I'm a senior non-game developer, playing at game development in my spare time. I used to use Unity, but I've quit them a few times, and I think this time is for good. UE4/5 didn't really fit my work flow or design style.

So I'm playing with Godot now, and I'm pretty impressed. Some things like 3d imports and animations could use some love, I think... But otherwise, I'm pretty happy with it.

[–] HeckGazer@programming.dev 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

!! The first paragraph but without having tried UE

!! The second paragraph but I've been working in 2D.

[–] kryllic@programming.dev 5 points 9 months ago

As a hobbyist, Godot is probably the most "fun" engine I've worked in. The software itself feels like a toy, similar to Gamemaker (at least from what I remember when I used it like 10 years ago as a kid lol). Coming from C# background, using GDscript wasn't as bad as I thought, and making small projects in a weekend has really itched the problem-solving part in my brain. I'm trying to re-create popular flash games that I remember playing back in the day and seeing what improvements I can make.

[–] WinterBear@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

I am enjoying Solar2D! Lua based engine for desktop and mobile, working on a virtual pet game. So easy to get something working quickly

[–] SirMino@feddit.it 2 points 9 months ago

for my little silly experiments I use Raylib (C or the Go bindings).

[–] ArmainAP@programming.dev 2 points 9 months ago

Professionally: Unreal Engine 5 Hobby: Godot and Unreal Engine 5

Godot is fun, quick and small. Unreal is powerful, bulky and big.

[–] SurvivalMariner@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

Unreal Engine. I've been enjoying learning it and building it. It's powerful and so far has solved every problem I've had without much pain.

[–] mapto@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

https://phaser.io/ - web-first, so Easy to distribute even games made for game jams

[–] saintshenanigans@programming.dev 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I had to build a game in phaser 3 for my "html" course and I swore I would never try to game dev in js again.

I know we were using a very old version and we had very minimal guidance... have I missed something big that makes it tolerable to work with or do i just need more js experience?

[–] mapto@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

The way you put it, it sounds that you have issues with the language. I can relate to that, but JS is what browsers understand natively. Probably using TypeScript is a good alternative, as static typing helps you keep afloat as the project grows.

As for Phaser itself (can be used with TypeScript), it depends what kind of game you're making. Even older versions of phaser have the typical programming affordances to make 2D games like assets and physics. Having said that, it's fair that other engines have visual editors, and possibly more tutorials and other resources.

But yes, phaser is hardly HTML, so weird choice for the course.

[–] Klear@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago

Defold. Fast and powerful, and so easy to deploy on any platform.