g3n VS gx

I've been working on a game over the past year in Go using https://github.com/g3n/engine. I picked Go because I like the language and wanted to learn it. I picked g3n-engine because I wanted to work in 3d after making a few 2d games in the past.

Making games is so much more challenging and rewarding than almost all of the work I've done for pay. There's always so much more to learn that doesn't feel like just relearning how to do the same thing except with a different framework of the week.

as well as possibly (G3N) https://github.com/g3n/engine

and https://github.com/g3n/engine

https://github.com/g3n/engine is BSD 2-clause.

Or... You might consider writing directly to a frame buffer and rendering the graphics directly, currently Go doesn't have anything like matplotlib, but there are options like 3d game engines: http://g3n.rocks/ https://azul3d.org/

Nice! Ebiten is a super nice API for Go. Lots there to be inspired by in API design. Another API I like a lot is Love for Lua (which also actually can be used from C++).

Re: the comments on here about the GC etc. -- I've posted about this a couple times before but I've been using a custom Go -> C++ compiler for hobby gamedev, which helps with perf, gives access to C/C++ APIs (I've been using Raylib and physics engines etc.) and also especially has good perf in WebAssembly. Another nice thing is you can add in some reflection / metaprogramming stuff for eg. serializing structs or inspector UI for game entity properties. I was briefly experimenting with generating GLSL from Go code too so you can write shaders in Go and pass data to them with shared structs etc.

The compiler: https://github.com/nikki93/gx

I've been using my own little Go (subset / my own extensions) -> C++ compiler -- https://github.com/nikki93/gx -- and found it to be a fun way to add some guardrails and nicer syntax over C++ usage. You get Go's package system and the syntax analyzers / syntax highlighters etc. just work.

Re: perf for hobby gamedev, I basically agree for native builds, but lately I've felt like Wasm support seems key for hobby gamedev (so you can have more people play your game / without downloading it / it works directly on mobile too without dealing with app or play store). And Go perf in Wasm unfortunately is not so good (I was hitting big GC pauses when trying to make a game with Ebiten and large images).

I ended up writing a Go -> C++ compiler. The games I've done with it don't use the GC at all but also don't manually manage memory -- they use an ECS api which helps. https://github.com/nikki93/gx -- the README links to development workflow video and complete example game code.

I've written my own Go (subset + extensions) -> C++ transpiler and using it on a game project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8He97Sl9iy0 -- No GC, it does have slices and has access to an entity/component API and with that I think you're basically set and don't need GC for games.

Example transpiler input / output: https://github.com/nikki93/gx/blob/master/example/main.gx.go... becomes https://gist.github.com/nikki93/97ff376abb6718427387bb9cca2f...

Hey thanks! The source code for the compiler itself is here: https://github.com/nikki93/gx along with a test / example under the 'example/' directory. This is the C++ output when compiling 'example/': https://gist.github.com/nikki93/b650c551ccb67490d8607980a582c468