The Moai Runtime - An Object-Oriented Reactive System

http://getmoai.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Moai_Runtime

by pygy_ • 14 years ago

39 24 14 years ago

getmoai.com

LaSombra• 14 years ago

I think that's the engine Double Fine will use in it's Kickstarter adventure game

Robin_B• 14 years ago

That's correct. The new Shadowrun kickstarter game will use it as well.

toddz• 14 years ago

Also, Strikefleet Omega is made with Moai, from the same team that did Crimson for Bungie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhdAosf7f9g

PostOnce• 14 years ago

Hopefully after Double Fine throws some weight behind it the docs will get better. In my experience, they're not great.

DrStrngeluv• 14 years ago

I've been using this engine, it's quite nice, and targets all the platforms one might be interested in. It only took a few hours to figure out how to translate some code from love2d.

seclorum6• 14 years ago

I have become a huge MOAI fan. I've built a physics game, a generalized data/entry application, a board game, and a few other things (internal projects) and I can't say I ever want to look at Objective-C/Android SDK's again. After deploying my apps on all platforms, I see absolutely no point to fall into the developer-brainshare trap again.

eskimoto• 14 years ago

really intuitive

yareally3• 14 years ago

My experience trying to prototype on Moai is it has promise, but they really need better documentation. There isn't very much of it as far as up to date examples and the API itself is not exactly complete. Since they went to version 1.0, much of their existing documentation is also depreciated.

I think in the near future as the project matures, it will become far more solid. It already has a big advantage of being open source and cross platform. Other such engines like Corona and Gideros for lua are closed and also have some limitations on how you can extend and use them at the code level.

I tried Moai for a few weeks for prototyping (after already trying Corona and Gideros before). I decided it would just be better to do the actual game in a native code framework on whatever platform (something like libgdx for android or cocos2d for iOS).

aptwebapps4• 14 years ago

Have you looked at Cocos2d-x?

http://www.cocos2d-x.org/

yareally3• 14 years ago

I have not actually. I will check it out. Do you have much experience you can share with it offhand? Mainly what to expect or avoid with it.

seclorum6• 14 years ago

Because I'm using MOAI for my projects (5 so far..) I am able to ship high-performance software on:

* Mac OSX * Linux * Windows * iOS * Android

Please note: MOAI targets BOTH mobile and desktop markets, and in that respect is much more powerful than a lot of competing frameworks.

The app looks the same on each platform, in fact its indistinguishable wherever you run it. Such a powerful framework, and many who look at it seem like they want to be hand-fed their apps, pre-developed for them ..

yareally3• 14 years ago

I'm not looking to be hand-fed for any software framework I might use, but I don't think it's much to ask for the API documentation to be totally complete. I just want sane, updated documentation on whatever I use. I'm not a professional game developer by any means and it's just a side thing I am doing for fun and perhaps some day will make money on it.

On the other hand, I consider some of the more established Lua game frameworks to be too limited to use for anything really good (such as Corona or Gideros) and I have some years of development experience in native app and web development.

Moai is probably the best Lua framework for games out there, it's just lagging a bit for documentation still (though it looks like they're updating some as of now, like the cloud stuff, which is nice). There's even a post in the developer's forum (http://getmoai.com/forums/post3503.html#p3503) for it where the maintainers of it admit their API documentation needs some help for version 1.0 as the functionality of some classes changed. Having to actually dig through the C++ source to find undocumented features of a Lua based framework is just where I say I can wait a bit and check back on Moai's progress later. I do regularly check on it out of curiosity every few weeks to see if there's much in the way of updates.

shadowmint4• 14 years ago

I don't get it.

I don't want to bag lua scripting in games, because I fully support that; supreme commander was a pretty good example of how you can do this right.

...but I can't help but think moai isn't it.

I've seen the code of three groups who are working on games using this engine (primarily because it's cross platform), and their code all makes me shudder. It's rubbish (no offence guys).

  lobsterGfx = MOAIGfxQuad2D.new ()
  lobsterGfx:setTexture ( "openlobster.png" )
  lobsterGfx:setRect ( -128, -128, 128, 128 )

  explosionGfx = MOAIGfxQuad2D.new ()
  explosionGfx:setTexture ( "fire.png" )
  explosionGfx:setRect ( -32, -32, 32, 32 )

That's not a high level API controlled by a scripting engine. That's _low level_ api controlled by a scripting engine.

All the code I've seen using this engine suffers from the same thing I've seen a dozen or more times in unity projects, but worse: 1) no unit tests, 2) spagetti code, 3) no interfaces or dynamically replaceable behaviour, 4) no documentation, 5) no workflow for artists.

It's a game engine by programmers for programmers to hack with; and I'll give it that; it _is_ fun to hack with, and it's nice to be able to shift the behaviour of things a little bit and see the results immediately... but that alone doesn't make it a good choice for serious projects.

aptwebapps4• 14 years ago

That's not a high level API controlled by a scripting engine. That's _low level_ api controlled by a scripting engine.

To be fair, they call it a "minimalist game client framework" in the FAQ and a "minimalist cross platform C++ game engine with a Lua-based scripting interface" in the SDK's page in the wiki, so they aren't billing it as a high level API.

seclorum6• 14 years ago

Its a good choice for serious projects. Nobody serious would ever bother with complaining about the low-level nature of the MOAI runtime without understanding its design.

Having done 5 projects in MOAI so far, I can tell you this: what you are isolating as a fault is actually a very big strength. If I need it, I can drill down and have absolute control over the Quads. If I don't need it -big deal, I isolate into higher-level abstract API's, and away we go.

I really don't think you're looking at it fairly, or professionally. If you want a higher-level API, choose Corona or something else. If you want serious power, there is nothing out there better than MOAI.

shadowmint4• 14 years ago

shrug As I said, I hear that from people, but I don't get it.

If you're writing good software you should have a nice Model, and a nice clean high performance visualization core that renders that model.

Scripting engines should be an easy and quick way to modify the state of the Model, not something you _write the model in_.

There is everything from speed to memory usage to testing and verifiability wrong with writing your model in your scripting language. Don't deny it; it's absolutely true. The only possible benefit is flexibility, which you take at the cost of all the other things I've mentioned.

Arguably MOAI actually provides you the tools to do this properly with its C++ api, and a real project would implement the state model and rendering code in C++ and build it as part of the moai binary, correctly using the scripting engine to modify only the state of the game model itself.

I can see some use for the low level operations as part of the scripting language for doing _clever things_ in a game, like cut scenes, where one-time-non-state-based operations take place.

...but writing the whole game in it? No.

On the other hand, people seem happy to 'hack away' with it and have fun, and I approve of that. Would seriously hesitate to recommend it for a professional project.

The Moai Runtime - An Object-Oriented Reactive System

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