@ykoda @meredith_matthews ok, but what's the time trade-off in learning a new engine instead of reimplimenting a quarter of it? That's where I'm at.
@meredith_matthews hmmm, good point. I guess the concern I’d personally have is “where are things going to go wrong with the implementation of this engine, what are my time sinks going to be?” If it’s a simple, straightforward thing and you know the tech super well, it’d be fun to twiddle a bit and make what you need. But if making the game is the primary goal, I might just stick with the established engine. But I’m a curmudgeon :D
@ykoda @meredith_matthews no, that's totally a reasonable approach too. I'm an old programmer, I know the risks of reinventing the wheel, and also, I know the risks of buying into a new framework. Sometimes it's an easy choice! This time, less so.
@meredith_matthews The eternal struggle! :D
If it were me, it would just come down to how badly I wanted to ship a game. If shipping it was the real main super important goal, I’d go with Twine. If making a game was a reason to be creative and do fun things, I’d write the engine bits myself.
Probably. Maybe. I dunno.
@ykoda @meredith_matthews *Flails* stupid technology!
maybe I should just go learn Lisp and achieve spiritual enlightenment instead. Then I'd know what to do. #iseeyouriconthere
@meredith_matthews now that’s a grand idea! Then, instead of wondering what engine to use, you can spend your time fighting with builds and portability and all sort of fun things.
But the ( ) are simple and beautiful and the code is data. Wish the language had a feature? Add it.
Wait, crap, then instead of writing engines you’re writing the language and still not writing the game. Just can’t win.
@meredith_matthews Is Twine what you made to make your game, @ada ?
@peter @meredith_matthews yeah i made my game in twine. It's really nice being able to see the flow of the story. I was still able to do 3D graphics too by using A-Frame. Here is the URL for mine: https://ada-game-engine.glitch.me
@meredith_matthews @peter this is the logic for a really simple game like mine, having the logic organied like this is invaluable and let me focus on other things like writing the story or making the graphics work. https://mastodon.social/media/ozr9DSYNTCaWObagtQI
@ada @meredith_matthews @peter whoa, that's a completely unexpected way to interact. That's so cool!
@meredith_matthews @peter Thanks! It took some hacks to make so i could click on the 3D scene to change the passage but the result is nice.
@ada @meredith_matthews @peter is that using Snowman?
@meredith_matthews @peter I used the default on Twinery which is Harlowe.
@meredith_matthews in addition to not reinventing the wheel (and sometimes there's a case for that) Twine also has a community you can lean on for support and which produces libraries you can use for features or to learn from.
Of course, depending on what you want, Twine might not be the best fit. There are other frameworks for game dev, including the one you haven't written yet. Part of the reason there are so many JS frameworks is JS is not great, but easy to write frameworks for...
@gdorn @meredith_matthews I guess what my question is, what does twine bring to the table that makes it a better choice than, say, react or angular?
@meredith_matthews you’ll get to actually write your game, rather than writing an engine.