Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Rewriting Scratch 3.0 from scratch in Lua (browser-free native runtime)
Built a native Scratch 3.0 runtime in Lua that runs .sb3 projects without a browser. Why? Browser sandboxing prevents access to hardware features (haptics, sensors, fine-grained perf controls). Native runtime gives you direct hardware access and lets you deploy to consoles, handhelds, embedded devices. Also means much smaller binaries (LÖVE is ~7MB vs 50-100MB for Electron). How it works: - Scratch blocks compile to IR, then optimize, then generate Lua - LuaJIT executes the compiled code - Coroutine-based threading for concurrent scripts - Lazy loading + LRU cache for memory management - SVG…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1
A replayable arcade shooter where you control a snake of heroes. - a327ex/SNKRX
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2
Hey folks — here’s a small experiment I hacked together over the weekend: https://cleoselene.com/ In short, it’s a way to build multiplayer games with no client-side game logic. Everything is rendered on the server, and the game itself is written as simple Lua scripts. I built this to explore a few gamedev ideas I’ve been thinking about while working on Abstra: - Writing multiplayer games as if they were single-player (no client/server complexity) - Streaming game primitives instead of pixels, which should be much lighter - Server-side rendering makes cheating basically…
Jan 2026 · cleoselene.com · its alternatives →
- 3
A low code platform to build internal tools
2021 · retool.com · its alternatives →
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Linux virtual machine, running in the browser via HTML5/WebAssembly. Networking and graphics supported.
2021 · repl.leaningtech.com · its alternatives →
- 5IB
I've been working on an MMORPG that is now in alpha as a solo developer. Here are the major open source technologies that I use: Blender - 3D modeling software for creating the overall environment and every game object. I've gotten a lot of CC and Public Domain assets from https://poly.pizza GLTF - I export assets from blender to the GLTF asset format JSON - I write a JSON config for every game object that describes things like its name, its interactions, its collisions, etc. Node.js exporter - I iterate over the environment and every asset to create a scene hierarchy. I use…
2024 · alpha.reconquer.online · its alternatives →
- 6
A minimal text-editor with lua scripting. Contribute to skx/kilua development by creating an account on GitHub.
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7
Flox▲375Hey Everyone! Ron here, part of the NixOS Foundation and building Flox. Just coming out of this years NixCon and pretty excited to show hn below :) As of today, NVIDIA officially recognizes Canonical, SUSE, CIQ, and Nix—via Flox—as supported distributors for CUDA. Full blog - https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/developers-can-now-get-cud... This is a huge win for the Nix community. For years, CUDA on Nix was possible but painful—builds could take hours, and redistributing prebuilt binaries was blocked by NVIDIA's licensing requirements. NVIDIA's growing engagement with key…
2024 · flox.dev · its alternatives →
- 8
A cross-platform build utility based on Lua
2019 · xmake.io · its alternatives →
- 9
2020 · proton-native.js.org · its alternatives →
- 10
An open source Lua framework for building 3D games and VR experiences.
2017 · lovr.org · its alternatives →
- 11
A multitasking monolithic Kernel based x86 targeting Operating System written in C# from scratch aiming for high-level implementation of drivers in managed environment. - amaneureka/AtomOS
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
Build Cross Platform HTML Desktop Apps on .NET using native GUI, HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, Owin, AspNetCore (MVC, RazorPages, Blazor) - chromelyapps/Chromely
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13
Hello HN, Just wanted to show this little 2D game engine that I've been working on for some time (around 2 years on the editor part, longer on some of the components). It's quite full featured but obviously this a project of such magnitude already that the work never really ends. That being said it's definitely already at a point where games can made and published. The editor runs natively on Windows and Linux using Qt5. The games can run on both Win and Linux as well as on WASM with WebGL. Feature wise there's a bunch of the stuff you'd expect. Audio, graphics, scripting,…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
🔥 A cross-platform build utility based on Lua. Contribute to xmake-io/xmake development by creating an account on GitHub.
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, clx is an ahead-of-time compiler for standard Lua that generates C++20 and produces standalone native executables through GCC, Clang or MSVC. The project started as an experiment to see whether modern C++ could be used as a portable compiler backend instead of LLVM or direct machine code generation. The generated code is then compiled and optimized by the host toolchain. The latest release replaces the previous NaN-tagged value representation with a new shadow-types implementation, adds full int64 support, improves native arithmetic code generation and adds ARM64 macOS coroutine…
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17
I love making small 2D pixel art games, especially using tools that have some constraints. Things like Pico-8 and the Playdate SDK are simple, fun, and allow for focusing on the game idea rather than the technical minutia. Years ago I prototyped an idea for this little game engine, Usagi, but used Rhai instead of Lua. The idea for this little game engine never went away, so I decided to finally dig in and build it. Today I released v1.0.0 of Usagi Engine after making a bunch of small games, getting feedback from developers, and stabilizing the API. It's simple, has a great developer…
May 2026 · usagiengine.com · its alternatives →
- 18LP
LuaCAD models solids in Lua rather than the OpenSCAD language, with operator overloading for CSG (`a + b`, `a - b`, `a * b`). It ships with a CLI and a desktop app, including a preview area and a text editor. I've always been a big fan of OpenSCAD, but the SCAD language itself is unfortunately quite cobbled-together and is a very poorly designed programming language. LuaCAD takes all the good parts of OpenSCAD and combines them with one of the best scripting languages. It has now completely replaced OpenSCAD for me, and I think it provides a better experience than OpenSCAD for all use cases.…
Aug 2026 · luacad.ad-si.com · its alternatives →
- 19AR
My background project for the last two years has been re-implementing my 2004 C++ shoot'em up game in TypeScript + WebGL, and it's finally done (just in time for the 20th anniversary!) Play the game online: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga/darklaga.html Technical article about the remake: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga/remake.html I have tested Firefox, Chrome and Edge on desktop and mobile (no access to a device capable of running Safari). It's amazing how much difference 20 years makes: the hardware is so much more powerful, the web…
2024 · nicollet.net · its alternatives →
- 20
Write programs on desktop and mobile
2023 · akkartik.itch.io · its alternatives →
- 21
Keystone▲125We kept hitting the same wall: you clone some arbitrary repo and just want it to run without any configuration work. So we built Keystone, an open source tool that spins up a Modal sandbox, runs Claude Code inside it, and produces a working .devcontainer/ config (Dockerfile, devcontainer.json, test runner) for any git repo. We build on the dev container standard, so the output works with VS Code and GitHub Codespaces out of the box. Main use cases: reproducible dev/CI environments, self-describing repos, and safely sandboxed coding agents. Our goal is to encourage all repos to…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
Hi HN, I've been building Mystral Native — a lightweight native runtime that lets you write games in JavaScript/TypeScript using standard Web APIs (WebGPU, Canvas 2D, Web Audio, fetch) and run them as standalone desktop apps. Think "Electron for games" but without Chromium. Or a JS runtime like Node, Deno, or Bun but optimized for WebGPU (and bundling a window / event system using SDL3). Why: I originally started by starting a new game engine in WebGPU, and I loved the iteration loop of writing Typescript & instantly seeing the changes in the browser with hot reloading. After…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
Builder Book▲130Learn how to build a full stack JS web app from scratch
2018 · builderbook.org · its alternatives →
- 24
Hey HN, Lume is an open-source CLI for running macOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon. Since launch (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42908061), we've been using it to run AI agents in isolated macOS environments. We needed VMs that could set themselves up, so we built that. Here's what's new in 0.2: *Unattended Setup* – Go from IPSW to a fully configured VM without touching the keyboard. We built a VNC + OCR system that clicks through macOS Setup Assistant automatically. No more manual setup before pushing to a registry: lume create my-vm --os macos --ipsw latest…
Jan 2026 · cua.ai · its alternatives →
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