Zanzlanz 2021-01-16 15:15:43

Hey Gimmick, thanks!

I started the engine in August 2017.
One year later it was ready to start porting games with. So I ported 5 games at the end of 2018. 2019 was a slower year due to other projects.
In 2020, I recruited my buddy @GhostID to help port another 6 games, while I made significant updates to the engine and used it to work on my biggest port, Mine Blocks.

So, around 3 years of casually working on it around other projects?

Zanzlanz 2021-01-16 17:02:17

Between devs I normally like to call it a library because otherwise it might be compared to something like Unity!

But I think it's crazy how quickly it took shape too - I didn't really know anything about OpenGL at the time, and while it was still super underdeveloped/slow in 2018, it was certainly usable enough to build from!

To put it another way, what I created is comparable to maybe something like ThreeJS? With specific support for drawing lots of quads.

The cross-platform stuff like OpenGL bindings, resource loading, basic audio playing, and event reporting (mouse, keyboard, etc) is provided by the Lime library (which OpenFL is build on too). Otherwise I'd have to write native code to implement literally everything in each platform, which sounds wAY TOo tedious haha!

It was a ton of work, but I'm glad it was the more fun part of making an engine, versus the tedious stuff.

Zanzlanz 2021-01-16 20:54:21

Hey thanks man!

It is definitely more tedious to work with games that use a lot of MovieClips and timeline features (I have to deal with that on my main project right now). This bundle includes games that almost exclusively used BitmapData, so it wasn't too bad thankfully! :)

If they aren't already, I imagine a lot of your older games will end up supported by Ruffle, right? That would make things easier for you, I'd hope!

Zanzlanz 2021-01-16 22:33:08

That's a pretty good deal, all in all! I have a handful of big WIPs and demos that I will have to recreate at this point, so I feel that.

Just curious, do you have any plans to address those newer games at this point, or are you mainly putting that energy on the next big things instead?

Zanzlanz 2021-01-16 22:56:45

I think you're right - Ruffle's contributors are doing amazing work, and there's certainly a huge demand for it. It's just such a long term project haha.

I'm sure people would love some revamped classics!

Zanzlanz 2021-01-17 06:13:43

That's fantastic! I love that the end of Flash has nudged creators to breathe new life into their old work in creative ways.

The quality-of-life stuff is always great. What kind of things are you considering QoL?

In my bundle, I made sure all games could be fullscreened and muted, and I fixed plenty of annoyances/bugs. I feel like I could have gone further and fixed minor typos, for example, but I didn't want to cross the point of being unfaithful of the original work.