Beltrunner: Game Design Postmortem(blog.gingerbeardman.com)
19 pointsby surprisetalka day ago2 comments
  • qezz6 hours ago
    > the totally new way of making games

    > it’s a lightweight game engine, interactive development environment, a language

    The statement is very strong and catches my attention, but I didn't find any useful details about the game engine itself on its website [1]. It feels like it's a wrapper around raylib, which is very welcome, but it's definitely not some innovative way of game development

    [1] https://jinks.gg/

    • msephtonan hour ago
      It's not a wrapper around raylib; raylib is just one of several thin shells or platform presentation layers. Only the standalone desktop builds (macOS/Windows) use raylib. The macOS IDE renders the live game view with SpriteKit/RealityKit; the web player is WebGL2/wasm; Linux handheld builds use SDL2/GLES2; Wii uses SDL2 over GX; Dreamcast uses KOS.

      The engine isn't the new part anyway—the way games are written is, which I'll say more about once things settle down. It's just me working on this, so I'm taking my time with the work and the rate of releasing information. But of the information on the website: I don't know of any other game dev tool that shows you theoretical maximum score based on the game rules, as one example of the type of things this new way provides.

      And I'm not aware of any other engine that can hit these platforms, and there are more coming.

  • Jabrov6 hours ago
    My eyes glazed over the AI slop that is this article. What are you even trying to say?
    • jere5 hours ago
      > I like that it begins as Asteroids, turns into a countdown race, borrows ideas from Nintendo, Bomb Jack and Pang, and then actually ends after sixteen waves that can be learnt by heart

      The thing about using AI to write articles for you is, because it's tuned to be enthusiastic about everything, it doesn't know what's boring and uninteresting. Shameful.

      • msephtonan hour ago
        In fact, I wrote that because that's what I think. It's a summary of the game design and flow—the preceding several sections—in a single sentence.
        • jere35 minutes ago
          If you wrote this, apologies. Blame Pangram in having high confidence that most of this is AI, my spidey sense going off because it sounded strongly like AI to me before I checked Pangram, and most importantly my lack of imagination in what people finding interesting.
          • msephton27 minutes ago
            No worries at all. It's a wild time we are living in, so it's good to be sceptical and question everything. I always try to keep in mind that at the other end of the wire is (usually!) another human.
    • msephtonan hour ago
      It's a game design postmortem; probably most interesting to game developers and designers and/or people who have played the game it is describing. I imagine that it's not very readable if you've not played the game, or have no reference to game design.
    • ididjwjfjwhf6 hours ago
      Like every other article by this guys: nothing.

      These personal blogs always tend to be the “look how incredible and humble I am, now clap, audience!” type, and none is so more than this guy’s.

      • msephtonan hour ago
        I find this quite amusing, because my blog turned 30 years old last week: it was started in 1996 which is 27 BC (Before Claude).

        I'm sorry that you find the topics uninteresting, the rate of my output challenging, or my enthusiasm for my own work grating, but I'll keep writing anyway.

        My goal is to simply write about the stuff I am doing, creating, solving…because it's fun! I don't expect anybody to clap, but you are correct that I am incredible—so thanks for the compliment!

        And congrats on your shiny new HN account!