As Java is generally the fastest GC'd language, what's the current state of Java gamedev?

Once upon a time, this indie Java game called Minecraft became the most successful game of all time.

But from the few minutes of research I just did, Java cannot be deployed to many commercially important systems

  - Nintendo Switch
  - PlayStation
  - iOS

It appears Java is only still viable for Windows and Android, and the 1% Linux desktop market.

There used to be the GCJ project which would in theory let you run Java anywhere you had a C/C++ compiler, but Oracle's litigiousness killed that because the Java[TM] "platform" must run the official Java[TM] bytecode.

It appears C# via Monogame lets you deploy to all desktops (Win/Mac/Linux), mobiles (iOS/Android), and consoles (PS/Switch/Xbox). So ironically C# seems to now be the "write once, run anywhere" fulfillment of the original Java promise.

[EDIT: grammar.]

Java's FFI and value type situation are the two major missing pieces for Java gamedev. C# has better stories for both, and has from the beginning.

Don't confuse Java having the fastest GC with Java being the fastest GC'd language (especially not in all situations)

> Don't confuse Java having the fastest GC with Java being the fastest GC'd language

I've always wondered, it's likely that Java has the fastest GC because it needs to have the fastest GC, otherwise it would be a bottleneck. Other popular languages probably don't depend as much on the performance of their memory allocation primitives.

Good point, the Debian Benchmarks Game for example shows C# matching or considerably beating Java at everything except the binary trees benchmark which stresses GC/mempool performance.

https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...

I haven't tried C#/MonoGame yet but all this discussion is considerably warming me up to it. The recent extremely successful indie game Hades was made with MonoGame.

Microsoft in typical MS fashion makes MonoGame higher friction if you aren't using a Windows box for development with MSBuild. On Linux it appears you need to use Wine to run DirectX effect compilation, though once compiled it works on OpenGL backends:

https://docs.monogame.net/articles/getting_started/1_setting...

FYI, Hades was ported from C#/MonoGame to C++ late in development in order to ship on Switch. Their previous titles (Transistor, Pyre, etc) were C# from start to finish though. AFAIK some of their releases use FNA instead of MonoGame (a similar library with more of a compatibility focus.)

Great catch! The Wikipedia article for MonoGame lists Hades, but is evidently wrong. Hades used The Forge for graphics. Ctrl/Cmd-F "Hades" on the Github page has some info:

https://github.com/ConfettiFX/The-Forge

The Forge is graphics only; audio, input, etc., have to be handled by something else and Hades used a custom C++ engine apparently.