Comment by littlestymaar
9 months ago
Well the problem with Jonathan's argument here is that he's spent the past decade mostly ranting about Rust and working to make a perfect game programming language, instead of making games.
So it turn out that even if he's opinion on Rust is correct, he would still have been much more productive using it than trying to build his own language for a decade…
(But he already shipped his masterpiece and he's a millionaire so he gets to chose his full time hobby as he wishes)
He is actively developing his new game in parallel to creating the language.
Not to mention smaller projects like 'Braid- anniversary edition'.
Isn't the traditional advice that if you try to write both a game engine and a game that you'll get neither?
Braid and The Witness, his last two games, both used custom engines written in C++.
Then it's a good thing not everyone listens to traditional advice.
I mean, it's not like there are no games in existence that shipped with a custom engine.
Even in hindsight it's hard to judge whether building your own engine was good or bad decision, and we are nowhere near "the hindsight" level of knowledge.
Yeah, and it's taking him YEARS to implement a simple grid-walking Sokoban clone, and Braid anniversary edition had to be delayed.
Last I heard, the Sokoban game has a ridiculous number of puzzles on it. Can't find a source but I seem to recall hearing that it would take 400+ hours to finish it all. So.. I don't think it's entirely unreasonable it's been taking this long.
>spent the past decade mostly ranting about Rust and working to make a perfect game programming language, instead of making games.
I wish. As far as I can tell he made a single hour long video shitting on rust and now he's the enemy of the cult. That's hardly spending the last decade sitting being mad over rust.
Why should he be making more games, instead of building his vision of a perfect language?
A machinist who retires from running lathes and goes into the lathe-making business has reached the pinnacle of that profession.
Writing games in C++ feels horrible which is a large part of he wrote the language.
I mean, he does like a good rant lol. But this seems like a bad take. The witness came out ~8 years ago, and Braid came out ~8 years before that. Braid Anniversary is launching next week, he's actively developing his language and next game (occasionally streams). "he's just resting on his laurels now" I think is clearly wrong