Making game creation fast 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" software engineer at Meta
• Built a game for Lil BUB (iOS, Android, desktop)
• Started GDevelop, the open-source project
• And founded the company of the same name

GDevelop?

GDevelop

• Designed to be 10x more approachable than anything else,
• 2D and 3D games,
• Large range of games: casual, midcore, education, promotional games...
• Publish to App Stores (Android, iOS), Windows, macOS, Linux, web (HTML5). Consoles one day!

2D/3D scene editor

Natural language, "event" based logic

Behaviors

3rd party editors

Asset Store

Reminds me of...

Demo!

But why?

• Be the first step for all new game creator. Young or old.
  • 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
  • That's why it's based on other proven, open-source libraries

But how?

• TypeScript + WebAssembly + WebGL game engine
  • PixiJS and Three.js for WebGL/WebGPU rendering
  • Physics library (Box2D)
  • ...

• (Typed) JavaScript + WebAssembly + React 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
• Build new Objects, Behaviors, Actions, Conditions directly from the editor
• 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!
• It's even perfect for education
• But the truth is that we're building a higher abstraction level - one that is approachable and 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 levels

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

Usage for edu?

• Runs from any browser, super lightweight
• Teach logic, game creation or coding
• Get fun, visual results quickly
• Fun results that can be shared!
• Tons of tutorials on gdevelop.io/academy and 2 long format videos on FreeCodeCamp

gdevelop.io

github.com/4ian/GDevelop