GDevelop

Making game creation faster and accessible to all

👋 Hi, I'm Florian

Some things I've done:

  • Software engineer in the Android Games team at Google
    • ​Android Game Development Kit, support for texture compression format + various gaming related work
  • "Full stack" SWE at Meta
  • Built a game for Lil BUB (iOS, Android, desktop)
  • Started GDevelop as an open-source project and founded the company of the same name

GDevelop?

An open-source, no-code, lightweight and fast game engine

  • Designed to be 10x more accessible than anything else
  • For 2D games (for now)
  • [Hyper] casual to midcore games
  • Publish to Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, web (HTML5)
  • Builtin player accounts, leaderboards, ...

Reminds me of...

But why?

  • Be the first step for all new game creator
    • That's why it's no-code
    • That's why it's lightweight & runs anywhere
  • Be there for all ambitious games
    • That's why it's open-source
    • That's why no-code is not a gimmick
  • Be there to change the speed at which we build & publish games
    • That's why it's all integrated

But how?

  • TypeScript + WebAssembly + WebGL game engine
  • (Typed) JavaScript + WebAssembly + React.js game editor 
  • Ready to use cloud build, leaderboards, player accounts backend services.
    Bring your own or use our own.

But it's limited

Not really - not at all:

  • The "no-code" approach is turing complete. Transpiled to code.
  • Object + Behaviors is an "Entity Component" architecture
  • Use JavaScript at any time...
  • ...but you probably won't use it a lot.

But it's for beginners

  • We're happy to have beginners!
  • But the truth is that we're building a higher abstraction level - one that developers also want to use.
  • Tweens
  • Physics engine
  • Visual effects (Shaders)
  • Behaviors ("components")
  • Structures/arrays
  • Custom objects ("prefabs" but encapsulated)
  • Tilemaps
  • Particles
  • Lights
  • Bitmap texts
  • Shape painters
  • Debugger
  • Profiler
  • Hot reloading
  • ...

GDevelop has features from all game engines...

  • Buttons
  • Health system
  • Smooth camera
  • Bullets handling
  • Pixel perfect movement
  • Transitions
  • Checkpoints
  • Linear movement
  • Pinching gesture handling
  • Explosions
  • Orbit movement
  • Boomerang

...but goes one level beyond in the abstraction level

But it's slow

  • JavaScript is JIT compiled
  • WebAssembly used and to be used much more
  • Events transpiled to JavaScript
  • We could switch to another rendering engine

But no way to make successful games

But no AAA games?

  • We're not competing with Unity/Unreal/Godot!
  • But there is a lot to do for the rest.

Still, no code...

  • It's why people come and stay with GDevelop.
  • Code is still there, but expressed as logic
  • It's open-source: come and help us!

Thanks! 🙂

@FlorianRival

gdevelop.io

github.com/4ian/GDevelop

DevCon gamedev

By Florian Rival