Hacker News: joemanaco

Show HN: Bullseye2D – A Dart library for cross-platform 2D games

joemanaco — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:39:30 +0000

I posted this here about a year ago, but I just pushed a 2.0 release, so I hope you don't mind a second look :)

Bullseye2D is a 2D game library for Dart with a very simple API. The new version now supports multi-platform. It compiles to the web via a WebGL2 renderer, or natively to Windows, macOS and Linux through an SDL3 backend (which itself supports Vulkan, DirectX, Metal, and OpenGL renderers).

It doesn't depend on Flutter and has very few dependencies (except SDL3). It mostly provides a minimal foundation that you can build your own abstractions on top of.

This was also my first time leaning more heavily on AI (Opus) for a large refactor. I tried to review and test everything as good as I could, but honestly for the restructuring parts where I had the AI produce rather big chunks of code, I found reviewing and testing quite exhausting, and I still have a slightly queasy feeling about it. So this is also quite an experiment for me how good I'm able to utilise AI :)

https://pub.dev/packages/bullseye2d

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47737387

Points: 4

# Comments: 2

New comment by joemanaco in "Show HN: I made a 2D game engine in Dart"

joemanaco — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 10:15:50 +0000

I don't have looked into Flame too much, but I would say the main difference is that Flame builds on top of Flutter while right now Bullseye2D only builds on the web package.

Flame offers more out-of-the-box features, while with Bullseye2D you have to build many things yourself, but it doesn't force you into a predefined structure as much. The API is more prodcedural style, making it relatively quick to learen in its entirety, without too much "magic" happening under the hood.

I think for most people Flame would be the better choice (it is also been around longer, which means better support...), however, I really love extremly simple approaches. I also believe it has advantages when you tailor your systems and architecture to your own requirements. Lots of stuff in 2D Game Development is also extremly simple (so often having to deal with a complex physics module or rendering pipeline or entity component system is contraproductive).

New comment by joemanaco in "Show HN: I made a 2D game engine in Dart"

joemanaco — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 09:41:06 +0000

You're right. I fixed it ;)

New comment by joemanaco in "Show HN: I made a 2D game engine in Dart"

joemanaco — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 09:21:24 +0000

Yes, maybe it's a stupid thing to say. My thought was that the simplicity of the API takes out a lot of the complexity of it compared to engines with complex structures, entity hierarchies, event systems and features that need to fit a wide range of genres. Especially if you want to make something simple or just a prototype.

New comment by joemanaco in "Show HN: I made a 2D game engine in Dart"

joemanaco — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 08:51:30 +0000

Thanks. Hearing that from someone who works on Dart and wrote two books I’ve read makes the compliment really special to me :)

New comment by joemanaco in "Show HN: I made a 2D game engine in Dart"

joemanaco — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 08:46:20 +0000

Thank you.

New comment by joemanaco in "Show HN: I made a 2D game engine in Dart"

joemanaco — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 08:45:55 +0000

I ported this game from the Book "Code The Classics" which was written in Python/PyGame. It should be relativley easy to add mobile touch inputs to it, but I didn't have time for that yet.

IntyBASIC: A Basic Compiler for Intellivision

joemanaco — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 05:17:21 +0000

Article URL: https://nanochess.org/intybasic.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44410537

Points: 34

# Comments: 4

Show HN: I made a 2D game engine in Dart

joemanaco — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 13:07:19 +0000

Article URL: https://bullseye2d.org/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44404447

Points: 98

# Comments: 39

Show HN: Soko64 – A Low-Res Sokoban Game Built in 24 Hours with Dart

joemanaco — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 11:06:04 +0000

Hi HN,

I built a small game in just 24 hours for a 64x64 pixel art lowrez game jam. The result is soko64, a tiny Sokoban game written in Dart.

This project was primarily a first test for a new web game library I've been developing for Dart (Bullseye2D). I wanted to see how quickly I could build a complete, playable game with it.

You can play soko64 directly in your browser: https://joemanaco.itch.io/soko64

The source code is on GitHub: https://github.com/JochenHeizmann/soko64

Happy to answer any questions! :)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44223207

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by joemanaco in "Apple's Software Quality Crisis"

joemanaco — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 08:51:48 +0000

This is not only an Apple problem. Most software developed today is in a terrible state. What boggles me the most is that how users are immune against it - it's so normal that software doesn't work or has bugs that most users don't even get upset - it's just the way it is. It's software - what can you do? :(

New comment by joemanaco in "I deleted my social media accounts"

joemanaco — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 07:44:46 +0000

They said many things that are just not true. Like Hitler was a left-winged communist… you can’t make this shit up.

New comment by joemanaco in "I deleted my social media accounts"

joemanaco — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 23:11:34 +0000

Yes, that's right. But social media platforms always tend to have something new on it each time you check them, which creates a strong incentive to check them even more often. News sites, for example, on the other hand, don’t use algorithms that encourage doom scrolling and keep you engaged far longer than you intended.

New comment by joemanaco in "I deleted my social media accounts"

joemanaco — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 23:08:28 +0000

It’s not clear, yes: I think they have way too much power in the wrong hands. Now, hypothetically speaking: If they were to lose most of their users, they would lose their power. So, in one way or another, everyone supporting those platforms (by using them) is part of the problem - and that would be the reason to stop using them (again, I know this is quite hypothetically).

I deleted my social media accounts

joemanaco — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 22:26:35 +0000

Article URL: https://asylumsquare.com/backstage/2025-01-12/why-i-deleted-my-social-media-accounts

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42677587

Points: 400

# Comments: 481

New comment by joemanaco in "Meta outage"

joemanaco — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 16:04:53 +0000

Has a meta developer used Chat GPT again?

Show HN: My game entry for the 48-hour global game jam

joemanaco — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 09:40:45 +0000

Article URL: https://joemanaco.itch.io/jugglin-jesper

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39174475

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Revision 2023: Livestream

joemanaco — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 18:51:35 +0000

Article URL: https://scenecity.tv/index.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35485463

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by joemanaco in "Show HN: I revived a game I abandoned 5yo ago and released it for free today"

joemanaco — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 20:43:37 +0000

My idea was to release it for free and cross-promote my other game in it I'm currently working on. But don't know if it works out, because it's quite niche.

New comment by joemanaco in "Show HN: I revived a game I abandoned 5yo ago and released it for free today"

joemanaco — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 20:40:35 +0000

Thank you.

It's based on a private fork of this (discontinued) language: https://github.com/blitz-research/monkey