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I'm gonna go on a slight tangent, about the Haxe language. I had seen this before -- it's really cool! I never dug enough into the site to realize the creator

I'm gonna go on a slight tangent, about the Haxe language. I had seen this before -- it's really cool! I never dug enough into the site to realize the creator was also on Dead Cells. The most interesting part to me, is the use of Haxe (in Dead Cells!). Haxe is to code what Esperanto was meant to be for spoken language. > "Haxe can build cross-platform applications targeting JavaScript, C++, C#, Java, JVM, Python, Lua, PHP, Flash, and allows access to each platform's native capabilities. Haxe has its own VMs (HashLink and NekoVM) but can also run in interpreted mode." Syntactically, there's "nothing new to see here" -- it may as well be Not-Quite-Typescript (with some other goodies; Pattern-Matching, GADT's, compile-time behavior, etc). But it never "took off". Yet here I learn that very impressive software/stunning games have been written in it, by incredibly knowledgeable folks. What happened with Haxe, where did it fail? I've never tried it myself, but I have a passion for pixelated 2D/isometric games and the tutorials on the authors' site are very sound, so I might give it a shot.

deepnight 6y ago
My 2 cents on this one :) The Haxe core team is made of great coders, but not so great marketing guys. On day one, a proper game engine with decent documentation should have been a thing, but yet, as of today, it's quite rough to get into Haxe. I've tried to do my share by posting some tutorials, guides & open source projects (like LEd or GameBase), but it's a long road :)
- gavinray 6y ago
  Oh uhh, hello there. You make really, really cool stuff. That makes complete sense though, feels like you have to be told about it (or go on a Wikipedia programming-language crawl) to know it exists. Thanks for the response, and keep being awesome =D
bogwog 6y ago
> What happened with Haxe, where did it fail? Who says it failed? Haxe is alive and well, even if it isn't a mainstream programming language. Even the latest Pokemon game used Haxe!
- gavinray 6y ago
  Whaaat?! The man is not joking apparently: https://www.reddit.com/r/haxe/comments/dwpvm7/pok%C3%A9mon_sword_and_pok%C3%A9mon_shield_uses_haxe https://www.reddit.com/r/haxe/comments/dwpvm7/pok%C3%A9mon_s... This feels a bit like "Game studios HATE him! This ONE secret they don't want you to know, will make you 10x Game Dev!" Crazy, and neat.
- danbolt 6y ago
  Around the transition to Xbox One and PlayStation 4, I know Haxe was considered an option for ActionScript/Scaleform codebases in certain AAA studios.
- gfxgirl 6y ago
  The OP meant something more along the lines of "failed to be as popular as Unity/Unreal/Godot?" not "failed to find some users"
koonsolo 6y ago
Why would you think it failed? I'm a heavy Haxe user myself since I'm developing https://rpgplayground.com https://rpgplayground.com in it. Since the years I see more and more people using Haxe, including recently Pokemon Sword and Shield (for scripting) and Spellbreak (on top of Unreal Engine)
- gavinray 6y ago
  Wow, that is beautiful. The aesthetics remind me so closely of the original SNES Tales of Phantasia (absolutely stunning art, to this day) but with a warmer/lighter feel, like Chrono Trigger/Harvest Moon. https://images.148apps.com/2014/1/37154/219974/img-0815-600x450.png https://images.148apps.com/2014/1/37154/219974/img-0815-600x... Thanks for sharing this. Out of curiosity, where does the art/assets for this come from?
  - koonsolo 6y ago
    Thanks! :) The art assets are all free for commercial use. See my credits for all references: https://rpgplayground.com/credits/ https://rpgplayground.com/credits/
- city41 6y ago
  Very cool. I'm building a similar thing for platformers (not in Haxe though) https://jump.club https://jump.club
- darkhorse13 6y ago
  This is a really cool tool, but all the example images are using Rpg Maker assets, which is a bit of a turn off to a lot of folks I'm sure. Do you plan on building your own asset set? Kind of like the official RTP packages?
  - koonsolo 6y ago
    One of the reasons I could bootstrap this project was because there are so many freely available graphics out there. Although I put a lot of effort into making sure not to use anything from RTP. Unfortunately this has the drawback of being a "rpg maker" clone. Getting traction on Twitter is therefore really hard. When I ever do custom assets, they will be 3D. Or give users to use custom graphics and share/sell them.
sydd 6y ago
> What happened with Haxe, where did it fail? As I remember Haxe started as an alternative to ActionScript (language used by the Flash player) when Adobe refused to do anything about it's platform's coming demise around 2010, it's main feature was that you could compile it to ActionScript and JS. I think it failed to become big because it was not backed by a tech giant - they developed their own language which they could fully control (MS - C#, Google - Dart,..) Also the small team behind it did not have the resources to make great tooling for it, thus Unity took over Flash in the small/medium game segment.
larsiusprime 6y ago
A few notable game projects that use Haxe -- - Spellbreak: https://playspellbreak.com/en https://playspellbreak.com/en - Dicey Dungeons: https://store.steampowered.com/app/861540/Dicey_Dungeons/#app_reviews_hash https://store.steampowered.com/app/861540/Dicey_Dungeons/#ap... - Northgard: https://store.steampowered.com/app/466560/Northgard/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/466560/Northgard/ - Papers Please: https://papersplea.se/ https://papersplea.se/ - Brawlhalla: https://www.brawlhalla.com/ https://www.brawlhalla.com/ (for the console ports) It never quite took off and exploded on a Unity/Unreal scale, but it's a solid sleeper hit in a bunch of places you don't expect, and steadily growing. It's in a much more mature place then when I started using it years ago.
royletron 6y ago
Damn I love haxe, I wonder how many ex Actionscripters are out there? Haxe, Flixel and Haxeflixel (thanks Adam Atomic) had a big influence on me as a young Dev. Even in the massively scaling SaaS work I do now I'm always inspired by 2d blitting stuff and what I learned about frame economising. Lovely.
- d13 6y ago
  Flixel still exists as Phaser

deepnight 6y ago

My 2 cents on this one :) The Haxe core team is made of great coders, but not so great marketing guys. On day one, a proper game engine with decent documentation should have been a thing, but yet, as of today, it's quite rough to get into Haxe. I've tried to do my share by posting some tutorials, guides & open source projects (like LEd or GameBase), but it's a long road :)

gavinray 6y ago
Oh uhh, hello there. You make really, really cool stuff. That makes complete sense though, feels like you have to be told about it (or go on a Wikipedia programming-language crawl) to know it exists. Thanks for the response, and keep being awesome =D

bogwog 6y ago

> What happened with Haxe, where did it fail? Who says it failed? Haxe is alive and well, even if it isn't a mainstream programming language. Even the latest Pokemon game used Haxe!

gavinray 6y ago
Whaaat?! The man is not joking apparently: https://www.reddit.com/r/haxe/comments/dwpvm7/pok%C3%A9mon_sword_and_pok%C3%A9mon_shield_uses_haxe https://www.reddit.com/r/haxe/comments/dwpvm7/pok%C3%A9mon_s... This feels a bit like "Game studios HATE him! This ONE secret they don't want you to know, will make you 10x Game Dev!" Crazy, and neat.
danbolt 6y ago
Around the transition to Xbox One and PlayStation 4, I know Haxe was considered an option for ActionScript/Scaleform codebases in certain AAA studios.
gfxgirl 6y ago
The OP meant something more along the lines of "failed to be as popular as Unity/Unreal/Godot?" not "failed to find some users"

koonsolo 6y ago

Why would you think it failed? I'm a heavy Haxe user myself since I'm developing https://rpgplayground.com https://rpgplayground.com in it. Since the years I see more and more people using Haxe, including recently Pokemon Sword and Shield (for scripting) and Spellbreak (on top of Unreal Engine)

gavinray 6y ago
Wow, that is beautiful. The aesthetics remind me so closely of the original SNES Tales of Phantasia (absolutely stunning art, to this day) but with a warmer/lighter feel, like Chrono Trigger/Harvest Moon. https://images.148apps.com/2014/1/37154/219974/img-0815-600x450.png https://images.148apps.com/2014/1/37154/219974/img-0815-600x... Thanks for sharing this. Out of curiosity, where does the art/assets for this come from?
- koonsolo 6y ago
  Thanks! :) The art assets are all free for commercial use. See my credits for all references: https://rpgplayground.com/credits/ https://rpgplayground.com/credits/
city41 6y ago
Very cool. I'm building a similar thing for platformers (not in Haxe though) https://jump.club https://jump.club
darkhorse13 6y ago
This is a really cool tool, but all the example images are using Rpg Maker assets, which is a bit of a turn off to a lot of folks I'm sure. Do you plan on building your own asset set? Kind of like the official RTP packages?
- koonsolo 6y ago
  One of the reasons I could bootstrap this project was because there are so many freely available graphics out there. Although I put a lot of effort into making sure not to use anything from RTP. Unfortunately this has the drawback of being a "rpg maker" clone. Getting traction on Twitter is therefore really hard. When I ever do custom assets, they will be 3D. Or give users to use custom graphics and share/sell them.

sydd 6y ago

> What happened with Haxe, where did it fail? As I remember Haxe started as an alternative to ActionScript (language used by the Flash player) when Adobe refused to do anything about it's platform's coming demise around 2010, it's main feature was that you could compile it to ActionScript and JS. I think it failed to become big because it was not backed by a tech giant - they developed their own language which they could fully control (MS - C#, Google - Dart,..) Also the small team behind it did not have the resources to make great tooling for it, thus Unity took over Flash in the small/medium game segment.

larsiusprime 6y ago

A few notable game projects that use Haxe -- - Spellbreak: https://playspellbreak.com/en https://playspellbreak.com/en - Dicey Dungeons: https://store.steampowered.com/app/861540/Dicey_Dungeons/#app_reviews_hash https://store.steampowered.com/app/861540/Dicey_Dungeons/#ap... - Northgard: https://store.steampowered.com/app/466560/Northgard/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/466560/Northgard/ - Papers Please: https://papersplea.se/ https://papersplea.se/ - Brawlhalla: https://www.brawlhalla.com/ https://www.brawlhalla.com/ (for the console ports) It never quite took off and exploded on a Unity/Unreal scale, but it's a solid sleeper hit in a bunch of places you don't expect, and steadily growing. It's in a much more mature place then when I started using it years ago.

royletron 6y ago

Damn I love haxe, I wonder how many ex Actionscripters are out there? Haxe, Flixel and Haxeflixel (thanks Adam Atomic) had a big influence on me as a young Dev. Even in the massively scaling SaaS work I do now I'm always inspired by 2d blitting stuff and what I learned about frame economising. Lovely.

d13 6y ago
Flixel still exists as Phaser