Check it out, it is handling hundreds of entities at >>60 FPS. And I still did not do much performance optimization (there are still many lazy seqs around and unoptimized code).
Also most of the sprite rendering is the main problem, which an atlas texture could also improve even more. (Right now all creature animations are separate texture files).
And you can always step down a level to java if the need arises!
the issue with JVM/java was always that when that GC triggers you are just absolutely hosed.
C# tends to be a bit more forgiving about when it triggers GC and how. The generational garbage collector in C# will tend to be more reliable or at least I never ran into super huge issues with the places I've used C# for game dev.
The JVM GC has this unfortunate effect of having very bad pauses occasionally. And appears to do so regardless of the type of GC you are using.
There are some techniques you can use to get around this -> re-using entities. Using C# structs. Not doing allocations/deallocations inside the main game loop if you can.
For small enough games it is irrelevant but as soon as you start to get a larger game with lots of memory allocations/deallocations it really crushes performance.
It was however completely rewritten in C++ when they needed to port it to more constrained platforms, every mobile and console version uses the C++ codebase while PC has both versions in parallel. If you ever intend to release your game on multiple platforms then Minecraft isn't an example to follow unless you're up for starting over from scratch at some point.
It worked out for Notch, sure, but most indie devs don't get the luxury of only considering console ports after they're already set for life from initially only releasing on PC. Planning for cross-platform from the start is table stakes, especially now the Switch has become just as if not more of a popular platform for indie games than PC is.
Minecraft was known for allocating and freeing hundreds of megs of memory every frame. It was able to be written in java and have huge performance problems because it was so simple and low res.
