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Why I started (and stopped) making games

austinhenley.com

11–20 of 77 posts

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#11

The reason I stopped making games... The tooling! It takes way too long to open Unreal Engine, or to do anything within its UI, and Unity gives me "bad vibes" (technical term) any time I open it. I know these days there are other engines, but I started my programming journey by learning game engines, and perhaps I should have learned programming properly before jumping into game programming.

You should try Godot. Open source and extremely lightweight compared to Unity and Unreal. It's pleasure to use, none of the baggage of the other engines. I'm a patron contributor. Fantastic for hobbyist tinkering and also viable for full blown commercial games. https://godotengine.org/

Can you share any references for finding the top quality or best known games made using Godot? I haven’t looked in a while.

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try Godot. Open source and extremely lightweight compared to Unity and Unreal. It's pleasure to use, none of the baggage of the other engines. I'm a patron contributor. Fantastic for hobbyist tinkering and also viable for full blown commercial games. https://godotengine.org/

Can you share any references for finding the top quality or best known games made using Godot? I haven’t looked in a while.

There is a decent showcase page on their site https://godotengine.org/showcase/

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try Godot. Open source and extremely lightweight compared to Unity and Unreal. It's pleasure to use, none of the baggage of the other engines. I'm a patron contributor. Fantastic for hobbyist tinkering and also viable for full blown commercial games. https://godotengine.org/

Can you share any references for finding the top quality or best known games made using Godot? I haven’t looked in a while.

The most visible title made with Godot in the last few months I can think of is Brotato.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1942280/Brotato/

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#14

The reason I stopped making games... The tooling! It takes way too long to open Unreal Engine, or to do anything within its UI, and Unity gives me "bad vibes" (technical term) any time I open it. I know these days there are other engines, but I started my programming journey by learning game engines, and perhaps I should have learned programming properly before jumping into game programming.

You should try Godot. Open source and extremely lightweight compared to Unity and Unreal. It's pleasure to use, none of the baggage of the other engines. I'm a patron contributor. Fantastic for hobbyist tinkering and also viable for full blown commercial games. https://godotengine.org/

Yeah Godot editor is snappy and smooth, unlike Unity and Unreal. However Godot's 3D and physics implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Not sure if Godot 4 solves those issues.

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#15
post #3

Anyone here that makes games for fun or on the side?

I tried to when I was at school, but there was never enough time. In retrospect I should have severely scaled back the game ideas. Also, this was the DOS era, so getting better graphics/audio was always a preoccupation. But then who would be the artist, etc. Also, most of this happened before I had an internet connection, so not much to work with.

That's why the game engines of today are really awesome.

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#16

The reason I stopped making games... The tooling! It takes way too long to open Unreal Engine, or to do anything within its UI, and Unity gives me "bad vibes" (technical term) any time I open it. I know these days there are other engines, but I started my programming journey by learning game engines, and perhaps I should have learned programming properly before jumping into game programming.

The tooling is a rabbit hole. Unity gives me the creeps and unreal (afaik) still doesn't work on Linux. However:

Löve is super fun, lua is cool but at some point it gets tiring to get more advanced things working. For 'simple' things you can't go wrong.

Haxe is amazing (I learned flash after it was dead o.O) several different frameworks to choose from, many plugins kinda dead but still big community. Compiled to everything you need, some Frameworks even have console targets.

However this coming from someone who hasn't released a real game yet.

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#17
post #3

Anyone here that makes games for fun or on the side?

I made this sprite scaler game here https://eri0o.itch.io/dont-give-up-the-cat

I usually make these small games because I find easier to scope and plan and finish. Some I attempted with bigger scope remain unfinished.

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try Godot. Open source and extremely lightweight compared to Unity and Unreal. It's pleasure to use, none of the baggage of the other engines. I'm a patron contributor. Fantastic for hobbyist tinkering and also viable for full blown commercial games. https://godotengine.org/

Can you share any references for finding the top quality or best known games made using Godot? I haven’t looked in a while.

Here are some games created using Godot that you can find on Steam: https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Godot/

If you prefer, there's also a collection of Godot games on Itch.io: https://itch.io/games/top-rated/made-with-godot

Personally, I highly recommend checking out Cruelty Squad: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388770/Cruelty_Squad - It's a fun game with a unique art style.

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#19
post #3

Anyone here that makes games for fun or on the side?

I made https://crooked.notabot.ai - a relaxing puzzle game about Lines & Angles

The game rules are actual math, and the puzzles turned out to be fun for kids as well as mathematicians (from my friend circle)!

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