Hello!

I love making games, have even had the privilege to do it “for real”. I’m looking for some game engine that I can use to make a 2D turnbased rpg game, that would compile for pc and android.

I have tried out lots of engines since a long time, and whats bothering me the most is that windows changes breaking stuff, the engine going paid or cease to exist, or it uses like javascript. So I’m wondering if there would be, today, something you could recommend that is FOSS, 2D, has sound&music maybe a menu interface, effects…, isn’t an obscure, old or too new language (like Lua or Rust, sorry!) and works out of the box for PC and Android.

I’m willing to ponder web instead of PC but I’m not willing to go the javascript route :-).

Thank you for your time!

Cheers

Valmond

  • @ilmagico
    7•9 months ago

    Have you considered Godot? I don’t have any real experience with it, but from what I gather, it’s FOSS, seems pretty popular and well supported, definitely supports 2D (also 3D but you don’t care), can export to Android or web, as well as PC, and doesn’t use any of your “blacklisted” languages. It uses its own python-like script, or you can use C#, and there’s extensions for others.

  • @[email protected]
    5•9 months ago

    Godot is great for 2D, is FOSS, and it is getting stronger by the minute. Where it doesn’t meet your requirements is perhaps that its main language is their own GDScript. it’s a really easy language to get started with, but still “obscure”. You can, however, use C# to do (I think) anything you could with gdscript.

    You can also use C++ to do everything. This is called GDNative. With this you’re basically just rewriting / adding to the game engine that is written in C++. Probably harder to get into, especially if you’re not too familiar with the language.

    I had experience with python so GDScript came naturally, and the documentation is really thorough.

    With Godot you can export to Windows/Linux/Web in one click. Exporting to Android just needs like 15 minutes of setting up using the tutorial in the docs, and that becomes single click too.

    You can even download the game engine onto your phone and it works the exact same there! Though I wouldn’t want to develop on a tiny touch screen lol

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•9 months ago

      Interesting, I have heard a lot of good things about it, didn’t know it could compile android versions!

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•9 months ago

      BTW I just installed Godot and to my delight it has a C# version (I’m a C/C++ guy so that should be easy peasy)!

      Now I’m only wondering if visual code is the way to go on my Linux Mint. IIRC one of their IDEs is somewhat open source.

      • @[email protected]
        2•9 months ago

        VSCode is open source with an asterisk. All the official releases are pumped up with not so open source microsoft parts. I recommend using VSCodium. They take the code and compile & release it so you don’t have to do it yourself. You’ll have to update it manually, but honestly I had a 1.5 year old release running before I thought to.

        The GDScript VSCode(ium) extension is excellent. I’ve never tried Godot with C#, so I can’t say about that extension.

        • @[email protected]OP
          1•9 months ago

          Thanks again, will do. I guess if the EEE goes too far then I can probably stay in a time bubble and keep going :-)

  • @AnAustralianPhotographerEnglish
    4•9 months ago

    I’m not sure it fully meets the specs, but have a look at the TIC80 it’s an open source fantasy console you can write code for.

    Imagine something like a 1st generation console game system fully sypported by emulators. I’ve touched on it on a recalbox.

    • @[email protected]OP
      2•9 months ago

      Ha ha well that would be almost the complete opposite that I’m looking for :-)

      I have already worked on some of the old gen consoles and it’s fun and all but typically not portable at all.

  • @themusicman
    2•9 months ago

    Rust is newish but it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. If you’ve got the chops to work directly in code without a built-in editor, try Bevy. Seriously. It’s the future of game dev.

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•9 months ago

      My man, I love your optimism :-)

      Thanks for the IDE tip though, was thinking about compiling Lemmy one day and if I understand it correctly it’s written in Rust?

      Edit: seems like its not a standalone IDE.

      • @themusicman
        2•9 months ago

        I meant level/scene editor, not IDE. Bevy has neither