Ask HN: Favorite Game Engine? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Favorite Game Engine?

41 pointsraytopia42 comments

Given Unity's recent announcement what's your favorite engine/framework to work in/with and why? It can be one you made, niche, or super popular.

My favorite is Panda3D [0] because I can use it from Python and C++ and that it lets you code your game how you want while being batteries included at the same time. It was used for some of Disney's MMOs and themepark rides too so it's production ready. Overall it's a lot of fun to work in and I'm also always discovering cool new features like the very good async support it has.

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Godot. I've spent time with Unity and it bogs down my system. Unreal.. seems to bring a lot of FPS baggage and you _must_ use visual scripting to iterate quickly. Bevy is promising.

Godot and Bevy have a lot going for them:

* They provide a basic structure (nodes in godot, ECS in bevy)

* They provide some built in objects/libraries that you have the _choice_ to utilize

* They don't bog down your entire system when you are just making a simple toy.

I really want to learn Unreal, but after spending 2 nights trying to get direct control over cursor locking I decided the other fancy features weren't worth destroying my iteration time.

In the past LibGDX and Game Maker 8 were how I started programming in the first place. They feel pretty dated now though.

As hobbyist, if I would plan a serious project (with the goal of shipping, and a concrete idea), I'd use PhaserJS or ThreeJS, depending on 2D/3D. Mainly because JS/TS is my the language I am most productive in. And the result can be packaged to any target thanks to Electron and similar solutions. "Curious Expedition" and "Vampire Survivors" are two more popular games made with web-tech. (Although Vampire later moved to Unity)

For Desktop/Mobile I'd use Godot or MonoGame with C#.

For silly stuff or really short games and/or prototypes, Pico-8 is hard to beat.

And when the low-level itch starts, Raylib with C.

A +1 for fantasy consoles here. I'm partial to the TIC-80. I don't have the time and energy for huge personal projects, so the restrictions keep me focused on simplicity, fun, and the joy of coding itself.

Totally! And for additional fun, run the games on one of those Retro-Handheld-Consoles (Miyoo etc.).

I haven't used many engines, but I've been programming some simple games with LÖVE [0] and (to a lesser extent) LÖVR [1] and like them both.

But maybe not real game engines, as you need to do quite a bit of work by yourself. I guess it depends what your definition is of a game engine.

I tried Unity and didn't like it. I don't like drag & drop interfaces, but I understand the appeal.

---

[0]: https://love2d.org

[1]: https://lovr.org

Lua is hanging in there, and those Lua skills can be transferred to Roblox! (although I'm not really a fan of the Roblox api...)

Unpopular opinion: code-first is the best approach (for people who know how to code, ofc).

Visual tools have their own quirks and special workflows that creators got to delve into for quite a long time in order to master. Code on the other way is a universal interface that coders already feel confident with and lets ideas turn into playab le prototypes real quick.

That said: phaserjs, love2d, pixi.js

It's unpopular for a reason. After using tools like Fusion and spending all my time writing workarounds, I lean towards this.

But can the average person with 10 years of web dev experience finish a sellable game within a year doing code-first?

I'm assuming we're in hobby space here. So sellable game is not an AAA massive online rpg. Then yes.

Godot has been remarkably fun to work with, and was way easier getting started in than I'd thought it'd be, coming from some topical UE4 experience. Scriptable with a flavor of Python, programmable in C#, and most recently with native C++ modules that don't require rebuilding the engine.

I recently made a small game with https://defold.com/, and it was very pleasant. Completely free and cross-platform out of the box (including Switch & PlayStation support!)

Share the game!

Monkey Mart is REALLY good! :)

I tried a bunch of the popular game engines and none of them really clicked for me. It wasn't until I found A-Frame and Three.js (which isn't an engine at all, but a Web 3D XR VR AR Renderer) that had an Entity-Component Architecture with a foss eco system of components that you could mix and match then things started making more sense.

So did I cleverly use all these freely built components to make the greatest XR experience ever? Nah, I decided to re-invent the wheel and do everything myself :). I do enjoy the challenge and freedom to build my own ultimate tool though and I know it's not likely others will use it, but I did release it under GPL3 anyways. It has a wiki (slightly outdated atm :)), starter script and some examples too.

It's pretty fun as both a learning/practice experience and actually be able to use it for various builds. Makes it even easier to prototype XR ideas which I love. I am currently wrapping v0.3 which has added tons of improvements, although it's not exactly ready for release, if anyone feels like checking it out I added some links as ref...

* AUXL (A-Frame UX Library) v0.3 repo --> https://github.com/Minty-Crisp/AUXL

* AUXL Grid Collision/No Clip v0.3 Demo -> https://auxlibrary.com/

* AUXL Physics & Powers v0.3 Demo -> https://minty-crisp.github.io/AUXL/physics.html

* Minty's XRcade (mini game arcade built with AUXL) -> https://mintyxr.com

Godot is easily my favorite game engine. The node system is simple yet powerful, truly a joy to use. For the most part, I feel like I have a good level of control over my projects without having to get too low-level. It doesn't feel like I have to organize my code around the engine's architecture, like with Unity or Unreal. Godot is also free and open-source and very lightweight. Support for C# and 3D has been improving, especially with Godot 4.0. And it has pretty good cross-platform support.

Game Maker 8 wasn't perfect but boy do I miss it.

nowadays I just do my own stuff but it's kind of interesting that nobody's really made an open-source Game Maker clone, to my knowledge.

Game Maker is still available: https://gamemaker.io/en

GameMaker is not Game Maker, at least, to me. either way: not open-source.

My fav from years ago, was ye ol' Blitz3D:

https://github.com/blitz-research/blitz3d

I've always wanted to try Haxe, because of my Flash background: https://haxe.org/use-cases/games/

I am not primarily a game developer. But I wanted to see how some of it works.

The engine that has been instrumental to it is DragonRuby Game Toolkit [0]. It was easy to set up and use. And I developed a simple game [1] following a really accessible book [2].

It uses Ruby which is an easy language to pick up- especially as someone who is experienced in Python.

I really loved the experience and talked with the author to turn the book into a livecoding tutorial series.

[0]: https://dragonruby.org/toolkit/game

[1]: https://github.com/ritog/dragon-game

[1a]: https://ritog.itch.io/silly-dragon-target-game

[2]: https://dragonridersunite.itch.io/dragonruby-book

Current game I've been developing with Monogame, but its 3D support continues to not be that great, especially multiplatform (and I've had trouble figuring out how to get even basic shaders working with it). I've managed to get it working okay to develop the game as far as I have with it, but I keep stumbling with it, and the models in the game don't look as nice as they do even just importing the same files into Unity.

I've also been a bit frustrated by the lack of updates or communication from the team in general (and their develop Github branch hasn't had any activity since May except for a dozen pull request merges 2 days ago) that I'm considering looking into how hard it would be to port my game to Godot (was considering Unity before the announcement today).

I'm suspecting hard enough I might want to just stick with Monogame until this game is out there, though, and maybe make my next game using Godot.

I also like Phaser.js for web games.

Source Engine. Greasy but fun and Valve provides you literally all the assets of all of their Source Engine games to work with.

It was Unity until today... They just canceled the Plus tier, making the cheapest paid plan $2000 / year.

I really like Godot, though I'm still using 3.5 LTS. You can use it with C# / Mono. I've heard it's not great for 3D, but I only work in 2D anyway.

For Java libGDX[0] is okay. This answer is most likely based on what programming language you use most. The C++ folks will like Unreal and the JS folks have their preference as well.

[0] https://libgdx.com/

I started toying around with EZ engine: https://ezengine.net/

Kinda reminds me of a lightweight C++ Unity with some weird tidbits.

There is a HUGE list of game engines running on Github for a while and from time to time, new stuff is added.

https://gist.github.com/raysan5/909dc6cf33ed40223eb0dfe625c0...

My personal preferences:

Godot

OpenBOR (I really like these beat'em up stuff)

Gamemaker 1.4

What is a good open source C++ and Vulkan game engine or renderer that has a good material system? I've never known how to implement a good material system with Vulkan. I've poked around the internals of Google Filament before I was wondering if there is something else worth looking at. Many engines were originally designed pre-Vulkan and DX12.

PhaserJS for when I want complete control, and Construct 2 for rapid prototyping even if it's a bit quirky (instance archetypes, selected object lists, etc). Unfortunately they no longer sell it and have since moved to a subscription service with an annual fee.

If I can devote some time, I'd love to check out Defold. I've heard good things about it.

https://www.pygame.org/

GZDoom. I know that Doom is an old game, but the GZDoom sourceport has enabled all kinds of cool and crazy mods. Doom is no longer a game but a platform. Because of the mostly 2D nature of the engine, creating maps is so easy that anyone can do it. I think it's extremely fun and accessible.

What are some games that a quite different than Doom? E.g., what the best GZDoom roguelike?

A search for "GZDoom" on Steam will show some different indie games that are using the engine, there are a few interesting ones.

A cursory youtube search brought up this random video with a wide variety of examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjnOdDzSxWs

There are also several versions of random level generators for Doom engine maps out there: https://obsidian-level-maker.github.io/

I can't remember the names but there are mods and games out there integrating the random level generators.

Of course the maps are still BSP and therefore somewhat constrained but the level of creativity in the mod community is pretty amazing.

I'm not really a game maker, but would like to give a shout out to the fabulous https://gdevelop.io/

It has everything you need, is free and its VISUAL PROGRAMMING is fab...

Not into creating games but cryengine2 is my favorite for creating levels as a hobby.

Favourite in what way?

Unreal seems to produce the most impressive visuals.

Bevy seems to make it easy to produce WebGL. As a hobbyist and a Rustacean, this is my choice. But I have no aim to release anything commercial with a timeline. I’d go Unreal then.

Related ongoing thread:

Unity plan pricing and packaging updates - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37481344 - Sept 2023 (272 comments)

Pico-8!

Don't let scope creep get to you and unleash your imagination by "limiting" the space you can use

Blender Game Engine (you will be missed, though perhaps it's the perfect time to revive it?)

https://upbge.org

wickedengine. good performance. linux support. fast cpp17 compiles. lua support. active community.

I'd never heard of this engine, it looks really cool. I'm going to try it out. Thanks!

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