Comments on: One Tiny Thing To Remember When Picking Your Game Dev Engine

By: erik yuzwa

erik yuzwa — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 05:07:23 +0000

@Kin: man that’s awesome. I’ve got tears streaming down my cheeks from laughing so hard. Never thought I’d see “Next-Gen” and “GameMaker” in the same sentence….like EVER.

as for your points about the engine developer melting down on the forums, I think some people tend to develop a very strange internet-success-barometer. The more vile they become, the harsher criticisms they receive, which convinces them the better they are….

I do actually understand the logic, but it only really works in moderation. If you surround yourself with “Yes” men, then you never reach your potential, but if you also only surround yourself with “No” men, then you don’t even get close. I think to be successful you have to have the ability to listen to both camps.

As for 3D, I hate it. I think it’s been the giant sinkhole in every single project that attempts it. Why? The minute you mention “3D”, people develop an expectation of photo-realism. You’re already dead before you render your first black triangle.

When you say “2D”, then there’s lots of wiggle room to either create abstract tilesets all the way up to realistic tiles. And guess what? 2D still sells like hotcakes.

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:52:05 +0000

@Juuso: oops yeah I meant doesn’t. That’s what happens when you type whilst under the influence of influenza.

By: KIN

KIN — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:10:20 +0000

I have a Unity Indie license (luckily, I payed for it 2.2 months before they made it free, I feel special) and am just waiting for them to make it to 3.0 with all the important updates (like… tutorials..) in the package before I even consider using it for a commercial app.

Meanwhile, my game (which I actually managed to recreate on Unity) in its 2D glory is doing just fine on the next-gen engine called GameMaker (totally next-gen).

Anyways, I have always viewed Leadwerks engine updates with great fascination. The visuals in the images with their news posts all over the place look just too damn good for the price. I also enjoy how the developer of that engine manages to be hostile to everyone criticizing his engine (on sites like Gamedev). :D

By: magallanes

magallanes — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:58:22 +0000

Hi there:

Exist two different kind of trouble with a engine.
The first one, previously mentioned, is the end-product. For windows, directx9c is more than enough, if a game uses as mandatory directx10 or higher then you can bet that this will hurts your sales.

And the second problem is the ide. I use Unity3d and the ide is sometimes pretty tricky. Luckily, part of the job can be done using visual studio ;-) But some other jobs are tied to a non-efficient ide and it can increase the developed time, hence increasing the value.

By: Juuso

Juuso — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:30:02 +0000

@Ville: let me know if you find one… ;)

@Lumooja: Dunno about LE 2.3 new version, but I kind of feel that it’s not stable to “use and never upgrade”. All I’ve done is upgraded :)

@Jake: whadda heck are you talking about the “realtime global illumination”? I presume you forgot to add “not” there, right?

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:25:40 +0000

True. It’s possible (but harder) to do both.

By: Lumooja

Lumooja — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:26:07 +0000

Yeah, it would be probably easier to make money with Facebook apps, but game making is not always about money, for me it’s also about making something which doesn’t exist yet and I always wanted to play.

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:50:13 +0000

Farmville does have “Realtime global illumination” or use the latest tech (unless you call the Facebook API the latest tech) and it has 60 million players and is on track to make $200,000,000 this year. Just a thought…

By: Lumooja

Lumooja — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:13:11 +0000

Well, I can only recommend Leadwerks Engine 2.3, it’s cheap: 134€, easy to use, completely realtime (even editing scenes and coding is realtime), fast, and can produce AAA titles similar to Crysis.

By: Ville Mönkkönen

Ville Mönkkönen — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:58:11 +0000

I’ve been developing my own engine for over five years, I use middleware. It drives me mad every time a new version of each middleware is released. They say it fixed this and that important bug, and obviously the interface has changed. And no- it won’t work with your old DirectX version anymore, you have to ask your customers to update that as well.

I’d want a good, cheap engine, and never have to update it. Who has one?