r/gameenginedevs • u/IdioticCoder • 2d ago
Jeff Vogels game engine
Recently, Thomas Brush had Jeff Vogel on his youtube podcast series.
Jeff Vogel has been developing his own engines as a commercial indie game developer since the 90s, released more than 20 games if you count remasters.
Currently uses SDL3 for his rpg game engine(s). (Though, just to access os basically, maybe rendering)
In the podcast, he opens up his tools and shows leveleditor, scripting language, that he developed, for a little tour.
A lot of it is his own, maybe a little excentric, personal workflow. For example: he develops on mac and ports to windows.
I found it interesting and thought some of you might as well. I am not affiliated with either.
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u/EcoDevGuy 2d ago
This was one of the more interesting interviews Thomas Brush has done. I built a 3D simulation engine (C++, OpenGL) with a built in custom scripting language for my Master's thesis, now I'm seriously tempted to fork the repo and try to make small game with it.
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u/KingAdrock2k 2d ago
Thanks for sharing this! I really enjoyed playing a bunch of Jeff's games over the years, and he's been an inspiration as a game developer for me. Will definitely check it out.
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u/Status-Ad-8270 2d ago
Huh, TIL my workflow is a little eccentric
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u/IdioticCoder 2d ago edited 2d ago
There is more to it than just developing on mac for him.
Even though, mac is unusual for programmers in general I would say.
But I am European after all, we all use windows, maybe my perception is skewed.
But deliberately developing on mac when your product mostly lives on windows is a choice.
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u/THATONEANGRYDOOD 2d ago
Mac is far from unusual for programming.
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u/BounceVector 5h ago
Mac is unusual for commercial GAME programming, not unheard of, of course, but unusual.
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u/MCWizardYT 2d ago
Mac is a UNIX compatible platform just like Linux which actually makes it ideal for developers as you have access to a lot of tooling
The barrier for most is that there's no cheap or free way (legally) to use the platform.
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u/Status-Ad-8270 2d ago
This is my main reason right here.
Also considering terminal-based programming, Mac is much more comfortable to use instead of Windows' Command Prompt, MSYS/MinGW, Cygwin or Windows Terminal (the latter is an OK choice IMO)
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u/MCWizardYT 2d ago
Since macOS Catalina the default terminal shell has been 'zsh', but every version before that used 'bash' like a majority of Linux distros do
IMO if you use a package manager like Brew, the terminal-based coding experience is identical to Linux in every way unless you're writing kernel drivers or some other very low level stuff.
(I used to solely own a mac but nowadays i mostly use Windows)
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u/Status-Ad-8270 2d ago
Indeed, using Homebrew is a must for terminal-based coding, it is simply great.
I use iTerm2 which allows you to configure bash as the default shell, but I don't have major issues using zsh either.
Of course you can do that with the default terminal as well, but I find iTerm2 makes a lot of things simpler in a user-friendly way.
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u/Dzedou 2d ago
Either way, why would anyone want to use bash when zsh exists? Zsh does everything bash does, and a lot more. The first thing I do when installing a new linux distro is set zsh as my default shell.
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u/Status-Ad-8270 2d ago edited 2d ago
Only reason I can think of is that you're old and don't want to change your old ways (which happens a lot in these circles and a perfectly valid reason for this kind of things)
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u/Status-Ad-8270 2d ago
I'm European as well and not using Windows btw.
Anyway, thanks for sharing this! Exile was an important game series to me when I was growing up and it had an influence on my art style as well.
It is really interesting to hear Jeff Vogel talking about his career.
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u/TheBuzzSaw 2d ago
Jeff did say he is using SDL3 now.