Introduction: as outlined in my initial blog post, I am going to attempt to create the same basic game - that of the first few minutes of Gradius for NES - using a number of different game making platforms, one per day during my week off. I'm using GitHub to store the different projects. See my progress in the repo.
| Name | Defold v1.2.19 |
| Web site | https://defold.com/product/ |
| Alt web site | https://store.steampowered.com/app/1365760/Defold/ |
| License | modified Apache 2.0 |
| Git/GitHub integration | Git yes, unclear on GitHub specifically |
| My github for this project | https://github.com/tildesarecool/grad-dah-clone-defold-ed |
| Export format(s) | android/iOS, HTML5 |
So far as I can tell this engine was open-sourced some time in 2020. It was available as a paid license before that. I’m not sure why there aren’t more video tutorials for it in the past year. Maybe it just got buried under all the other 2D engines. There are a lot of 2D engines.
I made it more than half way through a relatively extensive introduction to this engine and was planning on continuing the next day (December 27th). But the region I live in decided to get it’s once-per-decade snow storm the 27th, which knocked the power out. So instead I’ll summarize what I think, mention the play list of the tutorial and move on.
I found this YouTube channel creatively titled “Defold tutorials”. There’s two playlists: first a “familiarize yourself with Defold” seven part series then a “create a tower defense game with Defold” play list. I was only on video four of the first playlist when I had to stop for the night then the power went out.
It could partially be due to the host of the series of videos but I was really enjoying Defold. It also has the advantage of being after all the other engines I’ve tried so the process is starting to feel familiar.
It uses a little bit different terms than several of the others but it’s close enough I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.
The problem, at least for the progress I made, was the associating of different parts with Lua scripts. In that I don’t actually know anything about Lua in anyway. I just kind of copy/pasted his premade scripts when the guide called for it. I’m not sure I could decipher those scripts enough to modify them for my own creation. I’m not sure I’m ready yet to upgrade to something that requires actual scripting to make it work anyway.
At the end of the day
This seems like a really user friendly and possibly most importantly free engine but I’m not sure I could really adopt it without lots of examples. And/or just a really long tutorial on Lua scripting. I haven’t tried AppGameKit Studio yet but it seems largely similar except AGKS uses a form of BASIC for its scripting. Would that make it easier? Would there be a noticeable difference in performance over time? I don’t know. This may have to be pushed the back burner of possibilities. The top of the stack for back burners since it’s free, but still the back burner.
References:
Tildes on the side 
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