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I absolutely love ebiten, it's gotten me back into game development which was why I initially got into software dev. I've been working through the Game Programm

I absolutely love ebiten, it's gotten me back into game development which was why I initially got into software dev. I've been working through the Game Programming Patterns book and it's been an awesome platform to learn some of the common patterns in game dev. Also the maintainer is incredibly active and constantly pushing the development forward. I'm currently working on a side-scroller and am really excited to see if I can get it running on the switch.

barrenko 5y ago
Anything else you can recommend for starting out with game dev and appropriate algorithms? Is C++ a must?
- pizza234 5y ago
  There are game libraries for many languages, so for beginners to game development, anything will do. Small libraries abstract a few functionalities over the lower level ones (sprite batching, input/events handling, etc.) and handle multiplatform. Larger libraries may take care of other aspects (game loop, scene graph, etc.) and specialize on certain game types (3D, platform, RPG, etc.). C++ is probably a must if you one writes large games and/or performance critical ones (regarding "high performance"/low level languages, Rust libraries are immature). Scripting languages (e.g. Python/PyGame) can be a good (quick) way to start and experiment. But readability falls very quickly when complexity grows (e.g. difficult to interpret inheritance tree), so at some point one may easily feel the need to switch to a statically typed language. Regarding algorithms, a very common beginners book is "Game Programming Patterns", which is also available for free in HTML: https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html.
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  So, right now Unity, Cryengine and Godot all use C# as a language (though it's fairly new to Godot, but is fully supported). Godot is a free game engine to get started on and publish on to start with side projects/build up a portfolio on - though (and double check the documentation) you can use Unity for free and then they take a cut if your game makes more than X amount I THINK.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  C and C++ are the lingua franca for the games industry, followed by C# for tooling, scripting and lightweight game engines. Some Assembly also helps for those last mile optimization tricks. Naturally if you aren't looking into getting into the industry, rather having fun at coding games, anything that can do graphics and sound will do.
chana_masala 5y ago
Ebiten is actually making me want to get back into Go itself. I'd love to make a cross platform game and it may just motivate me enough to push through my ideological biases against Go.
- djur 5y ago
  I'm not big on Go either but I feel like it's a good fit for hobbyist game development. It's a lot harder to write automated tests for games, so the value of static typing is higher, but most simple game designs don't really benefit from the powerful type systems of a Rust or Haskell (or even a TypeScript). It's one of the cases where Go actually does feel like a "better C".
  - chana_masala 5y ago
    > but most simple game designs don't really benefit from the powerful type systems of a Rust or Haskell (or even a TypeScript). I get that feeling too but I have no experience with game development. I wonder what reasons you think so?
- philosopher1234 5y ago
  I've yet to meet an ideological bias against Go that took into account & understood the practical tradeoffs Go is making. The ones I've seen thus far are dismissive and incurious. But if you've got that, I would love to hear it.
  - halpert 5y ago
    To me, Go is just a boring language to write in. It’s target audience is large corporations where individuality is discouraged. I’ve used Go extensively at work, and its lack of expressivity definitely has some upsides on large teams, mainly keeping things simple and understandable. But when I program in my free time for fun, I want to be able to express myself fully.
    - philosopher1234 5y ago
tmountain 5y ago
Just came here to say that I also love Ebiten. It's so simple. It stays out of your way, and it has a ton of great examples. One of my goals for this year is to finally finish a game (after talking about it for over a decade). Ebiten is going to help me accomplish that goal.

barrenko 5y ago

Anything else you can recommend for starting out with game dev and appropriate algorithms? Is C++ a must?

pizza234 5y ago
There are game libraries for many languages, so for beginners to game development, anything will do. Small libraries abstract a few functionalities over the lower level ones (sprite batching, input/events handling, etc.) and handle multiplatform. Larger libraries may take care of other aspects (game loop, scene graph, etc.) and specialize on certain game types (3D, platform, RPG, etc.). C++ is probably a must if you one writes large games and/or performance critical ones (regarding "high performance"/low level languages, Rust libraries are immature). Scripting languages (e.g. Python/PyGame) can be a good (quick) way to start and experiment. But readability falls very quickly when complexity grows (e.g. difficult to interpret inheritance tree), so at some point one may easily feel the need to switch to a statically typed language. Regarding algorithms, a very common beginners book is "Game Programming Patterns", which is also available for free in HTML: https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html.
UnpossibleJim 5y ago
So, right now Unity, Cryengine and Godot all use C# as a language (though it's fairly new to Godot, but is fully supported). Godot is a free game engine to get started on and publish on to start with side projects/build up a portfolio on - though (and double check the documentation) you can use Unity for free and then they take a cut if your game makes more than X amount I THINK.
pjmlp 5y ago
C and C++ are the lingua franca for the games industry, followed by C# for tooling, scripting and lightweight game engines. Some Assembly also helps for those last mile optimization tricks. Naturally if you aren't looking into getting into the industry, rather having fun at coding games, anything that can do graphics and sound will do.

chana_masala 5y ago

Ebiten is actually making me want to get back into Go itself. I'd love to make a cross platform game and it may just motivate me enough to push through my ideological biases against Go.

djur 5y ago
I'm not big on Go either but I feel like it's a good fit for hobbyist game development. It's a lot harder to write automated tests for games, so the value of static typing is higher, but most simple game designs don't really benefit from the powerful type systems of a Rust or Haskell (or even a TypeScript). It's one of the cases where Go actually does feel like a "better C".
- chana_masala 5y ago
  > but most simple game designs don't really benefit from the powerful type systems of a Rust or Haskell (or even a TypeScript). I get that feeling too but I have no experience with game development. I wonder what reasons you think so?
philosopher1234 5y ago
I've yet to meet an ideological bias against Go that took into account & understood the practical tradeoffs Go is making. The ones I've seen thus far are dismissive and incurious. But if you've got that, I would love to hear it.
- halpert 5y ago
  To me, Go is just a boring language to write in. It’s target audience is large corporations where individuality is discouraged. I’ve used Go extensively at work, and its lack of expressivity definitely has some upsides on large teams, mainly keeping things simple and understandable. But when I program in my free time for fun, I want to be able to express myself fully.
  - philosopher1234 5y ago

tmountain 5y ago

Just came here to say that I also love Ebiten. It's so simple. It stays out of your way, and it has a ton of great examples. One of my goals for this year is to finally finish a game (after talking about it for over a decade). Ebiten is going to help me accomplish that goal.