alt Hacker NewsI am the freaky outlier that's actually excited about this.
My city builder game, Microlandia[1], runs on Deno. The game's graphics and UI is a Three.js/React app, but the guts of the game are in a "sidecar" process that is a `deno compile` typescript executable.
On Mac, there's a Tauri shell that runs both client and server, and for Linux and Windows we use Electron, (Tauri proved to be quite problematic except when in macOS)
Why on earth did I choose this cursed stack instead of a "proper" game engine? Well,
Turns out developing the simulation in typescript with a performant sqlite driver hot reloads very fast and with a light code editor and my browser open on a second window I see the stuff updating live as I make it.
Deno has a good VSCode extension with test helpers and a fast language server. WebGPU is good enough for me to write any cool shader I can think of and I don't miss any capability of a game engine.
More importantly, not using Unity/Unreal brought back to me the joy of game development that I had lost due to and horrendous UI-driven workflow that takes me back to Macromedia Flash (yes, I am that old). Oh, and the licensing.
And I know I could switch to Bun with small changes in code but Deno has never got in my way. Maybe it's because I avoid using libraries at all costs (and don't need much).
Also, Typescript/React is such an amazing language for building a complex tycoon/simulation type of game that deals with a lot of data and displays it. Anyone who's worked on Unity knows it's the dark ages for UI over there.
I'm unsure if i'll port the game to Deno Desktop anytime soon but if I start a game again I will use this stack again, as my game engine, this time without Electron or Tauri.