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Why I started (and stopped) making games

austinhenley.com

61–70 of 77 posts

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#61

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.

Blender?

Loooooong ago blender once did have a game engine but they removed it many many years ago.

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#62
post #14

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/

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.

For a solo indie dev it is far more than enough. There are solutions to any physics problems you encounter. The 3d in Godot 4 is quite beautiful

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#63
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come now, this is complete anecdotal nonsense. Unity had unreal are both excellent million $$ packages you can use for free(ish) that come with integrated editors and asset pipelines, massive plugin/package ecosystems and even one click playable templates . What more do you want? It takes too long to open the editor? Cry me a river! What do you want, a lean editor / hit code reloading / functional code only / truely…

> I mean come on, this is the golden age of indie development for games, where literally anyone can make a game in like a days effort following a YouTube tutorial. Yeah but will it be good? I'm betting on no.

That's because game design is an actual skill that needs to be cultivated, just as much as prose writing technique or cinematography or whatever.

Making game software is only half the problem, everything from high-level concept to tweaking spreadsheets is a genuine craft that is often neglected.

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#64
post #2

When I was 13-14 there was a brief period where I was making levels for Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2. I had a “clan” encouraging me to make us our own level and it was simple enough that at 13 I could listen to some Disturbed on my headphone while learning how to use the tooling and follow tutorials to make stuff and get things up and running. It had a basic scripting language (cog files) that you’d use to make elevato…

I was also fairly obsessed with modding this game, which is strange because I'm not really a massive Star Wars fan.

The cog language (more or less C syntax) was far more powerful than the base game really made use of. I think the grappling hook mods really got me started though, the engine wasn't super modern but few games really sold the vertigo of wide open cliffs and pits like this one did. I like tinkering with it far more than I did playing it. Cog seemed almost bolted on and the base cogs really only were sort of complicated for weapon handling and scripted level events. But I remember making laser trip mines (and the ability to shoot the mines with a blaster), a crude rope for the grappling hook, reloading weapons, etc. By the time I moved on I was implementing A* pathfinding for a replacement AI written in cog. I'd switched to Mysteries of the Sith just to get access to more cog verbs.

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Another fairly popular one is Dome Keeper: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1637320/Dome_Keeper/

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#66

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/

When I was moving away from Unity I looked at Godot and really liked it. It's nowhere near as performant or feature rich as other engines and it's future is undecided but it was fun to tinker with and get things moving. I hope to return to it in the future.

The lack of easy testing made me not use it. There were a couple testing plugins users had made which could kind of do unit and integration testing but they were super finicky.

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#67
post #2

When I was 13-14 there was a brief period where I was making levels for Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2. I had a “clan” encouraging me to make us our own level and it was simple enough that at 13 I could listen to some Disturbed on my headphone while learning how to use the tooling and follow tutorials to make stuff and get things up and running. It had a basic scripting language (cog files) that you’d use to make elevato…

Dark Forces 2, cog files! I haven't thought of any of this in years!

We're very similar, it was my introduction to game editing - I was never a fan of DOOM, Quake or Unreal/Tournament. But, I played around so much with JKEdit, and even continued with Jedi Outcast. It was by far the most fun I had with modding a game until Morrowind came out years later.

I really wish that modern games were as accessible, at least at a surface level - modding has fallen to the sidelines in recent years - I can't even think of the last game that came with an editor outside of a Bethesda game.

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#68

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.

Yeah, honestly too many people try to pick up something like a game engine or a web framework without knowing the underlying language. It's a recipe for disaster.

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#69
post #2

When I was 13-14 there was a brief period where I was making levels for Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2. I had a “clan” encouraging me to make us our own level and it was simple enough that at 13 I could listen to some Disturbed on my headphone while learning how to use the tooling and follow tutorials to make stuff and get things up and running. It had a basic scripting language (cog files) that you’d use to make elevato…

Battle.net also used to be great for learning your way around computers. Designed and released my first "game" via Starcraft's Map Editor, first "server" was a Battle.net chat bot hosted in my closet... First peek into how complex software works was map hacking Diablo 2... etc etc.

I learned a ton from Battle.net.

Re: Why I started (and stopped) making games

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blender?

Loooooong ago blender once did have a game engine but they removed it many many years ago.

The game engine of Blender faced limited support due to its requirement for games to adhere to Blender's license (GPL) when generating platform binaries. Although there were workarounds available, such as externalizing blend files or using the binary as a loader, these solutions were not practical for most commercial games. It would have posed a significant challenge, particularly if developers intended to port their games to platforms that did not permit such restrictions. Consequently, this limitation likely deterred widespread adoption of the feature, with its usage being primarily limited to prototyping purposes.
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