D engine wasn't actually my end goal.

BTW. This "Lonely Cube" game could be easily written in a simple 2D engine using perspective transformations ;)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Create your own game engine but don't use it (2017) by babuskov on Saturday February 09, 2019 @04:32PM (#19124770)

> The only significant platform that would need some larger effort that I identified is Playstation.

Is that a technical issue or just conditions you have to satisfy to get a development environment up and running?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Create your own game engine but don't use it (2017) by seba_dos1 on Saturday February 09, 2019 @04:44PM (#19124831)

All the other platforms I listed are already supported either by Allegro or SDL (which I can also use via Allegro's SDL backend), while it doesn't seem to be a case with PS4. Also, so far I've used GLSL and relied on Allegro's OpenGL (ES) renderer. In case of UWP I can use ANGLE, but PS4 seems to require more effort there (most likely renderer implementation and separate shaders). Nothing impossible, but it moves it out of "I'll eventually do it when bored" status to "I'll only do it when there's strong business case behind it".

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Create your own game engine but don't use it (2017) by serialdev on Saturday February 09, 2019 @03:17PM (#19124340)

Anything opensourced from it?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Create your own game engine but don't use it (2017) by seba_dos1 on Saturday February 09, 2019 @03:24PM (#19124373)

Everything, although nothing really documented, so I don't really advice using it just yet if you're not me ;)

It's GPL, but I plan to change it to LGPL once I declare it stable and documented enough.

https://gitlab.com/dosowisko.net/libsuperderpy/

Games live here: https://dos.itch.io/ (or more specifically, https://itch.io/c/195242/libsuperderpy-engine). Most are small game jam things, but recently I've been working on bigger ones as well.

[ Parent | on HN ]