Defold - Win/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS game engine (opens in new tab)

I agree, but think the issue is slightly deeper. The branding lays the sass / pass / social elements on a little too thick for my taste. I immediately get the sense that this software is limited compared to a 'hard core' game engine. I'm sure that's not the case, but the visuals seem to belie this.

There are two examples in the docs, a side scrolled and a platformer.

We currently don't have any support for this, but we plan to add the ability of user extensions in C++. We want to include it in the service so the extensions get compiled by our servers for every platform - so other people in your team can start using them, regardless of if you run the same OS or not. It should also be combined with editor-plugins.

Good point, we should show plenty more things on the site. The problem right now is that we are so fresh that we have little content to show. As people start releasing their games we will add screenshots.

Thanks for the feedback, we obviously need to improve the amount of info on the site. I would say the biggest pros compared to Unity is that you can change your games while they run on your mobile devices, without needing to rebuild/restart which gives an iteration-cycle of about 1 second. We have also specialized the toolset of 2D (tiled graphics etc), but the engine is 3D behind the scenes. We are a service so the pricing is completely different. The biggest con is of course that Unity has been around for much longer so they have a bigger feature set, larger community and proven technology. But we will get there in time. :)

Great feedback, thanks! We have almost solely focused on making the best workflow for game dev possible, with things like updating the games live on your mobile phones while they run and a proper editor with visual editing. I really agree that we are currently sending a mixed message, we need to be more clear of what kind of service we are and what you can do with it.

libGDX[1][2] (it's not an engine) is a great cross-platform Java library that allows you target the desktop (Win/Mac/Linux/etc), Android, HTML5 (through GWT), and now iOS all with the same codebase, built on standards like OpenGL ES/WebGL.

Mario Zechner (the main guy behind libGDX) wrote an excellent book[3] last year on Android gamedev that has you start from the basics up to creating your own game engine and games.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/libgdx/

[2] https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx

[3] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1430230428/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

I've been looking for something like this for a while... I'm writing an application that I want to have run on PCs as well as my Raspberry Pi (using Python preferably, although C++ is always an option), and eventually, I'd love to be able to port it to Android (+WP/iOS/BB/whatever else) as well. I'm still at the deciding state, obviously, as this is not a common thing for some reason. However, I'd love to use Python, so I'm comfortable with just having PCs and an RPi for now - but that still begs the question, is it possible to create an application (using restricted OpenGL calls) that works with both OpenGL full and ES systems without modification?

kivy ? http://kivy.org/#home

I can see the benefit of having a single codebase, but how would this fare against the likes of Unity, where the optimal backend is used for each platform?

I'm working on one of those. Beta SDK should be out soon too: http://multiplay.io

Moai?

http://getmoai.com/

Unity3D is pretty much just that.

How does it differ from Marmalade or any of the other Lua-based game engines?

We currently have no exposed network support, but that will come at a later time.

The only mention of Android Google could find is here: http://www.defold.com/ref/render#render.enable_state

But it seems like as always Android is not being treated like a first class citizen.

There's a screenshot on their twitter of a nexus 7 running the engine, so presumably it will be available soon.

Don't know much yet, but: their editor is Eclipse-based. The scripts are Lua-based and can be cross-compiled.

Hehe, a few of us thought that too once we had the logo in-place. We hoped no one else would make that association, we were obviously wrong. :) Another fun fact, our favicon on the site is almost identical to the new Microsoft logo, but we had it first. :)

For a release the lua code is surely translated into objective-c, so lua is 'just' used as a scripting language.

First of all, it couldn't possibly be illegal.

Second, apparently Apple now allow interpreters, just not JITs.