This is a massive undertaking... building a whole language + IDE + engine from scratch is insane.
I am curious: what made you go with a custom language instead of just embedding Lua or something? Was it a learning thing, or do you think Exp brings something Lua (or GML) doesn't?
Apart from "I have fun working on this", which is always legit, what's the point and who's supposed to use it? What'd be the benefit using with or working on it over e.g. Godot, which is, imo, pretty much the open source way to go if you want more than an IDE and libs/code you'd use to make a game. It's also written in C# and offers GDScript as a more lightweight programming language with C# being ready to be used for when it's necessary.
The benefit of engaging with a project like this is that you gain a very plausible set of excuses that can be leveraged when you find out that making the game is the actual hard part.
Firing up godot/unity/unreal eliminates an entire universe of reasons for why you haven't shipped more content today. Tools that "just work" can feel like brutal exposure when you don't have a creative vision to follow.
Do you make it a habit of shitting on other people hobbies? Maybe I should try doing the same! Lets go:
Your post assumes everyone wants to make a game in 2026, the year where a half a trillion games are launched per milisecond on Steam (numbers outdated, probably more now), and every "gamedev" community has become 50% about marketing and 50% about self-help. But that still adds up to 100% toxic and 100% being a lottery.
Or maybe they don't want to join a large game studio and make a fraction of the money they make on their cushy web job, where they're home at 6PM. Or worse: risk joining an indie team, where there's a 99% chance people are either lying or are plain talentless.
Seriously now: Game engines are a way to escape the hell that is making games in 2026 while still engaging with the fun parts of the hobby. Will it produce anything worthwhile? Probably not. But chances of it doing so are 100x higher than when making games.
The toxicity of the game community of constantly shitting in something they can't do and can't understand needs to fucking stop.
Replying to the trope that exists in gamedev that "making the game is the only valuable thing, people who make engines are just making excuses".
> Firing up godot/unity/unreal eliminates an entire universe of reasons for why you haven't shipped more content today
Not everyone wants to "ship content".
> brutal exposure when you don't have a creative vision to follow
Also assumes everyone must have or follow a creative vision.
EDIT: And yeah, I'm tired of people collectively shitting on other people's project in HN without even looking at it, or without considering why not having monocultures is good.
> when you find out that making the game is the actual hard part.
Guilty as charged ^-^"
Spent over 3 years trying to make an engine built in Swift cause I loved Swift, before I had to admit that an engine without an editor is almost useless in actual game development, and even 10 years won't bring me close to the level of Godot's editor (though Miguel de Icaza the Mono/Xamarin/Gnome guy did port the Godot Editor to SwiftUI) [0]
so I spent the next 3 years trying to make a framework for Godot :') and still no actual game.
AI is incredibly good at making scripting languages with your ideal dream syntax/functionality. It's pretty fun to use it.
(No, neither my engine nor my language is worth using and never will be)
Firing up godot/unity/unreal eliminates an entire universe of reasons for why you haven't shipped more content today. Tools that "just work" can feel like brutal exposure when you don't have a creative vision to follow.
Your post assumes everyone wants to make a game in 2026, the year where a half a trillion games are launched per milisecond on Steam (numbers outdated, probably more now), and every "gamedev" community has become 50% about marketing and 50% about self-help. But that still adds up to 100% toxic and 100% being a lottery.
Or maybe they don't want to join a large game studio and make a fraction of the money they make on their cushy web job, where they're home at 6PM. Or worse: risk joining an indie team, where there's a 99% chance people are either lying or are plain talentless.
Seriously now: Game engines are a way to escape the hell that is making games in 2026 while still engaging with the fun parts of the hobby. Will it produce anything worthwhile? Probably not. But chances of it doing so are 100x higher than when making games.
The toxicity of the game community of constantly shitting in something they can't do and can't understand needs to fucking stop.
> The toxicity of the game community of constantly shitting in something they can't do and can't understand needs to fucking stop.
In your rage, I think you replied to the wrong person maybe?
Replying to the trope that exists in gamedev that "making the game is the only valuable thing, people who make engines are just making excuses".
> Firing up godot/unity/unreal eliminates an entire universe of reasons for why you haven't shipped more content today
Not everyone wants to "ship content".
> brutal exposure when you don't have a creative vision to follow
Also assumes everyone must have or follow a creative vision.
EDIT: And yeah, I'm tired of people collectively shitting on other people's project in HN without even looking at it, or without considering why not having monocultures is good.
Guilty as charged ^-^"
Spent over 3 years trying to make an engine built in Swift cause I loved Swift, before I had to admit that an engine without an editor is almost useless in actual game development, and even 10 years won't bring me close to the level of Godot's editor (though Miguel de Icaza the Mono/Xamarin/Gnome guy did port the Godot Editor to SwiftUI) [0]
so I spent the next 3 years trying to make a framework for Godot :') and still no actual game.
[0] https://blog.xogot.com/blissful-ui-development-with-swiftui-...
No, Godot is written in C++. You can use C# to code games, as well as GDScript or other languages.