My First Game with Carimbo, My Homemade Engine

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2024-10-08 17:30:07

I made a game for my son. I could have used an existing engine, but I chose to write everything from scratch because code is like pasta—it’s much better and more enjoyable when homemade.

This actually reminds me of when my father used to build my toys, from kites to wooden slides. Good memories. I have decided to do the same using what I know: programming.

The engine was written in C++17, and the games are in Lua. The engine exposes some primitives to the Lua VM, which in turn coordinates the entire game.

We created the postal service, which is something I borrowed from languages like Erlang, where an entity can send messages to any other. As we’ll see below, the bullet sends a hit message when it collides with the octopus, and the octopus, upon receiving the hit, decrements its own health.

It’s not a triple-A title, but I’m very careful with resource management. A widely known technique is to create an object pool that you can reuse. In the code below, we limit it to a maximum of 3 bullets present on the screen.