clojure-gamedev 2024-01-30

I would like to make simple 2d games. What would you recommend to a beginner to clojure and gamedev?

If you want something simple, I think interop with https://github.com/electronstudio/jaylib is OK.

Another thing to consider is quil

for a simple 2d game it's clojure-only and is backed by processing, which is used for simple 2d games in java already

I like Quil too. I tried translating some games I did in pico-8 / tic-80 and it worked fine. If you don’t want to do anything more demanding, I’d start there. The biggest advantage is that you can find an a lot of videos about Processing and just translate that into Clojure. Something like that is more complicated with play-cljc and others. But I haven’t tried most of CLJ game engines to be honest. Personally, I’d love to see a godot-arcade for godot 4…

Thank you all for the suggestions 🙂 👍

Probably https://github.com/oakes/play-cljc/. It's not perfect but great for beginners.

FWIW, I myself ended up switching to LibGDX. But it's definitely not for a beginner in Clojure or gamedev. Maybe suitable if you're know Java well.

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I have developed GDL for this purpose, it sets up necessary state for 2D libgdx games so you can focus on making games https://github.com/damn/gdl

But I also recommend to learn libgdx Java library, it contains a lot of features for every use case!

Thank you 🙂 , but I have pretty much no Java knowledge. Maybe it's easier to go the ClojureScript route and interop with a JavaScript GameEngine? 🤔

IMO you should stick to simpler things at the start. You're a beginner in both Clojure and gamedev, there's no need to make it harder for yourself by bringing another language and interop with it into the picture.

You're right, I will look into play/cljc and maybe GDL and see how it goes 🙂

It's an interesting topic, if someone doesn't know Java tooling. How will they profile performance? All graphics libraries are using some language lower level at some point

Anything advanced I mean will be difficult if not knowing host language

> How will they profile performance? I think the mere existence of the need to profile would mean that that person is no longer a total beginner. :D

Actually, I was only looking for a way to get better at clojure by doing something fun 😅

Let me know if you have any questions about GDL , I can help out then !

Thank you 🙂, will do!