Comment by meheleventyone
9 months ago
I'd say the inertia is far more social than codebase size related. Right now whilst there are pockets of interest there is no broader reason to switch. Bevy as the leading contender isn't going to magic it's way to being capable of shipping AAA titles unless a studio actually adopts it. I don't think it's actually shipped a commercially successful indie game yet.
Also game engines emphatically don't have to be huge. Look at Balatro shipping on Love2d.
> Also game engines emphatically don't have to be huge. Look at Balatro shipping on Love2d.
Balatro convinced me that Love2D might be a good contender for my next small 2D game release. I had no idea you could integrate Steamworks or 2D shaders that looked that good into Love2D. And it seems to be very cross-platform, since Balatro released on pretty much every platform on day 1 (with some porting help from a third party developer it seems like).
And since it's Lua based, I should be able to port a slightly simpler version of the game over to the Playdate console.
I'm also considering Godot, though.
There’s a pretty big difference between the Playdate and anything else in performance but also in requirements for assets. So much so I hope your idea is scoped accordingly. But yeah Love2d is great.
It is. I've already half ported one of my games to the Playdate (and own one), I'm pretty aware of its capabilities.
The assets are what I struggle with most. 1-bit graphics that look halfway decent are a challenge for me. In my half-ported game, I just draw the tiles programatically, like I did in the Pico-8 version (and they don't look anywhere near as good as a lot of Playdate games, so I need to someday sit down and try to get some better art in it).
There are a few successful games like Tunnet [1] written in Bevy.
[1]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2286390/Tunnet/
Looks cool and well received but at ~300ish reviews hardly a shining beacon if we extrapolate sales from that. But I'll say that's a good start.
Speaking as a Godot supporter, I don't think sales numbers of shipped games are relevant to anyone except the game's developer.
When evaluating a newer technology, the key question is: are there any major non-obvious roadblocks? A finished game (with presumably decent performance) tells you that if there are problems, they're solvable. That's the data.
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