@hj @xianc78 @lanodan C# did add a lot of nice stuff to its language that Java is still missing or has bolted on. .NET also breaks comparability instead of keeping ancient shit in. (which Java finally did with 9 ~ 11, which breaks everything so no one uses them)

That said, I've written Mono/.NET code with Gtk# in the past and it's all pretty much dead and unsupported now. I'm not even sure if Gtk# works with .NET Core.

Java isn't a great language, but it was a major step away from manual memory management and a full VM. There are a lot of much better languages that run on the JVM such as Scala, Kotlin, etc. (although Scala libraries are getting pretty insane with cryptic functionality and error messages).

@djsumdog @xianc78 @lanodan
image.png

@djsumdog @hj @lanodan @xianc78 fun fact when microsoft got told to fuck off they weren't allowed to embrace extend extinguish java, they went and hired the Delphi guy to design their clone.

@icedquinn @xianc78 @lanodan @hj That makes sense. I never tried Delphi or Pascal. I wish I had; heard they were interesting languages.

@djsumdog @hj @lanodan @xianc78 delphi and freepascal are still around.

@djsumdog @icedquinn @lanodan @hj I think GameMaker before it was GameMaker: Studio would cross-compile their games into Delphi. But now, they apparently compile to C# (haven't looked into it any further).

@xianc78 @djsumdog @lanodan @hj game maker was written in delphi and it just taped an export bundle on to the end of an exe stub. the scripts were interpreted.

@xianc78 @djsumdog @hj @lanodan there is a clone of the old GM5/6 called enigma which does convert gmscript to c++ and compile it. but the engine is GPL from what i recall, which kinda sentenced it to death.

@icedquinn @xianc78 @lanodan @hj The company I work for now has stuff built into CI to ensure nothing they import in any dependencies is licensed under GPL ... kinda sad because GPL is the real solution to that Faker.js problem. Yes, fewer people will use your library, but the people who do will at least be contributing apps everyone else can use for free.

@xianc78 @icedquinn @lanodan @hj I think that's what Hotline Miami was written in.

@djsumdog @xianc78 @hj @lanodan lot of indie games are in game maker studio yes.

that company is run by human garbage though. they put in code to destroy files if the DRM triggers wrong, blew up some guy's project, then he was treated like shit on the forums until PR damage control showed up to confirm he paid the monies and the dev who put the feature in was basically like "bruh i wanted to make pirates suffer."

@icedquinn
@djsumdog @hj @lanodan @xianc78
It's a good thing indies forked off Monogame and the like because DRMware can fuck itself.

@parisc @djsumdog @hj @lanodan @xianc78
> monogame
i heard people liked XNA but the architecture didn't scale to 3D. i tried to use monogame but you couldn't compile shaders without windows so i left that clown show

@icedquinn @djsumdog @lanodan @hj @parisc I use MonoGame but only for 2D stuff. I think the shader problem is still there. Last time I checked the official documentation has a tutorial for compiling shaders on Linux using Wine.

@icedquinn
@djsumdog @hj @lanodan @xianc78
XNA could do 3d and a few games did use it (infinite flight notably did, alongside lots of XBLIG games) but you have to do a lot of low level work to get 3d out of it compared to 2d. One dev called Monogame a convenient set of c# libraries as opposed to an engine.

Most of the time 3d stuff was bigger with monogame/XNA on WP7 and XBLIG because those were the only options for programming. Now there's little interest because you can use Godot or Unity instead.

@parisc @icedquinn @djsumdog @lanodan @hj I think it could serve a nice middleground for those who don't want to work with a full engine while still not wanting to get into the very low level workings of OpenGL or Vulkan. I'm currently working with 2D right now but I would love to move on to 3D at some point.

I would really like to try to create a psuedo-3D engine. Maybe using something like raycasting (the algorithm used for Wolfenstein 3D) because it doesn't seem that hard to implement. With raycasting, everything is happening in 2D but you are seeing a 3D representation of it.

@icedquinn @djsumdog @lanodan @hj The engine is also a mountain of duct tape on top of an old codebase. It's really showing it's age like having game speed being tied to the FPS.

I often hear people say that it's the GameBryo of indie game engines.

@xianc78 @djsumdog @lanodan @hj well the IDE is cool at least.

@djsumdog
@icedquinn @hj @lanodan @xianc78
Try Delphi Community Edition or FPC:
https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter
https://www.freepascal.org/download.html

FPC doesn't support as much as Delphi does and it's less optimized (it's trying to add Delphi features later on ofc) but the Lazarus IDE is a Delphi clone.

@djsumdog @icedquinn @xianc78 @lanodan @hj I worked with Delphi for a short time, definitely takes some time to get used to Pascal syntax but not bad overall ngl

@djsumdog @lanodan @hj
>I'm not even sure if Gtk# works with .NET Core.

It does. Mono is pretty much obsolete now.
https://matt-perley-21.medium.com/start-a-new-gtk-project-in-net-core-b89634d395f9

@xianc78 @lanodan @hj eh Interesting. I gave up on Gtk#. Everything I write now is using PyQT5 😅

@djsumdog @lanodan @hj GTK# is still the go to library for writing GUIs in C# on other platforms, and is probably going to stay that way unless Microsoft ports Windows Forms to macOS, Linux, and *BSD.

@hj @lanodan C# has plain data structs, an exponential operator, a static class to work with stdin as opposed to manually declaring a scanner object, actual pointers, operator overloading, and unions. Java has none of those.

There is a good reason why indie game developers went from Java to C# and it's not just the XNA framework.

@hj @xianc78 @lanodan What pisses me off about .NET/C# is how much control Microsoft has over the language. Like, sure, you claim to support compiling for cross-platform and such, but simultaneously, you're closing source codes and making it harder to compile and debug for anyone who isn't using Visual Studio.

@seanking @lanodan @hj There are open-source C# IDEs like VSCode, MonoDevelop, and SharpDevelop, but yeah, I do agree that it sucks that Microsoft pretty much has full control of the language. And C# is still pretty much frowned upon in the FOSS community because of that.

I just think it's pretty decent for a gamedev language.

@xianc78 @lanodan @hj While VSCode is open-source, the binaries released by Microsoft are not and uses proprietary code for the sake of telemetry and such. There is fully open-source binaries like VSCodium, but extensions used for C# and C++ are made to only work with Microsoft VSCode.

- https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/60#issuecomment-161792005
- https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#proprietary-debugging-tools

@seanking @lanodan @hj I know and it's something I have to deal with. I personally prefer MonoDevelop but MonoGame switched to .NET Core so I'm stuck using VSCode unless MonoDevelop is also ported to .NET Core.

@xianc78 @seanking @hj
Problem of C# for me is that while Mono used to work somewhat okay before, since MicroSoft adopted it it's now an absolute clusterfuck to do anything related to C#.

Is it xbuild, is it msbuild, will nuget not blow up in my face?

@lanodan @xianc78 @hj It also probably doesn't help that most of my C++ and C# classes were learning those languages within the Visual Studio ecosystem. I never really learned how to do a Makefile until like I was asked for help on someone's first few exercises for a C/C++ for Linux class at a different college.

dotNEET is a compromised ecosystem, unless you are doing windows-first or windows exclusive development, there are superior choices.