Rust for game engine programming in 2024? | Hacker News Reader

Rust for game engine programming in 2024?

8 pointsbeezow7 comments

Hey!

I wanted to give it a try and write my own 2D game engine that I could maybe use in the future. I was thinking to use Rust but I have very little experience with it and wanted to ask whether I won't be shooting myself in the foot and should use C++/C# instead.

Any suggestions on the topic are very welcome, thank you!

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There was a good thread a couple months ago from someone who likes rust, but didn't like writing his game engine in rust.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40172033

Do you want primarily a 2D game engine that works? Then use a language that you know.

Do you want primarily to learn Rust, gather experience with the language, and don't mind if your 2D game engine will only work after your 3rd attempt from scratch? Then use Rust.

I agree with this advice. The OP should decide which itch should be scratched; learning to make a game engine or learning Rust. Doing both is just making things overly difficult.

This is one of the top posts on /r/rust over on reddit, which details the pain points of using rust for gamedev. It's a long one, but give it a read if you have the time.

Many of the posters in that subreddit along with even developers of rust saw the critique of the language as fair and well thought out.

https://loglog.games/blog/leaving-rust-gamedev/

Yep. Try to read the article and see if it resonates with you OP. Despite that though, there still many people that is interested in writing game (or engine) in Rust. The upcoming release of Tiny Glade[0] is maybe one of the most anticipated game in Rust game space (using Bevy ECS behind the scene). On the Bevy end, there is also a plan to integrate a scripting language so you could do the game logic on it instead.

[0]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198150/Tiny_Glade/

You will be shooting yourself in the foot. Stick to C++ or C#. Trying to learn to write your own 2D engine is hard enough, pairing it with a complicated language like Rust (which you have no experience) is a recipe for extreme frustration. Once you get your game engine up, you can then experience the downsides of Rust in comparison to C++/C# but that's for later.

Maybe try the bevy game engine so you don't have to reinvent the wheel

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