Handmade Hero»Forums»Game
MaixmB
2 posts
Basic questions about the game's development
Hello,
Some basic questions I didn't see answers too,
I can't watch the videos right now because I'm at work.

1. What language do you use to program this game?
2. What engine do you use?
3. Why don't you develop the game on all 3 platforms simultaneously? the code will be better and more stable this way.
Miguel Lechón
78 posts / 2 projects
Basic questions about the game's development
Hi and welcome!

1 The game is programmed in C++, although it's mainly plain C.
2 Handmade Hero is written from scratch; it doesn't use any preexisting engine. Teaching how to do that is actually the whole point of the project.
3 The first few weeks of the project were devoted to writing a platform layer to uncouple the game code from the operating system. The rest of the platform layers will get written when it's time to ship the game. In the meantime, people running OSs other than windows can follow the series using any of the available alternative platform layers.
Mārtiņš Možeiko
2559 posts / 2 projects
Basic questions about the game's development
1. C++ but in C style. Only few selected features of C++ is used.

2. Handmade engine. This series is to teach how to make engine for games. So engine is crated at same time as game.

3. Because this series is to teach how to write game (and engine). Compiling on all platforms will take more time and leave less time to do the actual code writing and explaining. Most code already now is cross-platform and stable (it works). It is much easier to develop all game logic on platform with which you are most comfortable and which offers best tools for debugging. Other platforms will need just the small platform code to interact with OS, rest of code will remain the same. And Casey has mentioned that there will be at least 5 official platforms - Windows, Linux, OSX, Raspberry Pi and Android. Why bother implementing input recording/playback functionality on Android or RPi if that will never be used? Waste of time.
MaixmB
2 posts
Basic questions about the game's development
Thanks for the haste replies,
I love the idea of creating a game from scratch and documenting the process.
However C++/C FOR ME seems extremely difficult.
I was trying to learn Python and in the middle of it became very hard for me.
Now trying to learn Javascript (to later use it in nodejs and browser based game creation tools).
I'm not good in programming at all, so I try to learn the easiest stuff.
Andrew Bromage
183 posts / 1 project
Research engineer, resident maths nerd (Erdős number 3).
Basic questions about the game's development
MaximB
3. Why don't you develop the game on all 3 platforms simultaneously? the code will be better and more stable this way.

Casey's First Rule of API Design is: Write the usage code first.

Take the amount of time that Casey has spent on the Win32 layer. Now multiply that by more than three (more because Win32 is the platform that Casey is probably fastest in). That's the amount of time that it would have taken to get to the actual game-programmy stuff. That game-programmy stuff is the usage code.