[HN Gopher] Luxe: Cross platform, rapid development game engine
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Luxe: Cross platform, rapid development game engine
        
       Author : de_keyboard
       Score  : 106 points
       Date   : 2021-10-25 10:37 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (luxeengine.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (luxeengine.com)
        
       | joeld42 wrote:
       | I've been using this for a couple months now and really enjoying
       | it. Here's a couple of things I've built with it:
       | 
       | Gummi Bridges, a game for the LDJAM game jam
       | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/gummi-bridges There are
       | some rendering issues with the web build, especially in Chrome.
       | Yes, the sim is very unstable but 1) it was for a game jam 2) it
       | was thematic (the theme was "unstable") so I didn't fix it.
       | 
       | Breaklchemy, a breakout+pachinko game that I did to learn the
       | basics: https://joeld42.itch.io/breaklchemy
       | 
       | I wrote a Tweening library (similar to DOTween but better),
       | that's available to preview devs.
       | 
       | I also have a 3d project that i'm just doing to figure out the 3D
       | rendering and lighting side of it, this is still a lot less-
       | documented but imho extremely powerful.
       | 
       | My background is gamedev in Unity and custom engines, and using
       | Luxe has been a far better experience for me so far to both of
       | those approaches. It's definitely early days and has some rough
       | edges, and for the 3D stuff is still WIP and I'd say you need a
       | pretty good understanding of 3d engine internals to make use of
       | it.
       | 
       | Some of the best things about it: - Wren's Fibers make stuff like
       | sequencing and AI scripting so much easier than other engines. I
       | did all the behavior for the little blob gummi's in the ldjam
       | game in about 45 minutes.
       | 
       | - Without getting into too many specifics, the way the project is
       | organized is really well thought out. Many, many things can be
       | edited thru the editor or with human-readable text files, and
       | this makes small changes and version control a lot smoother than
       | something like Unity.
       | 
       | - It scales very well. Despite being "easy to use" and beginner
       | friendly (ish), I have tried throwing huge numbers of objects at
       | it and it does very well, even if they are updating in script.
       | The design is very data-oriented and that really shows in
       | performance.
       | 
       | - Strong Cross platform. I can generate and package up builds for
       | web, linux, windows and mac in under a minute total. And I
       | haven't ran into any platform bugs outside of some stuff on web
       | (which is always difficult).
       | 
       | I'm finishing up my current game which has a semi-custom engine,
       | but I'm planning to use Luxe for future projects. It's definitely
       | got some "early adopter" surprises and doesn't have the level of
       | tutorialization and learning resources as something like unity,
       | but I feel like it's solid enough to support small/medium indie
       | game projects and well on the way to be able to support AAA
       | games. Hopefully the momentum will continue!
        
       | ensiferum wrote:
       | Been working on a 2D game engine myself. Still incorporating some
       | things before "Show HN". Comments welcome.
       | 
       | https://github.com/ensisoft/gamestudio
        
       | dang wrote:
       | One past thread:
       | 
       |  _Luxe: free, cross platform, open source, rapid development game
       | engine_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16615251 - March
       | 2018 (46 comments)
        
       | analognoise wrote:
       | I've been using (and loving) Godot recently, how does this
       | compare?
        
         | japhib wrote:
         | I'm in the closed beta. There are some interesting design
         | innovations compared to Godot/Unity. But I don't think I'm
         | allowed to talk about much of it yet ... so I guess you just
         | have to wait until the open beta!
        
       | agravier wrote:
       | Luxe is in closed beta so it might be very awesome, and I hope it
       | is, but right now it's only something to keep on the radar.
       | 
       | Wren, however, is a cool little language that has the simplicity
       | of early Python <3.
       | 
       | (I don't mean that it's like Python syntactically, I mean that
       | it's small and nice like scripting languages sometimes are early
       | in their life, and it's pleasant and refreshing.)
        
       | EamonnMR wrote:
       | I wonder if this is a Nystrom project since it uses Wren and
       | Nystrom was a gamedev.
       | 
       | Ed: It isn't
        
         | mkishi wrote:
         | No. Ruby [1] is luxe's main dev.
         | 
         | They just announced today [2] that a second dev [3] officially
         | joined the project.
         | 
         | [1] https://twitter.com/ruby0x1
         | 
         | [2] https://luxeengine.com/news-2/
         | 
         | [3] https://twitter.com/totallyRonja/
        
       | hamaluik wrote:
       | I wish the project the best of luck, but my sincere belief is
       | that is just vapourware. I used the "alpha" a bunch almost 10
       | years ago (it wasn't called an "alpha" then, and was written in
       | Haxe, and was open source), and my interactions with the author
       | left a sour taste in my mouth, especially how they treated
       | contributors and the community. I'm not surprised to see it is
       | now closed-source.
        
         | analognoise wrote:
         | Is the original still up somewhere?
        
           | bitshiffed wrote:
           | https://github.com/luxeengine/alpha
        
       | okkdev wrote:
       | Is it gonna be open source?
        
         | mkishi wrote:
         | I wouldn't bet on it. They've stated multiple times they intend
         | to eventually provide source-code access, but have always been
         | careful not to call it open-source.
         | 
         | But there doesn't seem to be concrete plans (dates or details)
         | yet, so who knows.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-10-25 23:02 UTC)