application idea: raylib

jstrout

I've just learned about raylib, which is an open-source, cross-platform framework for OpenGL-based game development. It supports Windows, MacOS, Linux (including Raspberry Pi), Android, HTML5, etc. It's a plain C library which makes it very easy to link into other languages.

So with that, and the C++ version of MiniScript, one could pretty easily make a MiniScript-based raylib development environment. MiniScript would provide the high-level, object-oriented language; raylib would provide the gaming API. It'd be a lower-level type of game development than what Mini Micro provides, but might be perfect for some folks who want more control.

I don't have time to do that myself, but if anybody wants to tackle it, you will have my full support!

SynapticBytes

That’s a lot of functionality to embed, even if it’s just passing through function calls. It’s seems to have the antithesis philosophy to MiniScript though. You want a lightweight but powerful environment. Raylib seems to be promoting diving head first into low level coding where you have to have a deep knowledge of how every line of code works. Given the amount of hair pulling I had trying to implement Bullet Physics into Shiva with barely anything but the code to read through, and virtually no community support, I don’t think I want to go down that road again, sorry.

jstrout

A fair point. Most of the embedding could probably be automated though (perhaps with something like SWIG).

And yeah, the result would be nothing at all like Mini Micro... except for the language. Some people might want a lower-level game dev environment that gives them complete control over the machine, while still using a high-level language like MiniScript.