05-31-2026
An update
Written by: Taxolotl
I bought this domain and set all this up and then forgot about it for a while lol. ADHD go brr.
A lot has happened. I graduated high school, my ceremony is next week. I got accepted into IU. It’s really been a lot. I kind of took a break from coding and went back to playing video games for a while. I beat Subnautica 2 about 4 days after release with a friend. I beat Still Wakes the Deep (now one of my favorites). After coming back I didn’t really know what to do, I mostly just looked at my hundreds of unfinished projects wanting to learn something new, or make a game.
However, I’m stubborn and couldn’t really decide. I didn’t want to use C/C++ because all of those build systems are huge messes (and kind of scare me). I didn’t want to use Rust because about 80 of my unfinished projects are all in Rust and Bevy is kind of frustrating. I like the control and speed of low-level languages, but the control and pretty syntax of a high level language. I refuse to use python for anything other than string manipulation. x86_64 assembly is fun, but absolutely brain-numbing. I eventually settled on Zig.
Zig sucks. I spent 2 hours trying to figure out how to create a project without a stupid root.zig file. I am not making a library, let me use main.zig. It would not work for me. My final straw with it was something stupid the lead developer was stubborn about that pissed me off, I cant even remember what anymore. It pretty much permanently turned me away from the language. It’s not like I am completely new either, I made a zip extractor (without any external libraries other than some compression library) in the language for fun a while back. If you disagree with me, thats completely fine. If you are mad that I don’t want to use some opinionated language that doesn’t feel right to me, politely stick a remote up your ass.
I really wanted to use Jai, but I didn’t have access to the compiler, and I don’t want to wait until after Order of the Sinking Star came out (its release date hasn’t even been announced as of writing this). I already knew of Odin, even before Jai, but using it hadn’t really crossed my mind until I saw that it had built in (not builtin) libraries for OpenGL, Vulkan, GLFW, etc. I go into my feelings about engines later, but that was big for me. I’d used the language previously but it was really easy to learn, it felt like drinking Arizona Tea for the first time, smooth.
I’d already used Vulkan in Rust, but it was very complicated and I knew if I was ever gonna go anywhere, I’d need to use something simpler at first, design a framework, and then extend the framework to use whatever backend(s) I wanted. So I went with OpenGL because I refuse to use anything MacroSlop produces, and I don’t have a Mac (not that I’d ever buy any Apple product). I also went with GLFW because I’d used it before and it was fun (and also in the vendor libraries). I knew about vulkan-tutorial.com, and figured thered probably be something like that for OpenGL, so I searched for “OpenGL tutorial” and learnopengl.com was the first result, so I started following the tutorial, adapting the code as I went. The project is going well, though I plan to completely restart once I fully finish it in order to design a proper system. Then I may use Nature of Code to patch up said system by following it there.
Engines are weird for me. I like the idea of them, but they’re rarely executed well enough for me. Unity really ruined themselves with their EULA (or whatever it was) a few years ago and I swore I’d never use it again (Unity hub was one of the most annoying softwares I’ve ever used anyway). Unreal Engine takes up absolutely too much space (and nobody ever optimises when using it, don’t know if thats a reflection of the developers or the engine itself) (and having to use the Epic Launcher is ridiculous). I would love to love Godot, but to me it just feels like something very coddling, pretty much the same as I feel about python (though with python it’s got animosity from me because of all the posers that use it. Writing a python script does not make you a programmer (and don’t even get me started on people who just copy and paste from ChatGPT or Copilot)). Sorry about the nested parenthesis. Then theres things like Bevy. I like the idea, it’s just an annoying system to use (at least without a GUI), and I’d much rather design my own.
This isn’t coming from somebody who just read a README and formed an opinion. I’ve used all these engines in the past. I just like things my way. My way for me though, if you want something some other way, I want to make that as easy as possible in whatever I make.
Its 2:32 am. I also need to go fix the about page here. I also don’t know how to properly end a blog post, if you could even call this that.