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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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What sucks is I've been working on this hobby project for nearly 4 years now. It started in C#, moved to C, now C++. It's at the stage where a lot of basic functionality has been implemented, with the largest component, the Vulkan based renderer being maybe 1/4 implemented. The core game stuff is ECS based and flecs has a rust binding so migrating that will be easy. Renderer will just become even further from completion. I'm worried that there will be new problems that are maybe more inhibiting, but this is meant to be a fun project and build systems aren't fun. It's a difficult balance and I'm not the only person involved, the other person isn't as convinced by cargo as they haven't spent days working on the build system
I'm a gameplay programmer who have worked with Unity and Unreal and I've experiment with Rust for gamedev(though only for hobby projects) and for regular code. My conclusions so far is that Rust sucks for gameplay code, for most other things it's kinda nice.
The biggest reason is that it's much harder to write prototype code to test out an idea to see if it's feasible and feels/looks good enough. I don't want to be forced to fully plan out my code and deal with borrowing issues before I even have an idea of if this is a good path or not.
I would say though that because you are using ECS stuff it is at least plausible to do in Rust but at least for my coding/development style it still isn't a good fit.
There are options for this with Rust. If you wanted to use pure Rust you could always use unsafe to do prototyping and then come back and refactor if you like it. Alternatively you could write bindings for C/C++ and do prototyping that way.
Though, I will say that this process gets easier as you gain more experience with Rust memory management.
Not really. Unsafe doesn't allow you to sidestep the borrow checker in a decent way. And even if you do it the Rust compiler assumes non aliasing and breaking that will give you loads of unexpected problems that you wouldn't get in a language that assumes aliasing...
Testing something that only has side effects to the local scope is probably not too hard but that isn't the most common case for gameplay code in my experience...
Going through another language basically has the same issues as unsafe except it's worse in most ways as you'd need to keep up to date bindings all the time plus just the general hassle of doing it for something that could have been a 10 min prototype with most other setups...
Now sure it's possible that I would have better result after doing even more rust, especially with some feedback from someone who really knows it but that doesn't really change anything in just general advice to people who is already working on something in C++ as they likely won't have that kind of support either.
Those are fair points. I haven’t used it for a little while and forgot the exact usage of unsafe code. I love Rust, but I totally agree that it’s a rough language for game dev. Especially if you’re trying to migrate an existing project to it since it requires a complete redesign of most systems rather than a straight translation.
Unsafe doesn't let you just ignore the borrow checker, which is what generally tripped me up when learning to write rust.
That’s fair, I honestly haven’t used it in a while and forgot the real usage of unsafe code. As I said to another comment, it is a really rough language for game dev as it necessitates very different patterns from other languages. Definitely better to learn game dev itself pretty well first in something like C++, then to learn Rust separately before trying game dev in Rust.
Yeah I'm not too concerned about the ECS stuff, since the library I'm using has a rust binding which is semi-official. From what I've heard about Rust in other places is that it requires a different mental model for memory management to other languages. So I'm more concerned about using Vulkan with it (there are quite a few libraries for it already though so it won't be impossible). I guess I can't really know until I give it a go though, I might try and port one of my smaller projects over first to see how I like it.
Story by a game dev who gave up on Rust after 3 years https://loglog.games/blog/leaving-rust-gamedev/