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Add to SafariWhen comparing Gosu vs GDevApp, the Slant community recommends Gosu for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Gosu is ranked 50th while GDevApp is ranked 83rd. The most important reason people chose Gosu is:
Gosu is not a game development framework, only a media library that happens to be suited to game development. (Kind of like SDL in the C world.) That means the interface is relatively small.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Lightweight
Gosu is not a game development framework, only a media library that happens to be suited to game development. (Kind of like SDL in the C world.) That means the interface is relatively small.
Pro Mature API, actively maintained and developed
Gosu has been under development since 2001. It is mature and has several toolkits built on top of it to provide additional functionality.
Pro Cross-platform, even mobile, using Ruby
Pro Quickly add behaviors to objects
Prebuilt behaviors can be added to objects. This is a very efficient way to add a physics engine or make a platformer game.
Lots of behaviors are included, from the most advanced (Physics, platformer, top-down movement) to really simple ones (like the behavior to destroy objects when outside the screen or the one to drag objects with mouse or touch).
Pro Powerful events system to create games without programming
No need for coding using this system which is clear and powerful: events are composed of conditions and actions.
Actions are launched when conditions are fulfilled. This is a very beginner-friendly way of making games and is still efficient for advanced usage, contrary to most other "block"/"drag'n'drop" systems.
Pro Intuitive interface
Pro Based on GDevelop
The entire webapp is based on GDevelop, an open source native game development software available for Windows & Linux, so it benefits from its advanced development.
Pro Can download an archive of the game source
Even though the tool depends on having a server up and running, you can download a copy of your game to run locally, or host somewhere else.
Pro Great UI
Sleek and user-friendly UI.
Pro Can export your game as HTML5 and for Android
Games can be packaged for Android without relying on any third party tool. You can also export your game and download it to host it on your server or let it be hosted on GDevApp.com.
Pro Shallow learning curve
Cons
Con Deploying Ruby apps is a mess
Games built with the Ruby to .exe "compiler" do nothing more than extract your source code and Ruby.exe to %TEMP%, then run it. The code is not really compiled at all. The process for wrapping games as Mac apps is a bit nicer, but you'll need a paid Apple Developer subscription to code sign the app, or users will see a warning/error when running your game.
The only way to really compile Ruby is to use RubyMotion, which does not work on Windows and requires a paid subscription on top of the Apple Developer one.
(This Con is not specific to Gosu. Deploying Ruby code has never been fun.)
Con Depends on a hosting service
If the website goes down or closes down, you'll no longer be able to develop your games using this system (but you can download a backup of your game from time to time and open it with GDevelop).
Con Cannot deploy native games
For now, games developed with GDevApp can only be deployed for the Web. Android deployment is in the works, but even then, they won't be native since they are built with web technologies.
