4 ms·

The JVM feels like a bad thing to write games on

by klysm 4y ago

xhevahir 4y ago
Looks like it's Scala.js.
SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
In general, I would agree. Simply because of how the games ecosystem is currently, not because of the JVM being good or bad generally. But if you want to make a good game, and have the desire and skills to do so, the language doesn’t matter. My favorite game of all time, a quite successful game that has critical acclaim from people all over the spectrum, was written in Java. It’s Slay the Spire, to answer the next obvious question.
themodelplumber 4y ago
I thought you didn't have to use the JVM with Scala. Not so?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  Scala is a JVM language. If it’s Scala.js, as referenced in a sibling comment, it’s still Scala being cross compiled. Therefore it’s still JVM at the source
  - klysm 4y ago
    I’m not sure this is true, it’s JVM if you are running JVM bytecode. I don’t think scalajs executes on the jvm
    - sjrd 4y ago
      You are right. See my other comment for some more details.
  - paulddraper 4y ago
    > Therefore it’s still JVM at the source Wat. No. Scala is a language. It has compilers for Java bytecode, JavaScript, and native.
    - ummonk 4y ago
      A language that just so happens to have built-in interoperability with Java.
      - sjrd 4y ago
        The JVM flavor of Scala has built-in interoperability with Java. Scala.js has built-in interoperability with JavaScript instead. And Scala Native has built-in interoperability with C.
      - paulddraper 4y ago
        Yes. Given Java's goal is "write once, run everywhere"...that's not a bad thing.
- kagakuninja 4y ago
  To be fair, Scala.js is a relatively new project, and I had avoided it for a while due to library compatibility issues and stability concerns. It now seems pretty freaking awesome. There is a concerted effort in the Scala community to break the dependency on the JVM, via Scala.js and Scala Native. This however requires porting the Java standard library to each platform.
  - AlexITC 4y ago
    > To be fair, Scala.js is a relatively new project I don't know if you are aware, a few months ago, Scala.js turned 10 years old: https://www.scala-lang.org/blog-detail/2023/02/05/ten-years-of-scala-js.html https://www.scala-lang.org/blog-detail/2023/02/05/ten-years-...
    - raincole 4y ago
      10 years old is new tho. I'm not being sarcastic. See how old Unity and Unreal are. Most gamedev still consider Godot new. Godot is 9 years old.
afpx 4y ago
depends on the type of game. For 2D games libGDX is actually a pretty nice framework. Slay the Spire was written using it, and what did it gross like 100M?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  I will say, having been the guy saying he really enjoyed StS in the sibling comment, that the devs of StS have gone on record saying that they probably would have chosen another library other than libGDX if they did it again. My understanding is that it’s simply the same reason as I mentioned in my comment - libGDX simply isn’t used enough and that’s a ding against it when you can go and use unity/Mono and have a thousand stack overflow questions for every one stackoverflow libgdx question. Edit: apparently unity has been off mono for about 3 years now. Tangential but interesting
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    I think, in an age where ChatGPT can point you in the correct direction in niche questions, that popularity of a tech stack becomes irrelevant to whether you can find answers or not. iOW, as long as a large enough userbase and codebase exists, popularity doesn't matter for getting answers. Might matter for shaking out bugs, enhancements, etc, but not for learning resources.
    - raincole 4y ago
      > I think, in an age where ChatGPT can point you in the correct direction in niche questions, that popularity of a tech stack becomes irrelevant to whether you can find answers or not. It's the exact opposite. I really don't know how you got this conclusion. The quality of the answers from ChatGPT/Copilot/whatever highly depends on how many learning materials in the training set. In other words, popuplarity matters more than any time ever. If you don't believe me, ask ChatGPT to write a Blender addon, then ask it to do something similar but for Houdini. The difference is day and night. By the way, Houdini is basically used for every single VFX studio. Even that doesn't reach the "large enough userbase" needed for ChatGPT to generate quality answers.
kaba0 4y ago
Unless it is some AAA game, the JVM is more than apt for writing games, especially that the rendering itself is OpenGL/Vulkan libcalls either way.
- pkolaczk 4y ago
  GC pauses and a very high memory usage are still a problem. That's why we don't see many Java games (Minecraft was a notable exception and ran like a dog).
  - kaba0 4y ago
    There are plenty of indie games written in Java, there are low-lat GCs available for the JVM (ZGC) that promises sub millisecond pauses, and you don’t have to use a ton of memory, there are ways to manage it. Minecraft was written in a very suboptimal way, its creator was a very novice developer — there are mods that easily increase performance many-many times.
  - noelwelsh 4y ago
    That was true about 20 years ago, but it's not really true any more. The real reason we don't see many Java games is that most games are written using either Unity or Unreal Engine, and neither of those support Java as a first class language.
    - xmcqdpt2 4y ago
      Exactly. Also both Unity and Unreal Engine have GCs and that hasn't stopped them from being used in most games. If anything, games can afford GC more than many other applications, because it's expected of a game that it will consume a lot of resources so they can just hog cores and memory and it's fine. You don't expect users to be running multiple games at the same time. Also, a lot of the more real-time work is offloaded to the GPU anyway.
      - pkolaczk 4y ago
        There is a difference between a GC used for only a tiny fraction of objects that implement a certain interface (Unreal Engine case) and using a GC for all the things like Java does, which you cannot opt-out. In Java case the GC has to scan gigabytes of objects, and often the garbage production rate is also in gigabytes per second, hence an efficient general purpose GC implementation is much more challenging.
sjrd 4y ago
As others have mentioned, Indigo is entirely written in Scala.js. Therefore, it runs on JavaScript in browsers. There is no JVM at all at run-time. (A JVM is required to compile the code, but what you run and deploy has no dependency on any JVM stuff.) Source: I am the lead author/maintainer of Scala.js and I wrote a personal game project in Indigo.
esarbe 4y ago
Minecraft seems to be doing fine.

The JVM feels like a bad thing to write games on

by klysm 4y ago

The JVM feels like a bad thing to write games on

xhevahir 4y ago

Looks like it's Scala.js.

SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago

In general, I would agree. Simply because of how the games ecosystem is currently, not because of the JVM being good or bad generally. But if you want to make a good game, and have the desire and skills to do so, the language doesn’t matter. My favorite game of all time, a quite successful game that has critical acclaim from people all over the spectrum, was written in Java. It’s Slay the Spire, to answer the next obvious question.

themodelplumber 4y ago

I thought you didn't have to use the JVM with Scala. Not so?

SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
Scala is a JVM language. If it’s Scala.js, as referenced in a sibling comment, it’s still Scala being cross compiled. Therefore it’s still JVM at the source
- klysm 4y ago
  I’m not sure this is true, it’s JVM if you are running JVM bytecode. I don’t think scalajs executes on the jvm
  - sjrd 4y ago
    You are right. See my other comment for some more details.
- paulddraper 4y ago
  > Therefore it’s still JVM at the source Wat. No. Scala is a language. It has compilers for Java bytecode, JavaScript, and native.
  - ummonk 4y ago
    A language that just so happens to have built-in interoperability with Java.
    - sjrd 4y ago
      The JVM flavor of Scala has built-in interoperability with Java. Scala.js has built-in interoperability with JavaScript instead. And Scala Native has built-in interoperability with C.
    - paulddraper 4y ago
      Yes. Given Java's goal is "write once, run everywhere"...that's not a bad thing.
kagakuninja 4y ago
To be fair, Scala.js is a relatively new project, and I had avoided it for a while due to library compatibility issues and stability concerns. It now seems pretty freaking awesome. There is a concerted effort in the Scala community to break the dependency on the JVM, via Scala.js and Scala Native. This however requires porting the Java standard library to each platform.
- AlexITC 4y ago
  > To be fair, Scala.js is a relatively new project I don't know if you are aware, a few months ago, Scala.js turned 10 years old: https://www.scala-lang.org/blog-detail/2023/02/05/ten-years-of-scala-js.html https://www.scala-lang.org/blog-detail/2023/02/05/ten-years-...
  - raincole 4y ago
    10 years old is new tho. I'm not being sarcastic. See how old Unity and Unreal are. Most gamedev still consider Godot new. Godot is 9 years old.

afpx 4y ago

depends on the type of game. For 2D games libGDX is actually a pretty nice framework. Slay the Spire was written using it, and what did it gross like 100M?

SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
I will say, having been the guy saying he really enjoyed StS in the sibling comment, that the devs of StS have gone on record saying that they probably would have chosen another library other than libGDX if they did it again. My understanding is that it’s simply the same reason as I mentioned in my comment - libGDX simply isn’t used enough and that’s a ding against it when you can go and use unity/Mono and have a thousand stack overflow questions for every one stackoverflow libgdx question. Edit: apparently unity has been off mono for about 3 years now. Tangential but interesting
- lelanthran 4y ago
  I think, in an age where ChatGPT can point you in the correct direction in niche questions, that popularity of a tech stack becomes irrelevant to whether you can find answers or not. iOW, as long as a large enough userbase and codebase exists, popularity doesn't matter for getting answers. Might matter for shaking out bugs, enhancements, etc, but not for learning resources.
  - raincole 4y ago
    > I think, in an age where ChatGPT can point you in the correct direction in niche questions, that popularity of a tech stack becomes irrelevant to whether you can find answers or not. It's the exact opposite. I really don't know how you got this conclusion. The quality of the answers from ChatGPT/Copilot/whatever highly depends on how many learning materials in the training set. In other words, popuplarity matters more than any time ever. If you don't believe me, ask ChatGPT to write a Blender addon, then ask it to do something similar but for Houdini. The difference is day and night. By the way, Houdini is basically used for every single VFX studio. Even that doesn't reach the "large enough userbase" needed for ChatGPT to generate quality answers.

kaba0 4y ago

Unless it is some AAA game, the JVM is more than apt for writing games, especially that the rendering itself is OpenGL/Vulkan libcalls either way.

pkolaczk 4y ago
GC pauses and a very high memory usage are still a problem. That's why we don't see many Java games (Minecraft was a notable exception and ran like a dog).
- kaba0 4y ago
  There are plenty of indie games written in Java, there are low-lat GCs available for the JVM (ZGC) that promises sub millisecond pauses, and you don’t have to use a ton of memory, there are ways to manage it. Minecraft was written in a very suboptimal way, its creator was a very novice developer — there are mods that easily increase performance many-many times.
- noelwelsh 4y ago
  That was true about 20 years ago, but it's not really true any more. The real reason we don't see many Java games is that most games are written using either Unity or Unreal Engine, and neither of those support Java as a first class language.
  - xmcqdpt2 4y ago
    Exactly. Also both Unity and Unreal Engine have GCs and that hasn't stopped them from being used in most games. If anything, games can afford GC more than many other applications, because it's expected of a game that it will consume a lot of resources so they can just hog cores and memory and it's fine. You don't expect users to be running multiple games at the same time. Also, a lot of the more real-time work is offloaded to the GPU anyway.
    - pkolaczk 4y ago
      There is a difference between a GC used for only a tiny fraction of objects that implement a certain interface (Unreal Engine case) and using a GC for all the things like Java does, which you cannot opt-out. In Java case the GC has to scan gigabytes of objects, and often the garbage production rate is also in gigabytes per second, hence an efficient general purpose GC implementation is much more challenging.

sjrd 4y ago

As others have mentioned, Indigo is entirely written in Scala.js. Therefore, it runs on JavaScript in browsers. There is no JVM at all at run-time. (A JVM is required to compile the code, but what you run and deploy has no dependency on any JVM stuff.) Source: I am the lead author/maintainer of Scala.js and I wrote a personal game project in Indigo.

esarbe 4y ago

Minecraft seems to be doing fine.