bevy_editor_pls VS rusty_engine

I think one part that makes this extra obvious is bevy UI and the attempts at an editor. I remember when https://github.com/jakobhellermann/bevy_editor_pls came along and I was very excited, but since then nothing has really happened on the editor front. Not that I need an editor personally, but what I find disappointing and telling is that this whole thing has been basically halted because of bevy's idea of having UI in the ECS.

Also, there is this Bevy plugin https://github.com/jakobhellermann/bevy_editor_pls/

It's on of the primary initiatives right now. Games are not developed by only programmers, we're well aware of that. There are a few ongoing existing ecossytem level efforts like bevy_editor_pls. For an official editor, we're just lacking the UI tooling to fully flesh it out right now. Like Godot, Bevy's dogfooding it's own UI solution for the official editor, but it's not quite there yet. Bevy isn't alone in this. There's a smorgasbord of ongoing work in the Rust for UI space, and there's quite a bit of greenfield efforts to develop a data-oriented or ECS style approach to UI layouting and management. Once we have this a bit more hammered down, it's just a matter of time before an official editor becomes available.

It is something we've been building toward for awhile. We've been focused on core systems like the renderer and ecs for awhile now, but we're finally at the point where we can start moving up the stack.

We will be focusing on scenes, asset workflows, ui, and the editor from here on out (with scenes, asset workflows, and UI being the focus for the next release).

I'd like to have some sort of editor MVP by the end of the year.

Until then, there are community efforts like: https://github.com/jakobhellermann/bevy_editor_pls

P.S. There is an effort to make an editor for Bevy if you're interested, though it's not complete.

For now though, bevy_editor_pls is a surprisingly useful third-party prototype.

Rusty Engine is a very simplified wrapper over Bevy made by one of its contributors which allows you to basically get straight into game creation using code without having to learn proper ECS patterns and Bevy systems.

One of the guys who contributed to Bevy made a wrapper around it called Rusty Engine. It vastly simplifies what you need to do to bootstrap a game with Bevy while introducing you more gently to the concepts you will need to learn when transitioning to a full Bevy project.

Ultimate Rust 2 uses Rusty Engine for the game prototype project(s) at the end of the course. Rusty Engine was created specifically for the course. More info about Rusty engine can be found on the GitHub repository, linked above.

If you are the kind of person who wants to learn Rust first, and then Bevy later, then I suggest starting with Rusty Engine (full disclosure, I'm it's author). It is a simplification layer around Bevy that removes almost all game engine concepts, so you can practice out your beginner Rust skills making simple game prototypes.

- Rusty Engine doesn't support drawing primitive lines, polygons, or circles. Bevy 0.8 added the ability to draw polygons and circles, so I'm planning to add that "soon", but Bevy does not (yet) support drawing lines, so that is still up in the air. Given the OP's stated desires, this may eliminate the current version of Rusty Engine from consideration.

Check this one out: https://github.com/CleanCut/rusty_engine

Update: I couldn't stop thinking about this 👆🏻, so after updating to Bevy 0.6, I circled back and tried to make Game generic over the game state struct...and it worked this time! I don't know if Bevy 0.6 did something to make it easier, or if I just smartened up sufficiently, but there is no longer any need for the macro call. 🎉 The change will be in Rusty Engine 4.0, which I will release as soon as I figure out what to do about bevy_prototype_debug_lines not having an upstream Bevy 0.6-compatible release.