triptych

I just discovered GDevelop, though I think I have seen this engine in the past in earlier versions and thought “It's not fully baked, I'll check it out later” only to forget about it until I was reminded of it a few weeks ago. It's like Construct 2 and other “action sheet” kinda game makers where you don't exactly code , more like you set up listeners for certain events, then manipulate pre-built objects to make a game.

GDevelop is essentially a hybrid app that has been written in C++ but gradually ported over to ReactJS as well as Webassembly. Check out this very interesting slide show from the author that talks about the app's transformation.

For me, I've been trying to build a game making tool for over a year now, and I've been learning a lot about how to make an app. Godot Engine is an excellent tool for making games, both 2D and 3D and it even has enough functionality to create other kinds of apps.

I'm even working on a book about making apps in Godot, but more on that later. Today is all about GDevelop.

I decided to try out one of the tutorials to see how complex and workable creating a simple game in GDevelop would be, and I have to say it was pretty good.

If you want to skip to the playing part of this – check out my demo game over at itch.io.

Essentially I implemented this demo. It was pretty straightforward, with only a few glitches. I actually found a bug in the app, filed an issue, and got a response all in the space of 30 mins.

Apparently GDevelop is being maintained by a single person, in their spare time. It's looking pretty good for a side project, but to be honest I think they need to allow more folks to contribute.

It seems to be actively developed, with some exciting features just a few months ago added. I like where the app is going, and I plan on trying to create a real game in it this year.

My goals for my time at Terminus / Campus Movie Fest are to make progress on #ittybittyrpg and to get a basic walk around demo for Dungeon Afternoon working in GDevelop. I might even write some tutorials on my Andreww.xyz home page.

So, if you are a “non coder” or are looking for an app that has a nice framework to build a game within – that is open source and free – give GDevelop a try.