Can I Create Video Games Using SQL? (No Game Engine) 

A new era of gaming indeed

@@icitryNew Google Stadia

What TRUE server side looks like

i remember playing Garry's mod sandbox where people could build anything, there is Expression 2 interpreted language that is based on lua ingame functions. it was always serverside and it was fun making something usable with screens and stuff even though it works with obvious delay

Thank god out games now have SEO.

what a coincidence, I was exactly on that chapter when I got the idea

Who's going to take up the Brainfuck game engine challenge?

@@michawhite7613 someone wrote tic tac toe for it with a computer opponent

Sql is not even turing complete dude

@@vytorrennan7923 postgres is (which is what he uses in the video)

Well of course, I am a man of integrity and commitment to the bit. Plus, better play it safe, who knows what lurks out there

Prolog’s graphics libraries is likely the closest you get to a sql-like language for game development

Well, there is. It's called ECS. Unity Dots or Bevy for example.

Lmao

Do not tell them about godot

I try to make everything I do seem like a typo, so thank you doubly 😄

structured directmedia language

@@icitryThat is REALLY smart, it really made the video stand out on my home screen! Awesome!

@@mki443 😄I actually was just talking about the project ideas, but now I'm definitely stea- integrating that into the original idea (also I'm really happy nontheless, thank you!!)

@@icitryahahahaha, what do you meannn that just programming

Why yes what a delightful decision, I see you're also well versed in the righteous ways of programming

I want to do similar for a custom engine or two one point.

Glad to know there are people with the same stance on this

one other small thing I though of, you are running a game loop server side, but there's probably an argument to be made that you have a client query allow the game to perform a tick manually, moving away from frame based updates to time delta based updates based on how long since the last tick was run, e.g. (velocity += some fixed speed) vs (velocity += speed * delta).

Ok, first off - wow thank you a lot for taking the time to write this out 😄 For the 1st thing, I totally agree, great improvement, exactly the fix I was looking for when thinking about this shortcoming. But for the 2nd thing, exactly as you said, it would start to lean on the client too much, which I wanted to avoid. On the 3rd point - there's definitely a point to be made for reducing the number of queries as much as possible, but wouldn't that cause potential delay to feedback on user actions? For the last idea, yea I could see that work actually, could probably end up a bit smoother visually and maybe lighter on the whole processing. Really great points, all of them (even on the small disagreements it pretty much boils down to personal preferences), so big props to you!

​@@icitryYeah for the third point it would introduce a single frame of input lag, I think some games do this method but can't remember why they do. Thanks for listening to my ideas lol, just had them while eating lunch watching your vid.

Hmm, I'll have to check that out then, you actually made me curious. And of course - brainstorming ideas is what makes this whole thing fun, I always enjoy seeing what others can come up with 😄

@@icitry lots of netcode uses a rollback feature, where they post process events after they happened. So like Deliver Tick 1 Deliver Tick 2 Deliver Tick 3 Deliver Tick 4 Event keypress tick 2 Rollback 4 Rollback 3 Rollback 2 Event Tick 2 Execute 2 Execute 3 Execute 4 Deliver Tick 5

You know you could've simply not manifested the thought or put it into words, but now look at what you've potentially unleashed

Thank you! It makes me so happy to hear you enjoy it

Wait that's actually such a cool idea, didn't even cross my mind - nice one!

Finally - a fellow supporter of the SQL game dev movement

Ohh yep, really great solution, virtually no drawbacks and simple to implement. Someone else suggested something similar, and gotta say - you both came up with it so fast it's amazing. Big props, and thanks for taking the time to write it out 😄

@@icitryNo problem, glad I could help! I'm always happy to participate in these sorts of gloriously ridiculous projects

@@icitryBTW, another thing that comes to mind: Instead of sending a grid of pixels, you can probably make much more complex games much more easily if you send simple vector draw instructions instead (e.g., "draw a 5x5 square at 0, 10", etc.).

@@jakesarjeant8326 Oh definitely, that would be a great optimization - just that it would shift a lot more responsibilities onto the client, which is something I wanted to avoid for my approach (but if I wanted to make an actually viable solution, I'd probably go for something like you said)

Oh yes, yes you can. And I will

Love to hear you enjoyed it! And hey, if you ever get back the interest for it, know that the world could always use another SQL game engine 😤

Why thank you very much for the kind words, I was just thinking of submitting it for an award

Oh but who would I be if not for the madness 😤 Thank you, love to hear you enjoyed it!

Similarly yeah. Thanks for the heads-up on Bevy, it’s a cool system

Thank you, glad you do!

ohh well that's shitty... sorry you had to go through that - goes to prove how for most (if not all) of these companies employees are just replaceable commodities

@@icitry Thanks, you get get it :D. I look forward to seeing your next videos.

Thank you as well! :D

Glad to hear you enjoyed it! 😄

No don-don't call it that..

Well thank you very much, glad to hear I managed to deliver on your expectations 😅

Thank you so much! 😊 As for the 2 points you raised: 1. Yep, that is sped up (although surprisingly enough the original still looks good, and handles better than it would at higher framerates - due to how Snake is designed probably - just that it takes longer to get a good grasp on the gameplay). 2. Also yep, you can, but it's not something in-built with a well designed repository system and CLI tools something like Linux comes with by default, for example. You can get by with doing simple stuff, but once you break away from that... (also you don't have a universal solution, so each compiler, be it the MSVC one, mingw, or cygwin will have its own quirks which often don't translate between them)

but.. I still have so many other unhin- revolutionary ideas

Good.

I was thinking more of "masochist", but I'm flattered nonetheless 😅 Thank you!

Well.. genius isn't quite the word I'd use, but I do appreciate the compliment 😄

Well there's a reason they call me waterboy (they don't) - always ready with a refreshment

@@icitry i cant wrap my head around how u got this much play when ur an SQL developer lmao

@@ohimdabiggestbird Woah woah this a wholesome-only zone, let's not throw around words like that (for the 2 sql devs in this world I'm sorry)

I dunno, when I showed my therapist this he smiled and asked if he could share it with his other therapist friends, so I think it's simply just an interesting subject yk

Databases make me want to hurt myself especially Microsoft Access databases

​@@icitry did he ask for your last name? They might be about to name something after you

@@le0t0rr3z You think so too? I was a bit unsure when they asked, but now I'm certain something big is about to happen

ushering the game dev world into a new era? hell yeah he is

😁 Thank you!

I hope it's one built with SQL though... Thank you!! 😁

@@icitry hahaha

Great question actually! And I would argue that yes, it would, but in very specific scenarios. I'm thinking generally games where the player has a predefined set of actions allowed and in which users don't interact with each other (not necessarily only singleplayer, could also work for "multiplayer" games where players work toward common goals for example - mainly in the style of those gimmicky mobile games). That way the database can simply manage the state of each player, along with the actions and responses it should provide, whereas the client needs to only display the visuals for what is returned by the database - like: hit enemy -> update enemy hp data -> signal play enemy hit for enemy with a certain id -> client plays hit animation for said enemy. So really simple stuff, but there are definitely games made in that style that could (and I'm pretty sure do) benefit from such an approach. Another thing is that you'd probably use something like Redis for direct communication with the client, as it would be exponentially faster for these kinds of operations, and have Redis instances for multiple regions, all of which then flush the data at given intervals to a relational database.

just the aftermath of me being in a silly goofy mood

What can I say, I always try to bring out my A-game

Now why would you go and say that, you've hurt potentially all ten js game devs in this world (I agree)

Thank you! Yeah, exactly, well pointed. It's all a balancing act - you can move more of the logic to the client, but then you'd be losing portability, and wouldn't be leveraging the full potential of SQL 😔 But it's a really nice alternative approach to the problem. Also I'm sure it can ultimately be made more portable - you can abstract away the primitives used on the client and just call what is available once the server makes a request. But I guess it boils down to personal preference, or rather restrictions you want to impose on the architecture.

Well.. you can of course do that, but going in that direction is just going to go further and further towards "just do everything without using SQL" (which is of course the correct answer if you were trying to make a game as efficiently as possible) - after all, there's really no need for the server to exist at all and everything could be done way more easily by just.. not using such a convoluted setup, but then you just aren't making a game with SQL at all anymore.

Haha yes, when refining the SQL method more and more I'm sure you'll end up not using SQL at all, or at least very little of it (possibly only storing temporary game state - or even better only long term game state). Though as @icitry pointed out at the end, encoding the video feed would make this setup a lot more efficient, and I guess even sending the stuff I mentioned above would be a way of "encoding" a very strict video feed.

I'm simply beginning to believe

hell yeah acknowledgement! you too, making me blush like that

Oh the code could always be improved. About the theme - if you're asking about the code samples, it's actually Carbon, they're not taken directly from my IDEs. Otherwise I'm running the default dark theme and config on all of them. Also glad to hear you liked it!!

yessir XD

Honestly I was really surprised as well, initially I was going to try incrementing the size from 50x50 pixels till it crashed - now imagine my surprise when I went with 400x400 for the lols and it worked decently

Well I had to pick the one with more potential yk

That's actually because of Carbon, as that's what I use when creating the code snippet demos. But I'm fairly sure there are plugins/add-ons for most IDEs that can do just that

Thanks! Well yes, they have MSVC, but it doesn't come prepackaged with the OS, instead it's part of Visual Studio, meaning you don't get access to the compiler the OS was actually compiled with, so obviously there'd be differences across implementations - reason why we have like 3 different solutions.

@@icitry Understood

Thanks, always happy to provide 😤

Well unless we'd run the game in the db console, calls to os primitives are still needed, so I don't think a pure SQL solution is actually possible (at the very least I see it as needing to modify the internal libs) - I could be wrong though, but I genuinely don't see how - would be curious to see some ideas, if anyone more well-versed happens to chime in. Also thank you for the kind words!

Let's call it a nostalgia trip

@@icitrylol

And I love being like this :)) Thanks!

Oh that's from Sniper Elite 3

Thanks! 😊

I think I'll let someone else have the honor of doing that

not really tbh, I went with postgres from the start, knowing it's a really mature and comprehensive solution, so that if I wanted to touch on some edge cases, there's at least a chance a mechanism already exists - others would probably work as well (maybe even better), it's just that I went with the safest pick

Depends on what you think when you say "just SQL". Cuz you could write a DLL to define new procedures that SQL can use, and inside those you can technically do whatever you want. But with just the stuff you'd get when installing it and not modifying anything - I'm pretty sure you can't (although depending on the flavor there could be some extra functionalities that may allow some more freedom).

Now, don't lump me in with those lunatics, it's obvious my creation is an actually viable product with real value

It's inevitable at this point tbh, someone's definitely porting doom on it

I.. think I'll let others do the honors for that 🤕

Hmm I wouldn't say a lot (at least not from a pure programming perspective, as data-wise it might be), as from what I know they basically use SQLite to store config, initialization files and the like, as well as localization stuff, so they don't walk around parsing XML and ini files and instead rely on db optimizations. Ofc I could be wrong, but I find it highly unlikely it's used for more than that, given the nature of the games

C++? Oh yea that's definitely a small fry, especially compared to this absolute work of art

well that's a tough one, but I think I'll go with the infinite game engines... I mean there's grease involved in both cases, but infinite game engines is obviously better

😅 Thank you, happy to hear you liked it!

Well unless something major happened in the meanwhile, MSVC is proprietary software to the Visual Studio toolkit, which isn't shipped bundled with Windows, so it's as much a native compile as any other you can install on your machine. For the second thing - yeah let's just say sustainability wasn't a core concern when developing this 😅

Thank you!

What a sick and twisted individual you are - why must you take joy in others (me) suffering?

oh that's a terrifying prospect, and I don't know for whom more

Oh wait that's smart actually, given the type of game that seems to be (haven't actually tried it, but I think I get the gist of it). Ty for telling me about it, now I have something else to look into 😅

@@icitry well if you find out how the backend architecture work you should make the video abbout it , waiting for it 😀

Is there? I mean I shouldn't even be surprised at this point, there's probably a way to run it directly on my retinas

Ohh gotcha. Well it's a pretty clever hack though so you gotta give it to the creator

There were people running it on human cells, so at this point nothing surprises me

Going through the whole databases gauntlet hmm.. But I think there needs to be as many people as possible making the server-side gaming gospel known - I'm just happy being one of the founding fathers (I'm not)

oh but what an extremely exquisite alternative (and also thank you!!)

I'm 100% taking that as a compliment

Even that wouldn't be enough, gotta add some poison swamps throughout the codebase

The what now? I always used the default one, but now ofc I gotta check that out

I wonder who's the unlucky (pronounced insane) bastard that's gonna try that