Games

Best Game Development Languages 2021

Game development is a complex and comprehensive job. History knows cases when hits were created by single enthusiasts, but they are few and far between. Much more often a whole studio with a lot of multidisciplinary professionals works on game development. Needless to say, they should be equipped only with the best and most modern technology. In this article, the experts from RexSoft will tell us about the best languages and tools for game development.

Table of contents

Unity

The Unity game development engine is the most popular third-party game development software among developers worldwide. Teams and studios at all levels, from high-budget AAA projects to independent indie developers, use Unity. The percentage of developers and artists relying on Unity as their primary development tool is growing all the time.

Unity supports development for all major platforms: mobile, PC, console, web, virtual reality and augmented reality.

Unity is easy to use and its interface is often intuitive. You can create 3D and 2D games in it, as well as make them for the Web, Android and iOS without much change in code. As it has a built-in code editor, but you can also install an add-on to Visual Studio for more convenient development on Unity. And if there are problems when writing code, the site of the engine is good documentation of its libraries, as well as lessons on creating simple games and opening abilities of the engine.

Spine 2D

Spine is designed to create a skeletal 2D animation of game characters and not only. For this, instead of a whole image of the character, we need its separate parts, which will be subsequently animated by linking the bones.

It is very easy to control the skeletal animation because when one bone is involved, the other bones will also be involved. Thanks to this, the user does not need to animate every single part. After creating the skeleton, it will need to be covered with texture. This will give the model the desired appearance, which the player will see during the game. After creating the model it is necessary to work with its actions. The user can set the most different actions, from the usual steps to jumping and bending.

The Spine app makes it easy to create multiple characters. You can use one skeleton for several characters. This way, the time it takes to create them is significantly reduced. The program also gives you the possibility to perform several actions at the same time. For example, a character can walk and bend, jump and throw objects, as well as perform many other actions. If you’ve created games based on frame-by-frame animation, the skeleton method may seem unfamiliar and even uncomfortable. But after a few hours you’ll get used to it.

Intermediate frames are calculated automatically at runtime, so the animation looks more lively. In addition, only parts of the character are loaded for animation, not whole frames, which saves a lot of video memory.

C#

C# is one of the fastest-growing, most in-demand, yet “user-friendly” programming languages. It is a modification of the fundamental C language from Microsoft, designed to create the most versatile tool for software development for a large number of devices and operating systems.

C# is popular due to its “simplicity”. Simplicity for modern programmers and large teams of developers, so that they can create functional and productive applications in a short time. Atypical language constructions and specific syntax that help to implement the intended functions as organically as possible contribute to this.

C# clear syntax noticeably simplifies not only the development as such but also other important aspects of teamwork, for example, reading other people’s code. It simplifies the process of refactoring and error correction when working on applications in large teams.

The C# language is almost universal. You can use it to create any software: advanced business applications, video games, functional web applications, applications for Windows, macOS, mobile applications for iOS, and Android.

C# is without exaggeration extremely popular among video game creators. The language is used to develop games for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. It’s all about Unity – the platform for working with 3D graphics. C# is better adapted to work with this engine than any other language. That is why programmers usually do not choose, and immediately use a bunch of Unity + C#.

Of course, game development is not limited to this technology stack. Nevertheless, if you are planning to develop a mobile game, you should first of all pay attention to the development teams that are proficient in these very tools.