So, I accidentally discovered an awesome little language for game programming. There I was, browsing Hacker News and clicked a link to read some blog post. The post was well written and interesting so I noted the url to come back for more later.
A week later, wanting something to read, I started going through a couple older posts on the previously noted blog and came across this article on community and vibrancy. In it the author referred to an amazing community around a language that most “real” programmers look down on and the amazing productivity that people seem to be getting out of it. I checked out the language, which in turn led me to a spinoff language/framework that had been created.
X Marks the Monkey
The language in question is Monkey-X. It is for game programming and has a lot of similarities to Basic. What is cool about it is that it is designed to write the games once and publish them on multiple platforms, including Xbox, Mac, Playstation, Android, IOS, Windows, and the Web.
Two of the things that really got me excited about it though is that for publishing to desktop and web, it is completely free (as in no dinero required) and it is available to run on Linux. Not that your average gamer plays on a Linux box, but I sometimes do (Battle of Wesnoth anyone?).
Get Started
If you want to try it out you can download it here, although you will need to create an account on their website.
In addition, there is a fantastic series on getting started with the language and even making a simple game on youtube. The links can be found in the Monkey-X forum. Or you can go directly to the youtube channel.