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Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

noelberry.ca

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Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#81

Post by krapp »

bitwize wrote: post #16

Creating a game with an engine is like designing a character with a pixel dollbase. You can get something out quickly, skipping a few steps because they're done for you, but you have to live with whatever choices were made by the creator of the engine/dollbase. Those choices can constrain your execution and to some extent, your imagination.

>Those choices can constrain your execution and to some extent, your imagination.

In theory, yes. In practice 99.9% of the games developers want to make are feasible with an off the shelf engine.

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#82

Post by Madmallard »

grian42 wrote: post #68
Madmallard wrote: post #11

Has he dealt with some of the more challenging problems in game dev that engines help a lot with? Like... multiplayer netcode. Seems like if you're doing this for a hobby or solo/small team then maybe it's reasonable. For most people where they want to be a game dev but they probably will just work in industry, it seems like learning the major engines to competency cannot be ignored.

multiplayer netcode isnt overly difficult to write unless you're at the highest lvl of complexity lol. it's not a black box, it's just transferring bytes around efficiently and keeping track of state, your "netcode" can literally just be bare tcp (+ssl), validation, and state, it's not that deep.

handling latency to keep a coherent experience in a real-time game is an unsolvable problem where every single mechanic requires a planned out scheme and companies go so far as buying data centers in optimized locations to help out with the illusion

that's probably what you mean by highest level of complexity

but even just a regular turn-based game there's a lot of questions you need to answer and decisions to make regarding latency, packet loss, and disconnects that all have to be solved in a coherent and consistent way

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#83

Post by roflcopter69 »

dxuh wrote: post #78
roflcopter69 wrote: post #71

I see `dotnet watch` being mentioned for code hot reload which is such a great feature for quickly iterating on a game. Not having to restart the whole game just because one has changed a few if statements and values really helps staying in the flow. But I'm still not too enthusiastic about having GC in C# which is why ideally I'd like to start making a small 2D game just with SDL3 and C++ but how could I get this ni…

I quite like modern C++, so I really tried to make it work for gamedev, but I think you can't really do it. You can use all the modern C++ features that are not in the standard library though! I am working on a little game the last few months and after a while I just decided to not use any of the C++ standard library (I just use a few C headers) and make my own Vector, Array, Span, String, FlatMap. And using those th…

Thanks for the reply!

> I quite like modern C++, so I really tried to make it work for gamedev, but I think you can't really do it.

What exactly do you mean? What parts of modern C++ did not work for you?

> You can use all the modern C++ features that are not in the standard library though!

> I just decided to not use any of the C++ standard library (I just use a few C headers)

So what do you do with C++ that C alone couldn't do?

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#84

Post by jsheard »

MasterScrat wrote: post #27
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is Noel Berry, creator of Celeste. They don't shout about it, but with that pedigree, I'm confident they'll be staying well away from AI.

Why would a game development pedigree correlate with rejecting AI? As Carmack said: > AI tools will allow the best to reach even greater heights, while enabling smaller teams to accomplish more, and bring in some completely new creator demographics.

Carmack isn't exactly a neutral observer here, his main gig since quitting VR has been as the founder of a VC-backed AI startup. He has a clear financial interest in joining the chorus of AI boosters.

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#85

Post by PacificSpecific »

hjkl0 wrote: post #58
redbell wrote: post #6

> Our game, Celeste I was really enjoying reading this piece until I read the above, then I realized I am reading for a big developer, the maker of, Celeste [1]. I am definitely adding this to my list of favorite articles about making games. Also, you may want to check a previous discussion from nine months ago (573 points, 246 comments ): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44038209 _____________ 1. https://store.s…

But Celeste came out in 2018. How is it relevant to 2025 as suggested in the title? Also, pretty sure it was a small indie team rather than a “big developer”

How is it not relevant? Celeste wasn't exactly a pinnacle of bleeding edge technology when it came out.

If I remember correctly it was a team of 2.

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#86

Post by tecleandor »

hjkl0 wrote: post #58
redbell wrote: post #6

> Our game, Celeste I was really enjoying reading this piece until I read the above, then I realized I am reading for a big developer, the maker of, Celeste [1]. I am definitely adding this to my list of favorite articles about making games. Also, you may want to check a previous discussion from nine months ago (573 points, 246 comments ): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44038209 _____________ 1. https://store.s…

But Celeste came out in 2018. How is it relevant to 2025 as suggested in the title? Also, pretty sure it was a small indie team rather than a “big developer”

It's the same developer as Celeste, but in the article they talk about "city of none" [0], that's a yet unreleased game they're working on right now.

--

  0: https://cityofnone.com/

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#87

Post by indy »

jsheard wrote: post #84
MasterScrat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a game development pedigree correlate with rejecting AI? As Carmack said: > AI tools will allow the best to reach even greater heights, while enabling smaller teams to accomplish more, and bring in some completely new creator demographics.

Carmack isn't exactly a neutral observer here, his main gig since quitting VR has been as the founder of a VC-backed AI startup. He has a clear financial interest in joining the chorus of AI boosters.

A less cynical interpretation of his actions would be that he's never shown to be motivated by money and is working on technology that interests him and that he can make an important contribution to

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#88

Post by dxuh »

roflcopter69 wrote: post #83
dxuh wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quite like modern C++, so I really tried to make it work for gamedev, but I think you can't really do it. You can use all the modern C++ features that are not in the standard library though! I am working on a little game the last few months and after a while I just decided to not use any of the C++ standard library (I just use a few C headers) and make my own Vector, Array, Span, String, FlatMap. And using those th…

Thanks for the reply! > I quite like modern C++, so I really tried to make it work for gamedev, but I think you can't really do it. What exactly do you mean? What parts of modern C++ did not work for you? > You can use all the modern C++ features that are not in the standard library though! > I just decided to not use any of the C++ standard library (I just use a few C headers) So what do you do with C++ that C alone…

I think the standard library is good, but if you pull in ANY of it's headers you add a couple hundred milliseconds to every translation unit. So when making games (and only then), I avoid the standard library.

What I do like and use is overloading, references, templates, concepts, lambdas, enum classes, user defined literals, constexpr, operator overloading for math (!), little syntax stuff like structured binding declarations, "auto" and range based for. I also made my own little fmt (like https://riki.house/fmt). C++ is a much nicer language than C imo, even without the standard library.

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#89

Post by Joel_Mckay »

flohofwoe wrote: post #43
simooooo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody seems to consider that doing it yourself, requires you implement it at least as efficiently as the commercial engine did, otherwise you're just creating a worse-performing implementation that seems to behave just like a bloated engine does.

The big difference is that the big game engines have to cover all sorts of genres and scenarios, which often results in bloated "jack of all trades master of none" code compared to engine-layer code that's highly specialized for exactly one, or few very similar games.

If building a custom commercial game engine these days... A team is 100% focused on the wrong problem, as the game-play content is what sells. Customers only care about game-engines when broken or cheating.

Godot, Unreal, CryEngine, and even Unity... all solve edge-cases most don't even know they will encounter. Trying something custom usually means teams simply run out of resources before a game ships, and is unlikely stable on most platforms/ports. =3

Re: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)

#90

Post by PacificSpecific »

I generally worked on AAA stuff but the few times I released stuff independently I ended up writing my own framework/engine.

I think the issue was when I used an engine the scope was too large and I never completed the work so I never released the game (or I released it for free because I felt it was incomplete and wasn't worth charging for)

It's great to work in a constrained environment

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