[senkora]

> Many Web games were created with Impact [the game engine from the article] and it even served as the basis for some commercial cross-platform titles like Cross Code, Eliot Quest and my own Nintendo Wii-U game XType Plus.

Cross Code is an excellent game. I knew that it used web tech and I was constantly amazed by how performant it was on the Nintendo Switch hardware. I would guess that this engine deserves some credit there!

[phoboslab]

To be fair, they modified Impact _a lot_. In some of their development streams[1] you can see a heavily extended Weltmeister (Impact's level editor).

Imho, that's fantastic! I love to see devs being able to adapt the engine for their particular game. Likewise, high_impact shouldn't be seen as a “feature-complete” game engine, but rather as a convenient starting point.

[1] https://youtu.be/4lZfnM9Ubeo?t=3215

[pdpi]

> To be fair, they modified Impact _a lot_.

You can't polish a turd. There would've been no point in modifying the engine a bunch if you hadn't given them a useful base to work with.

[BadHumans]

In game development this isn't true for better or worse. There is a lot of sunken cost mindset in games that we just go with what we have because we have already invested the time in it and we'll make it work by any means.

[dylan604]

> You can't polish a turd

Of course you can. Not really sure why this still is tossed about. You just get a shiny turd with a lot less stink. I've made a career of taking people's turds and turning them into things they can now monetize (think old shitty video tape content prepped to be monetized with streaming).

[dgb23]

I like this take, but you're saying something different I think, which is more along the lines of "Customers don't care about how the sausage is made".

You didn't polish a turd, you found something that could be valuable to someone and found a way to make it into a polished product, which is great.

But "You can't polish a turd" implies it's actually a turd and there's nothing valuable to be found or the necessary quality thresholds can't be met.

[Modified3019]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorodango

[Sohcahtoa82]

> You can't polish a turd.

You absolutely can. Mythbusters proved it.

https://youtu.be/yiJ9fy1qSFI

[make3]

that's just crazy bs, starting from open source code and adding specific features needed for a project is a very common strategy, doesn't mean at all that the tool wasn't good to begin with

[pdpi]

I think we're in violent agreement.

phoboslab was downplaying their own efforts by saying that the Cross Code team customised the Impact engine a bunch. My point was that no amount of customisation can turn a bad engine into a good one (you can't polish a turd), so phoboslab definitely deserves credit for building the base engine for Cross Code.

[seba_dos1]

> no amount of customisation can turn a bad engine into a good one (you can't polish a turd)

At a risk of being off-topic and not contributing much to this particular conversation (as I doubt it's relevant to the point you're making), I'd like to note that I often actually find it preferable to "polish a turd" than to start from scratch. It's just much easier for my mind to start putting something that already exists into shape than to stop staring at a blank screen, and in turn it can save me a lot of time even if what I end up with is basically a ship of Theseus. Something something ADHD, I guess.

However, I'm perfectly aware this approach makes little sense anywhere you have to fight to justify the need to get rid of stuff that already "works" to your higher-ups ;)

[xtirpation]

I think the point is that Impact is _not_ a turd because it could be polished.

[GuB-42]

That switch port took a lot of effort as someone has already commented, it is absolutely not standard impact.js.

For the anecdote, everyone wanted a Switch version, but considering the technical limitation, the team replied with "Sorry but CrossCode will be coming to Switch when Hedgehags learn to fly." [1] When they finally got to do it [2], it came with an extra quest called "A switch in attitude", featuring, you guessed it, flying hedgehags.

[1] https://www.radicalfishgames.com/?p=6581 [2] https://www.radicalfishgames.com/?p=6668

[Mindless2112]

Here's a talk about how CrossCode was ported to Switch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfBzlzvt8RU

[senkora]

Really interesting watch, thanks for sharing!

So, if I understand correctly, this is roughly what he did:

1. Wrote a transpiler to convert the subset of Javascript used by CrossCode into a dialect of Haxe.

2. Selectively modified his version of Haxe in small ways to more closely match the semantics of Javascript, to make writing the transpiler easier.

3. Selectively re-wrote complicated parts of the Javascript code into Haxe directly, so that his transpiler didn't have to handle them.

4. Transpiled <canvas> and other browser API calls into calls to his own pre-existing Kha framework for Haxe, which provided similar APIs.

5. Compiled the Haxe output into C++.

6. Compiled the C++ to native code.

Damn.

[Version467]

Thanks for the recommendation. Looks interesting and is currently on sale on steam, so I bought it.

[Modified3019]

One thing to note, is you don’t have to feel compelled to master every combat mechanic the game throws at you (which is a lot), you can just pick your favorites. A “fox with one trick vs a thousand” and all that.

I for example basically ignore the shield for the vast majority of the game, only doing some very basic usage for some bosses, but perfect counters could very well be your favorite thing.

[rowanG077]

The switch port required heroic levels of efforts though I recall.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Huh. Never would have guessed. I am sure there were many “fancy” effects in the game, but during my playthrough, it all felt like it would have been achievable on a SNES.

[Kiro]

It's not about that. They are talking about complications in general when porting a JavaScript game to Switch.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41155807

[pjmlp]

That is to be expected by anything that isn't C, C++ and Assembly, also why Unity has IL2CPP.

Even Rust is going to be heroic levels until console vendors decide it is an acceptable language to be made available on their devkits.

[jdnxudbe]

I am not familiar with either Rust or the Switch, so maybe you can enlighten me: why would a Rust game be challenging on the Switch?

As long as you have a good C ffi (which Rust has), shouldn't it be quite easy?

Or is the Switch more similar to Android/iPhone where you cannot (could not?) run native code directly but have to use a platform specific language like Java or Objective C?

[flohofwoe]

AFAIK some (all?) console vendors require you to use the compiler toolchain from their SDK to compile your code. So unless the console SDK includes a Rust toolchain the only way is to somehow translate the Rust code to C or C++ and compile that with the SDK compiler.

Maybe if the console SDK toolchain is Clang based it would also work to go via LLVM bitcode instead of C/C++ though.

[pjmlp]

As flohofwoe pointed out, you are limited by the console vendor SDK, the compiler toolchains, and everything required to target their OS, linker, API, ABI,...

[otachack]

Agreed! While I loath JavaScript it was immensely impressive that a masterpiece like Cross Code came from it.