Jonathan Blow's next game looks like it might support Linux

Why is he not using the same custom engine used on The witness?

Why is he not using the same custom engine used on The witness?

He's writing a new engine in a new programming language he developed.

I watched the video, but still I didn't understand what the purpose of his new language. What problems does it solve that cannot be done in other modern languages ?


Last edited by Spyker on 20 Apr 2017 at 9:17 pm UTC

I watched the video, but still I didn't understand what the purpose of his new language. What problems does it solve that cannot be done in other modern languages ?

He explain it in the first video of this playlist why no other modern language is a perfect fit for gamedev:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmV5I2fxaiCKfxMBrNsU1kgKJXD3PkyxO

I know Jonathan Blow is not a favorite among us Linux gamers, but I have been following his series of programming videos for quite a while now and I have a lot of respect for the guy, both for his knowledge and his intuition into what makes a good game programming language. For many years I ran C++ commercial programming teams under Unix and I was considered an expert on C++, but I never felt it was a natural language for programming. Unfortunately, C++ was always a language where you can do a function in 7 different ways, but you will need to put a lot of work in to find out which of those is an 80% reasonable solution. For personal use, I ditched C++ very quickly once Java became mainstream, as Java was like daylight compared to the C++ fog.

I think Jonathan Blow's language will be excellent 80% of the time for writing games, I just wished he had fully created it, rather than writing the Witness, but I guess he has got to pay his bills first. I am not surprised that his language is showcased on Linux, it is by far the best OS for new languages, and was one of the many reasons I personally moved from Windows to Linux. I wanted to play with what were then new languages and only available on Linux, like Google's Go, Firefox's Rust and Gnome's Vala. So please allow Jonathan more leeway, as I am sure Linux will benefit in the longer term from his work.

Gotta love the after-lunch-special, G2A .

I don't know why Braid has so much acclaim. I gave it a try and that game was just boring and awful.

Fair enough; I found it focussed, engaging and well-crafted.

The attention to detail in the puzzles is mind-blowing (heh), but you do have to have a taste for the games specific implementation of puzzles.

I suspect most reviewers, being distracted by the artwork, ignored that it is just not a game suitable for everyone, or even for most people. The worst of the reviewers seemed rather smug and superior about liking the game when other people didn't.


Last edited by emphy on 21 Apr 2017 at 4:48 am UTC

Whoa, what happened to Jonathan doing a presentation showing off on Linux?!
I'm shocked... in a positive way :)
I would have never expected that, but this is quite cool!

edit: ah okay, it's only one screenshot, just showing the game is also running on Linux.
Still cool enough ;)


Last edited by Corben on 21 Apr 2017 at 5:18 am UTC

Yeah, well... Jonathan Blow may be a nice guy and all, making great games, I really disliked his aggressivity aginst Linux in general. He's a big voice in the indie game dev community, so what he says resounds a lot in many people's ears. I'm waiting for actions after that, not just "oh, I changed my mind". The Witness was a great occasion, he missed it. He's not the only one (hello 2dark) so I'm currently a bit fed up.

Seems he is doing this game to prove that his upcoming laguage Jai is good enough to make a complex game in. And when you want to interest programmers interested in modern programming languages, you have to show that your code runs on Linux and macOS (and, preferably, other Unixes).

So it makes sense that he will build this game for Linux just to show it is possible, so that his language cannot be rejected by his audience on the presumption that it’s Windows-only. It doesn’t mean he starts loving Linux or he will do anything beyond this proof-of-concept on Linux ever.

Also, I’ve just read [a few things about Jai here](https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md) – I don’t have time to listen to Blow’s own presentations on Youtube right now to verify correctness of this source – and the section called WHY NOT USE C++/RUST/GO/D/SWIFT/HASKELL/LISP/ETC? gave actually not a single argument against using Rust… (and not that there are none – eg. ecosystem is still a bit immature, but [games written in Rust](http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=868228143) still [start appearing on Steam right now](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=893373312)).

But, anyway, the Jai language itself looks quite nice for somebody who just wants a little bit more polished C, with a little easier (but still very manual and pretty cumbersome) memory management (and certainly better than C++ in that regard).


Last edited by silmeth on 21 Apr 2017 at 2:54 pm UTC

gave actually not a single argument against using Rust… (and not that there are none – eg. ecosystem is still a bit immature, but [games written in Rust](http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=868228143) still [start appearing on Steam right now](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=893373312)).

Rust is fucking excellent for game dev, and I will choose it over any other language every single time.
The only downsides are;

Some projects such as rust-sdl2, glium, glutin etc, are still a little immature; however, they are absolutely entirely useable right now, and it's pretty darn easy to keep on top of updates and changes.

Learning curve - the fucking borrow checker. But honestly, this is overcome fairly quickly once you understand how it works, and why it works that way. It does seem to lead to better understanding of how to use pointers in other languages and a larger awareness of the problems they can cause too.