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?

• 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

• 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!

@FlorianRival

gdevelop.io

github.com/4ian/GDevelop