Hi there!
For the last 3 years I have been working on an open source game engine in my spare time. Concept wise it is similar to Love2D in that it allows you to build games in Lua running on a C++ back end, however there are some fundamental differences that make my engine potentially very desirable compared. Here's a run down of some of the things it can do:
- Works on OpenGL 4.1+ (and ES 3.0+) (no SDL dependency).
- Write game code in Lua, no need to recompile every time.
- Very fast emitter/subscriber event system.
- Scene system, to switch instantly between game parts.
- Load in textures, sprite sheets, custom shaders, fonts, audio, tile maps, text data, databases etc...
- Smart renderer that renders in organised batches for performance.
- Simple and easy to use transform system to move, rotate or scale graphics.
- An SDK/CLI for creating, packaging and sharing your games.
- Compact & portable, with the main executable compiling to 2mb in release mode on Windows.
Development has remained on a private repository since conception, as a lot of the things I needed were things I did not know how to do (like learning C++ as I'm a C# dev), and I wanted to avoid the pressure of people getting inpatient with the progress. I actually build a fully working version of the engine in C# MonoGame before moving to C++, so the whole process has felt like a life time already.
So just recently I reached the point where a good majority of the code base is in good working order. I've shown various examples to people in person, it ports fine (runs on Windows, Mac OS, Linux), and a lot of the pieces are in place, however I'm still wary about pressing the button to make the project go public, as there is a good while, maybe months/years till a v1.0 will happen.
I guess there is some anxiety on my part, wariness that people may miss the point of the project etc... or that people won't understand that it's finished as I am not great at art (the website prototype is still in a shambolic state!). There is also worry weather I'll be able to manage the project when a lot of people make requests etc…Still though I am so proud of the damn thing that I want to shout about it.
Has anyone else been in this situation? If so can you tell me weather I should be patient and plan further? Working in a black box has had it's uses, but it does feel that exposing it to the community might be the best course of action so feedback can help mature it to competency.
Thanks for any contributions to the discussion, I am keen to hear your thoughts.
Koda
