Show HN: I made a 2D game engine in Dart
28 comments
·June 28, 2025_stillmind
joemanaco
I don't have looked into Flame too much, but I would say the main difference is that Flame builds on top of Flutter while right now Bullseye2D only builds on the web package.
Flame offers more out-of-the-box features, while with Bullseye2D you have to build many things yourself, but it doesn't force you into a predefined structure as much. The API is more prodcedural style, making it relatively quick to learen in its entirety, without too much "magic" happening under the hood.
I think for most people Flame would be the better choice (it is also been around longer, which means better support...), however, I really love extremly simple approaches. I also believe it has advantages when you tailor your systems and architecture to your own requirements. Lots of stuff in 2D Game Development is also extremly simple (so often having to deal with a complex physics module or rendering pipeline or entity component system is contraproductive).
sgt
This is promising. I just did a review of some of the code and the premise of the platform, this is clearly not your first rodeo in gaming. I wish you luck! I might consider sponsoring as well.
joemanaco
Thank you.
leecommamichael
> An easy-to-use, high-performance 2D game library for Dart.
This is one of those things you say to interest people. To put their concerns to rest that it might not be able to make the game they want. It doesn't really mean anything. No absolute measurements or relative comparisons.
ghurtado
Surely this isn't the first time you see software that claims high performance and speed without any hard benchmarks attached.
You can benchmark an algorithm or a small piece of code, but for something like a game library, the definition of what is "fast" and what isn't is too dependent on context to be meaningful.
That doesn't mean that the statement is useless: it tells me that this is, at least partially, one of the goals of the library.
Joel_Mckay
For most folks I think they use an fps score while not sacrificing aesthetic quality or game play experience.
i.e. The engine is considered lower quality if it is laggy, generates DLSS chowder, or glitches up on some hardware.
The people responsible for shader cache performance get a lot of grief given the performance hit in unpredictable play contexts is often very noticeable.
The Unreal devs made it look deceptively easy. =3
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nurettin
To me it just means that they are satisfied with their work. Enough to announce success and joy.
voidUpdate
> Writing games is fun again
Was it not before? The only parts I've not enjoyed in the past has been working with a team that didn't pull their weight. What part of this makes it fun again?
joemanaco
Yes, maybe it's a stupid thing to say. My thought was that the simplicity of the API takes out a lot of the complexity of it compared to engines with complex structures, entity hierarchies, event systems and features that need to fit a wide range of genres. Especially if you want to make something simple or just a prototype.
voidUpdate
Probably better to say "Writing games is simple again" or something then. Though engines like unity or unreal would make 3d games a lot simpler to make than this, so it's only some kinds of games
joemanaco
You're right. I fixed it ;)
devrandoom
The Boing game doesn't work mobile, is that by design?
joemanaco
I ported this game from the Book "Code The Classics" which was written in Python/PyGame. It should be relativley easy to add mobile touch inputs to it, but I didn't have time for that yet.
stpedgwdgfhgdd
Probably worth it as most people read HN on tablet or phone.
What is potentially a problem is the lack of training material for AI agents to generate games on top of this platform.
lionkor
You can just read the documentation and write code, there's really no need for AI here. Your argument sounds a bit like "What is a problem is that I cant enjoy my hourly whisky while driving". Maybe the problem isn't the platform :)
socalgal2
I hope this isn't off topic. What is the draw of Dart? In other words, what does it claim to do special or emphasize over other langauges? Like if you were going to try to convince someone they should give Dart a try, what reasons would you give?
freitzzz
I would say that the best benefits are:
- Cross Compilation (even wasm and js) out of the box - Simple concurrency model, similar to NodeJS - Ability to use it on a popular cross platform framework (flutter) - Hot reload capibilities (has JIT and AOT mode) - Strong developer tool chain
All of these are built on top of a language that has a pretty syntax and supports many language paradigms.
The biggest con is the (weak) package ecosystem and community.
sgt
I think it's also important generally speaking - not just Dart/Flutter, but really any language ecosystem, to not blindly start adding packages. You'll end up with conflicts and Dart is no exception. Sometimes it is sensible to vendor a library into your own source code tree, or just build it yourself ("Own it").
IshKebab
The language is a little nicer than Typescript (though not in all ways), the performance is better and the tooling is excellent. Even better than Go's. And it can be AoT compiled to a self-contained binary or transpiled to Javascript.
The LSP server in particular is amazingly fast and reliable - better than Java IDEs. It's practically instant from typing something to seeing the squiggles update. C++, Rust, Go, Typescript etc. don't come close.
Obviously there are downsides: relatively tiny ecosystem, sometimes weird syntax (why is a match expression and match statement different??), this very annoying issue that I see remains unsolved after 5 years: https://github.com/dart-lang/language/issues/1188
sgt
Having developed Flutter apps for a few years now (albeit not full time), I have to say that Dart is simply a pleasure to work in. The language - at least - doesn't hold you back at all. I guess it's kinda like Java should have been.
isoos
Modern, but sane syntax (readable), good defaults (strong typing, null safety...), good-enough runtime performance, good APIs and tooling out of the box, cross-platform (also hot-reload on some, AOT). The list goes on, what specifics do you care about more?
munificent
This is so cool! I love it.
joemanaco
Thanks. Hearing that from someone who works on Dart and wrote two books I’ve read makes the compliment really special to me :)
zxexz
I really hate to be that guy, but I don't see a single screenshot/demo on the main page.
niekiepriekie
Well, it does seem a bit hidden and the demo's are a bit simple. The Pong demo doesn't seem to work on safari desktop (When playing, the ball stops after 0.2 s . But he! You have to start somewhere.
Good luck!
rodnim
Click "Showcase" in the main top menu.
I haven't used Flame engine, but I know it already exists as a way to make games in Dart. So, if someone like me is curious about making a game in Dart, it would be nice to know the pros/cons of using this versus using Flame. Maybe remaking Flame's Klondike tutorial, or one of the others, using Bullseye to help show the distinct advantages that this engine brings over other solutions? It's not very obvious to me when this would be the right choice for me over Flame.
Nevertheless, it's cool to see something new come to the scene for game dev in Dart. Thanks for making this!