- I really want to like bevy but compile times are slow and the output binaries are huge.
I built a few games in WASM and was shocked to see many of the bevy variants larger than the Unity versions.
There’s definitely a market for rust game engines but it seems that no one’s hit the sweet spot yet.
- I hear Rust being slow to compile is their biggest gripe, but really - look at what you’re gaining for the slowdown!
Bevy gives you a very nice ECS to model your app but compilation can be slower than hand crafted code, while not using it gives you tonnes more code and the complexities that come with it, just to compile faster?
- I don’t know what you mean by, “just to compile faster.” Compiling fast is critical to game development. There’s no formula for fun so you have to iterate extensively.
I also don’t think that other solutions are “tonnes more code.” Any code will explode in size if poorly written. The same is true for bevy.
- I swear I have only heard about ECS and people trying to show off how good the ECS is when it comes to Bevy, never about an actual game.
- Bevy gives you a very nice ECS
That's a single data structure. People say binaries start at 50 MB for a hello world program and 700 MB for the debug binaries.
https://old.reddit.com/r/bevy/comments/16wcixk/cant_figure_o...
- It's a single data structure that contains your entire game though? The whole point of the ECS is that literally everything uses the same data; it's like if you modeled every object in the world with one struct that has an optional field for every piece of data that could exist. I'm not saying that necessarily makes the tradeoff worthwhile, but calling it a "single data structure" is a bit reductive.
- Compile times are my biggest struggle, too. I'm vibecoding Bevy with parallel agents, and the bottleneck is often compiling the changes on my 7950X, not getting Codex to write them.
As far as file sizes go, I'd be really interested in how a Rust compiler that didn't monomorphize so much would perform. Right now you have to modify the source code to write polymorphic generic functions, but it doesn't strictly have to be that way (at least as far as I can see).
I wouldn't use Bevy for a web only game either, especially while it's still single threaded on WASM.
- Bevy website has some tips for improving compile times, have you tried them out?
- - since we are on the topic, i wanted to ask people here
- could someone kindly share some resources on c++ game development
- here is what i have
- https://gamedev.net/tutorials/
- https://shader-learning.com/
- https://www.gabrielgambetta.com/client-server-game-architect...
- https://github.com/0xFA11/MultiplayerNetworkingResources
- just a headsup, i am looking for 3D game development without unreal, unity , godot or any of those engines
- Here's a great one: https://pikuma.com/courses/cpp-2d-game-engine-development
- Handmade Hero
- Those of us unfamiliar with Bevy can deduce what it might be, but it would be really nice if your introduction included at least a link titled "Bevy game engine" which links to bevy.org.
Then your unfamiliar readers can first hop to bevy.org to see what it's all about.
- > These guides are up to date with Bevy version 0.18
This is huge, thanks. Unfortunately many Bevy resources became stale (the Bevy cookbook was even abandoned, there was little interest in keeping it up to date and so there were many sections for, say, Bevy 0.12)
- This site is excellent. I emailed the author to thank them after reading it cover to cover, and they replied and asked if anything was unclear or if there was anything I wanted to see explored more.
Quite the dedication to a free resource!
- There's also ongoing work on the (for now hidden) Bevy Book https://bevy.org/learn/book/intro/
Already seems like a great resource to me but it's still WIP.
- As someone who is actively working on the Bevy Book, the next engine release should include the first public release of the Bevy Book. And once it's out, then we'll be doing our best to keep it updated and expand it alongside the Bevy engine.
- Great news, thanks. I have to say that several times I tried to invent something from scratch only to eventually find, reading the documentation/examples, that Bevy already has that part covered.
I now default to the examples, but a book would greatly help.
- This is great news and thank you for work.
- My problem with bevy isn't the basics, but the architecture. I always feel like I'm making wrong decisions on if something should be a component or a field, and how it interacts with other stuff in systems. I just feel like I'm making an unmaintainable mess, but I'm not sure how it could be improved.
- > I always feel like I'm making wrong decisions on if something should be a component or a field... I just feel like I'm making an unmaintainable mess,
That is true for all game platforms, experience takes care of it, don't give up.
About compilation time concerns, it doesn't seem to be a problem with Bevy, there's a fast compile mode with very reasonable performance.
However, I didn't see any scripting, there are scripting options for rust, it would be good to have bindings for some rust-like scripting.
- This has been on my list to kick off for a while. From previous times I looked at it, these tutorials are the only text based tutorials that are really kept up to date. Love it
- Thank you. Not many free and in-depth resource for Bevy engine. Mostly are paid ones. I am surprised that you switch from Ruby to Rust. Seems a different beast to me.
- As a long time ruby enjoyer and now also rust enjoyer, the core syntax and systems of rust are very rubyesque in a lot of ways, you can tell that some of the core contributors liked the language.
- yeah ruby API ideas and the _why poignant guide specifically, they were very influential in programming in general. a number of early rust devs came from ruby as well. all original authors of cargo worked on ruby's bundler earlier. etc
- Really? What do you think comes from Ruby? Rust mostly seems to be inspired by ML and C++.
Actually I just checked the "official" list and they only list the closure syntax which seems pretty minor:
- Iterator style, chaining, traits, blocks all feel very rubyesque, and expression syntax as well, plus the cargo toolchain is very bundler-informed.
- Expression orientation
- That's from functional programming.
- I don't think anyone claimed that Ruby and Rust were the only two languages with those features, just that they're something they both have in common.
- The claim is that Rust took espression-orientation from Ruby. That's unlikely - it is much more inspired by FP languages which are also expression oriented.
- can you tell me what those paid ones are?
- > Mostly are paid ones.
can someone link to some of those paid resources?
- Thank you :)
128 points by GenericCanadian 2 days ago | 34 comments