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Create your own Game Engine but don't use it

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Re: Create your own Game Engine but don't use it

#31

Post by hacker_9 »

aphextron wrote: post #6

I think a lot of developers who come into game dev have a mistaken view of Unity as the "budget" choice based on the poor quality of many of the indie titles shovleled out with it. But Unity is probably the most advanced game engine in existence today. Far beyond Unreal 4 in terms of both performance and tooling. The reason the average quality is so low with Unity titles is because of just how easy the technical aspe…

Agree, Unreal Engine still has a lot of catching up to do in terms of ease of use and performance (even importing an FBX file in the editor is a slow affair).

Re: Create your own Game Engine but don't use it

#32

Post by [deleted] »

aphextron wrote: post #6

I think a lot of developers who come into game dev have a mistaken view of Unity as the "budget" choice based on the poor quality of many of the indie titles shovleled out with it. But Unity is probably the most advanced game engine in existence today. Far beyond Unreal 4 in terms of both performance and tooling. The reason the average quality is so low with Unity titles is because of just how easy the technical aspe…

[deleted]

Re: Create your own Game Engine but don't use it

#33

Post by crucini »

CJefferson wrote: post #3

On the other hand, I find my game engines, particularly (unfortunately) open source ones, are in a terrible state. They often try to support many platforms, then it turns out they usually support one platform well, and the others are various degrees of broken. Then, when you want to get your game working on Android, the engine is too massive and complex for me to have any chance of figuring out how to fix it.

Seems to be a subset of libraries and frameworks in general. They are not up front with the limitations of their software, so you have to invest a lot of hours finding them.

Re: Create your own Game Engine but don't use it

#34

Post by crucini »

oneZergArmy wrote: post #23
CJefferson wrote: post #3

On the other hand, I find my game engines, particularly (unfortunately) open source ones, are in a terrible state. They often try to support many platforms, then it turns out they usually support one platform well, and the others are various degrees of broken. Then, when you want to get your game working on Android, the engine is too massive and complex for me to have any chance of figuring out how to fix it.

This is why i prefer frameworks like LÖVE 2d. it's so simple that I can keep everything I need in my head. I like just staying in the text editor.

Do many game engines force you to use a GUI?

Re: Create your own Game Engine but don't use it

#35

Post by juliangoldsmith »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #17
emodendroket wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond that, it's not the 90s anymore; what novel feature are you going to implement that is going to wow anyone in the way that Carmack's engines did?

I wish modern games could get the basics as right as Carmack's engines did. What good is the tech in No Man's Sky if visiting untold numbers of planets feels like a slog through mud?

Game mechanics were a lot of what always set id apart from everyone else. You could always count on them for smooth, fast-paced action, without much in the way of frills.

While their new games are still quite good, they seem to have begun to slip a bit after Carmack's departure.

Re: Create your own Game Engine but don't use it

#37

Post by dakics »

karmadog wrote: post #30

There's two big hindrances for success right off the bat: 1. Refusing to just use C/C++ 2. Attempting to support most of the platforms Both problems compound each other. All platforms (even Android at this point) have C APIs for everything you need. Creating another layer of abstraction here causes more work and overhead. Trying to get Java running on iOS with 3D APIs is a huge task in and of itself. The same goes fo…

Unity's multi-platform track record is quite solid at this point in time.

I wouldn't bet on exotic Java attempts of "write once run everywhere" though.

Re: Create your own Game Engine but don't use it

#38

Post by camus2 »

aphextron wrote: post #6

I think a lot of developers who come into game dev have a mistaken view of Unity as the "budget" choice based on the poor quality of many of the indie titles shovleled out with it. But Unity is probably the most advanced game engine in existence today. Far beyond Unreal 4 in terms of both performance and tooling. The reason the average quality is so low with Unity titles is because of just how easy the technical aspe…

> Far beyond Unreal 4 in terms of both performance and tooling.

No, that's untrue. First it's much much easier to develop a game from scratch with Unreal without a single line of code, which isn't possible with Unity.

Second Unreal "vanilla" is more advanced in every ways. Unity is a toy compared to it. Unity is "budget" and successful because it used to be much much more affordable than Unreal. That's barely the case today. There is very little reason to use it instead of Unreal.

I started game dev with all that C++ bullcrap and DirectX headers with its insane API and message pump, and there is absolutely nothing better than Unreal in my book today, both in terms of ease of use, pricing and performances.

Re: Create your own Game Engine but don't use it

#39

Post by fellellor »

alol wrote: post #21

Having a broader understanding of your domain at a different level of abstraction is always extremely valuable. For anyone interested in the detail of _how_ to create a game engine from scratch, I'd recommend checking out Handmade Hero https://handmadehero.org/

Handmade Hero is over 380, hour or two long videos last i saw. How far are you into it?

Regardless, it's an amazing effort.

Re: Create your own Game Engine but don't use it

#40

Post by aaron-lebo »

kevindqc wrote: post #8
aaron-lebo wrote: post #7

A year is nothing in the grand scheme of things. If you can't invest a year into building tools that could be your foundation for the next 3 decades, then what you are building is just a quick-rich scheme that doesn't matter. Use whatever you want because it doesn't matter...and your game probably isn't going to sell anyway. Those are the odds. But as they've pointed out, you kind of need to know that stuff anyway, s…

>For the longest Unity required you to use 3rd party modules for a camera. What do you mean? How can there not be cameras? How then can you view a scene without that 3rd party module?

Google "unity camera scripts" for an idea of the kind of functionality that people were grafting onto Unity a few years back.
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