A guy who made his own programming language because C++ sucks for game development but everyone was saying "eh, it does suck but it's the best we have", and then made a blockbuster by using said programming language, is not a software development visionary? What are you smoking?

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bena a day ago | parent | next [-]

"Blockbuster" is stretching it.

On steamdb.info, Order of the Sinking Star has 1830 players right now, 2404 over a 24 hour peak, and 8247 all-time peak last month which was when it was released.

It is just beating out Cuphead, which released in 2017.

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slopinthebag 18 hours ago | parent [-]

it outsold the witness's entire launch year in a week, and holds a 96% score on steam. in terms of puzzle games it is by all accounts a blockbuster.

	▲	fuussssip 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
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KingMob 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How do we know the success is because of his new language?

It seems to me, Blow is a wealthy independent dev, who's talented at making games, but has little time pressure and little interop needs.

Maybe his new language brought him personal satisfaction, but had nothing to do with his game's success.

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throwawaybackag 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Excellently put. On the surface, there is absolutely no reason the game couldn't have been made in any language.

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incrudible 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Any language? Like what? C++ has terrible metaprogramming and build times. Rust has terrible build times and you need to wrap your head around it. C# has GC. C is barebones.

I firmly believe that you should settle your approach to metaprogramming first, on any major project, and for me none of the off-the-shelf solutions ever were preferable to "just generate the code" (JAI probably won't be any different here). Then, once you build all the tooling to be able to iterate as quickly, you basically have your own language and standard library anyway.

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throwawaybackag 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, C#, C++, Rust. Even Javascript. They may not be perfect, they have flaws... but the game could certainly have been built in any of them. Blown just didnt want to, for ideological reasons, which is his decision. Look at the complexity and sophistication of modern AAA games... none of them "needed" a language built from scratch.

	▲	incrudible an hour ago \| parent [-]
		A far worse version of that game concept could have been built in Javascript (which you can't even run at speed on consoles because they don't allow JIT), but that's not this game. Modern "AAA games" cost 100 million dollars or more. Of course if you have an army of developers paid by the hour, maybe iteration speed doesn't matter, maybe the subjective experience of software development doesn't matter. But "AAA gaming" would never produce a game like this in the first place, so it's a moot point.

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incrudible 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would argue that if you hate working in a certain environment, you will not do as good a job as you would have otherwise, and also that quality and success are at least tangentially related.

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KingMob 11 hours ago | parent [-]

This is very true, but it means Blow should not advise others, because most people don't hate their tooling enough to invent a new language.

	▲	incrudible 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Clearly they hate their tooling enough that there is a proliferation of build tools, frameworks and other utilities to make work more palatable, and if you haven't at least dabbled in designing your own language, you missed some sort of crucial step in your development as a programmer. If anything, not everyone has the time and energy (and hubris) to actually follow through with it on a major project. I don't think Jon advised anyone to do what he did, it's a massive gamble. If you're that type of person - contrarian and self-directed to a fault - you can't help but do what he did, you don't need or will accept anyone else's advice.

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erikpukinskis 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

He went into debt to finish Sinking Star.

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KingMob 12 hours ago | parent [-]

That's interesting to know, but doesn't say anything good about whether he needed a new language for it.

Maybe he just values doing his own thing more than money? Which is fine!... but not proof anyone else should take your advice.

	▲	Jtarii 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>That's interesting to know, but doesn't say anything good about whether he needed a new language for it. Some people just like making things they thing are good? He thought cpp was bad, and didn't want to program in it anymore, so he made something different. Obviously the guy isn't optimising for making the most amount of money possible.

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komatar 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's a simple sokoban game, based on 4 existing games. And the development took a decade and then language still isn't released. I'll believe in his vision when other developers will release games using it, or even the engine he claimed will be opensource.

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duggan 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Writing a language is one of the famous yak shaves of game development.

What’s impressive is that he succeeded despite that. The man must have a fire in him.

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jayd16 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No one uses Jai. He shipped and that's always nice but games are full of stuff people made to scratch an itch.

The difference is Blow can and does post some good flame bait.

	▲	Tiktaalik 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It was actually also pretty common for game devs to make their own languages to make games, so it's not too remarkable. Yes usually this was for scripting but still. PS2 era Naughty Dog also wrote their own game dev language.

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nnevatie 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And where is this language for us to try out and see? Oh right, nowhere since it's not publicly released.

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fuussssip 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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