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.
My experience with making your own engine vs using an off the shelf solution - the former can be viable and even superior on the condition that you know what you're doing. That is if you've built entire games or engines before, or have enough experience with the internals of one.
Otherwise it can be a dangerous fool's errand on which many projects go to die. My younger naive self can attest to this, he loved trying to build his own overly-ambitious engines. But he never finished any games.
Another thought if you do roll your own - keep it simple stupid. When your brain tells you that some amazing nested scene graph with integrated occlusion culling would be the coolest thing in the world, but you lack evidence that you'll actually need all that functionality, tell your brain that it's being stupid and just implement some kind of basic flat scene structure. You can always retrofit it later.
Also - study the code of the likes of Carmack. Consider that he produced the likes of the quake engines in only a couple of years. Reflect long and hard on the raw simplicity of a lot of that code.
Do not worship complexity.
These are the words of someone who has walked both roads!
After I read the title, I fully expected this to be about writing games using AI. But no, actually there is no mention of AI to be found in the text, not even in the "Miscellaneous Thoughts" section, which seems to be mostly answers to "why don't you use X?" questions. Refreshing...
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.
I don't use AI for the sake of it, I use it where and when it is useful. For example:
1. advanced autocomplete -- if you have or paste the structure of a JSON or other format, or a class fields, it is good at autocompleting things like serialization, case statements, or other repetitive/boilerplate code;
2. questions -- it can often be difficult to find an answer on Google/etc. (esp. if you don't know exactly what you are looking for, or if Google decides to ignore a key term such as the programming language), but can be better via an AI.
Like all tools, you need to read, check, and verify its output.
Nice article, engines are bloated and introduce so many overheads. If you don't intend to ship any AAA games, consider investing your times to learn code-first game frameworks like libGDX, MonoGame, love2d,... or even lower level stuffs like SDL, bgfx, opengl which are good enough for almost any cases. A bit higher learning curve is expected but it won't hide anything from you, or bury you under tons of bloated abstractions.
I’d highly recommend going with SDL if it’s 2D. IMO libraries like MonoGame, Love2D, LibGDX only offer small conveniences over SDL with big negative tradeoffs, sacrificing portability, quality of libraries, and conventions. The downsides of using C++ are now heavily mitigated with the use AI tools.
I could never jell with C++ until I had Cursor hold my hand (especially around the build system), and now I feel like I am developing games with a razor sharp knife that I could never before access. The patterns associated working directly with memory suddenly clicked and now it’s the only I want to build games.
I'm actually building my own mini-engine with SDL_GPU. It works ok so far. I'm quite confident that I can rebuild most of Unity's URP features (except the shader graph as I don't plan to expose such an interface for artists).
But I haven't reached to the more tedious parts, like doing skeleton animation on GPU and testing cross platform, etc.
Similar, I also went back to mainly C++ and Raylib now that I can delegate the "boring" stuff to AI, never had any issues with programming in C++ it was mainly adding dependencies and builds I hated (configuration).
I still don't use it for the game programming as it sucks the joy out of it for me. Especially when AI usage is currently being pushed hard at work.
This was a great read. I'm in my 40's and have mostly done web dev/devops type stuff throughout my career. Making video games has always eluded me even though I've always been interested in it. I think it's that everything feels like a brand new language I have to learn. Perhaps creating an engine is the move.
The primary thing I'm going for in a commercial engine is platform targeting and stability. Some of the defaults are certainly "bland", but that ensures I can actually ship this thing to a meaningful % of the available market. Unity's coverage is so consistent that I've been debating using it for non gaming applications. There aren't many cross platform ecosystems that work this well.
It's kinda sad SFML never get quoted, It was my framework ( after ALLEGRO ) where i learned c++ and I think it dosen't get much love nowdays even if it is very light and strong
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.
>I often find the default feature implementations in large engines like Unity so lacking I end up writing my own anyway. Eventually, my projects end up being mostly my own tools and systems, and the engine becomes just a vehicle for a nice UI and some rendering...
I honestly don't see anything wrong with using the engine for its UI and "some rendering" kind of sweeps a lot of the complicated 3d light handling under the rug. I think the biggest mistake large engines have made is baking in features as first class citizens instead of those features being part of a standard plugin you could have written yourself from scratch once you reach that stage.
I've contemplated building my own editor UI, but after four weeks I realized that I'm just rebuilding the same UI structure you see in FreeCAD, Blender, Isaac Sim, Godot, etc. There's always a 3D viewport, there's a scene tree and there is an inspector panel for looking at the properties. So why not just use the Godot editor as a UI and provide my own custom nodes? By the time I've outgrown the training wheels, I've spent months working on the actually differentiating features.
> I honestly don't see anything wrong with using the engine for its UI and "some rendering" kind of sweeps a lot of the complicated 3d light handling under the rug. I think the biggest mistake large engines have made is baking in features as first class citizens instead of those features being part of a standard plugin you could have written yourself from scratch once you reach that stage.
Godot is more or less built that way. The entire node system is an abstraction over the various “servers” and you can even completely forgo it if you want, providing your own MainLoop implementation (instead of the included SceneTree implementation of MainLoop) and then just use the servers directly.
A lot of the editor features are also implemented as plugins. It’s been very easy turning the Godot editor into a custom editor for my game by writing some simple plugins
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.
You should use tools that are appropriate to what you intend to achieve. If you want to make a 3D game then Unreal, Unity, or Godot are appropriate choices. If you want to make a 2D game then something like MonoGame might make more sense than Unreal. You don't need highly refined netcode if your game never needs to exchange data in realtime.
Heck, I've seen someone build a visual novel-type game with WinForms. That was actually a sensible choice for the game's presentation and interaction needs.
Of course if you want to become a game dev at a studio then you should be competent with whatever the studio uses (or something comparable so you can pivot to their stack). If you only want to make your hobby project and maybe publish it later it doesn't matter if your engine is Unreal, MonoGame, RPG Maker 2000, or vanilla JS/DOM.
I would say that one of the "Miscellaneous Thoughts" at the end of your article answers your question pretty well:
> I need only the best fancy tech to pull off my game idea
Then use Unreal! There's nothing wrong with that, but my projects don't require those kinds of features (and I would argue most of the things I do need can usually be learned fairly quickly).
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.steampowered.com/app/504230/Celeste/
Otherwise it can be a dangerous fool's errand on which many projects go to die. My younger naive self can attest to this, he loved trying to build his own overly-ambitious engines. But he never finished any games.
Another thought if you do roll your own - keep it simple stupid. When your brain tells you that some amazing nested scene graph with integrated occlusion culling would be the coolest thing in the world, but you lack evidence that you'll actually need all that functionality, tell your brain that it's being stupid and just implement some kind of basic flat scene structure. You can always retrofit it later.
Also - study the code of the likes of Carmack. Consider that he produced the likes of the quake engines in only a couple of years. Reflect long and hard on the raw simplicity of a lot of that code.
Do not worship complexity.
These are the words of someone who has walked both roads!
> 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.
No need to brag about that.
Like what? If you can already program your game and create art for it, what is it going to be doing?
People are so obsessed with using AI stuff for the sake of it, it’s nuts
1. advanced autocomplete -- if you have or paste the structure of a JSON or other format, or a class fields, it is good at autocompleting things like serialization, case statements, or other repetitive/boilerplate code;
2. questions -- it can often be difficult to find an answer on Google/etc. (esp. if you don't know exactly what you are looking for, or if Google decides to ignore a key term such as the programming language), but can be better via an AI.
Like all tools, you need to read, check, and verify its output.
I could never jell with C++ until I had Cursor hold my hand (especially around the build system), and now I feel like I am developing games with a razor sharp knife that I could never before access. The patterns associated working directly with memory suddenly clicked and now it’s the only I want to build games.
But I haven't reached to the more tedious parts, like doing skeleton animation on GPU and testing cross platform, etc.
I still don't use it for the game programming as it sucks the joy out of it for me. Especially when AI usage is currently being pushed hard at work.
While most of the stuff is one off assets that do not fit together there are also some nice sets by some creators such as Kenney.
Also the Liberated Pixel Cup (LPC) stuff is pretty nice.
Mind you I mostly just look for 2D assets.
https://opengameart.org/users/kenney
https://opengameart.org/users/emcee-flesher
https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-collection
It's kinda sad SFML never get quoted, It was my framework ( after ALLEGRO ) where i learned c++ and I think it dosen't get much love nowdays even if it is very light and strong
(246 comments)
I honestly don't see anything wrong with using the engine for its UI and "some rendering" kind of sweeps a lot of the complicated 3d light handling under the rug. I think the biggest mistake large engines have made is baking in features as first class citizens instead of those features being part of a standard plugin you could have written yourself from scratch once you reach that stage.
I've contemplated building my own editor UI, but after four weeks I realized that I'm just rebuilding the same UI structure you see in FreeCAD, Blender, Isaac Sim, Godot, etc. There's always a 3D viewport, there's a scene tree and there is an inspector panel for looking at the properties. So why not just use the Godot editor as a UI and provide my own custom nodes? By the time I've outgrown the training wheels, I've spent months working on the actually differentiating features.
Godot is more or less built that way. The entire node system is an abstraction over the various “servers” and you can even completely forgo it if you want, providing your own MainLoop implementation (instead of the included SceneTree implementation of MainLoop) and then just use the servers directly.
A lot of the editor features are also implemented as plugins. It’s been very easy turning the Godot editor into a custom editor for my game by writing some simple plugins
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.
Heck, I've seen someone build a visual novel-type game with WinForms. That was actually a sensible choice for the game's presentation and interaction needs.
Of course if you want to become a game dev at a studio then you should be competent with whatever the studio uses (or something comparable so you can pivot to their stack). If you only want to make your hobby project and maybe publish it later it doesn't matter if your engine is Unreal, MonoGame, RPG Maker 2000, or vanilla JS/DOM.
I would say that one of the "Miscellaneous Thoughts" at the end of your article answers your question pretty well:
> I need only the best fancy tech to pull off my game idea
Then use Unreal! There's nothing wrong with that, but my projects don't require those kinds of features (and I would argue most of the things I do need can usually be learned fairly quickly).