This post is just rambling. :)
Today I was in the worst pain in 2 years- so I decided to look at every small 2d engine I havent looked at before- that used LUA, python or other scripts. I wanted to see different approaches. I went thru all the 2d engines on github and few rust engines, a lua/haxe engine, and all the Lua referenced engines I could find. I did not download them all if they offered test in browser I used that otherwise I watched videos or read tutorials.
What shocked me was the number of dead engines and others that are really struggling. And every single one I seemed to like was dead. I also noticed how some of the engines would get a massive boost from Gamesfromscratch then they would just as quickly lose users a month later. Also the market dominance by Unity is a little disturbing for me. I actually need to see a documentary on just how did they grow so fast. They are starting to make acquisitions of other engines and companies. Yall probably remember I dropped unity when they started their weird launch service and data tracking. That was one of the reasons I came to Godot.
Anyway I really didnt find any new IDE's I liked. Its like the IDE and API's are afterthoughts and not geared for unity with each other. Sometimes they clashed with each other. SO my current list that I have on my system is Godot, Defold, Love2d, and Gamemaker. But I havent used gamermaker since 2019 or so.
I also miss my little friend qbasic from the 90's which I used for our shop equipment control when I was bright eyed young man. I wrote some little text adventures in qbasic. But I also installed this screensaver on every computer in the company- if you are an old fogey like me you might remember this:
