D game development: a call to action

[Manu via Digitalmars-d]

On 14 December 2014 at 17:55, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d
<digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
> On 12/13/2014 11:39 PM, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>
>> On 14 December 2014 at 17:25, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d
>> <digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 12/13/2014 5:00 PM, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> my engine: https://github.com/TurkeyMan/fuji
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Please set fuji up at http://code.dlang.org !
>>
>>
>> It's totally incompatible with dub. How does code.dlang.org deal with
>> foreign build systems?
>> It's very complex to package, since it supports so many optional
>> features, platforms, and various multimedia API's for each platform.
>>
>> I use premake to create projects/makefiles, which I've been
>> maintaining D support for years.
>> The typical way is to just make the engine repo a submodule and extend
>> the buildsystem to the host app (FeedBack is the best example).
>
>
> The thing is, merely having the code there on github and referring to it now
> and then in the n.g. will result in likely:
>
>     0
>
> users.

That's fine, I'm not selling a product or anything.
It's for personal use... but I'm perfectly happy for other people to
take an interest if they want a professional engine dev helping on
their project, and portability to a very wide range of systems.


> People are going to look for code like yours on code.dlang.org, and
> if it isn't there, they will assume it does not exist.

Well it's not really D code, it just has quite comprehensive support
for D. I've taken a lot of time with the bindings, and making sure D
game projects can effectively be developed against my engine.
I still consider the D bindings experimental though, and I keep tweaking them ;)

I can't make D engine code until D is supported on the menagerie of
console platforms that I support. We need better bare-metal support
and more working toolchains.


> "Build it and they will come" is a stupid hollywood myth. It will never
> happen. So many excellent D projects have died because the creators did:
>
>     0
>
> promotion, and nobody used it. Please do not let this happen to your work!
>
> I recommend:
>
> 1. find a way to make it work on dub. Ask for help. (Martin and Dmitry have
> been graciously helping me get my code up on dub.)

Trouble with this is, I'm not interested in dub.
An exclusive language-specific build ecosystem is of absolutely no use to me!

If I'm mistaken about dub though and I could theoretically somehow
make this work, I'm certainly willing to work with anyone who knows
better than me how to get it working?


> 2. write article(s) about it, post them on your blog site, and ask someone
> to link 'em to Reddit.
>
> 3. announce it on gamedev.net
>
> 4. talk about it everywhere on the internet where game devs hang out

These are all good ideas, but I'm not really actually pimping a
project here. I'm not sure it's a project that I'll ever consider
'finished'.
It's had 12 years of work, and it's pretty robust and capable, but I
just don't have the time to finish/polish off all the stuff I want to.

I tend to work in a reactionary manner to emergent requirements :/
I am super happy for those requirements to be someone elses
requirements though, and I'm all good to give some of my time to help
get other peoples cool projects running well.


> 5. submit a presentation proposal about it for Dconf 2015, and every other
> programming conference. How about YOW 2015, it's even in Australia!
>
> P.S. This applies to everyone writing open source D projects.

Maybe one day I will, I like that idea, but I don't think that day is
particularly soon with this project. I need to give it more undivided
attention to get it to that state.