Can you recommend a game dev environment that is 3D, cross-platform, and (ideally) open-source, while being actually fun to code in?<p>Defining fun: I love coding in Ruby and Lua. Learning new languages is fun - it might be neat to do a game in Erlang or something. But I hate coding in C++ and am getting pretty tired of Java.<p>My girlfriend and I started coding a game together as a hobby. It may never see the light of day - we're primarily just trying to have a good time. To that end, we'd like to do it in a fun language.<p>So we started it in Lua, using the Löve framework, which has been awesome. Unfortunately ... it looks like we're definitely going to need a 3D environment, with proper 3D acceleration. As soon as I started doing a little vector math for lighting some simple 3D meshes, poor Lua was brought to a crawl. We have a very simple demo of structures floating in space ... and we only get 15fps out of it. Ouch.<p>I've been looking at 3D game environments, but the thought of having to go back to malloc() just makes me sad. Any thoughts?
(I'm the other author of this game.)<p>We've investigated many of the 3D game environments out there, but it's been difficult to tell what "supports Lua scripting" means. We don't just want to control particular game elements; we want to write the game itself in Lua, if possible, calling out to an optimized graphics library where needed, only for the rendering. Any thoughts?<p>Luxinia (<a href="http://www.luxinia.de/" rel="nofollow">http://www.luxinia.de/</a>) looks like it might be what we're looking for. Anyone have experience with it? Or possibly using OpenGL from Lua for 3D graphics?
Fluxus is a 3D game engine for livecoding in Racket. <a href="http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/</a><p>Example video:
<a href="http://vimeo.com/6744140" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/6744140</a>
In case anyone's curious, the game concept is a sandbox (a bit Dwarf-fortress-like) in space. Instead of excavating Moria, you're constructing Niven rings, Dyson spheres, and other megastructures.