Question about using an engine

General Discussions
#1

Hi everyone,

I’ve spent a few months working on a game of mine, only to find a few engines out there that might help me out considerably. Now i have a general question about using such an engine. Overall in the game development community, is it frowned upon to code an indie game off a prebuilt engine rather than starting from scratch? I’m pretty new to game programming but i feel like im a rather advanced java programmer.

I’ve been working on my own engine (if you could cal it that) but i feel as though all i’m doing is reinventing the wheel; i’m spending considerable effort programming in functions and honestly in these few months i havent even begun on the actual game yet. I think i went into this project a bit ill informed on my part; i still havent implemented openGL support, lighting, etc etc :frowning:

so once again, what is your opinion on someone using an open source engine in their indie game?

#2

Short of actually stealing code or assets, nothing whatsoever is frowned upon as long as it gets you a good game. If an engine is what helps you make your game, go ahead and use it – that’s what they exist for!

#3

That is I think the last question I would expect. You make it sound like it has something do with fashion. The cool kids use pre-built engines too, really!

I have a question for you: do you need an engine?

(note: I’m not saying that blog post is the ultimate truth, it just put some things in perspective for me)

#4

thanks for the post.

Honestly the reason i want to use an engine is so that i can begin working on my game rather than trying to figure out how to implement openGL lol. I’m kidding :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m not really asking this to be “cool” or anything, but i just wanted to know what the indie programmer/developer community thinks about stuff like that. Am i gonna be labeled a “script kiddie” because i didnt start from scratch, considering that i want to eventually sell my product?

#5

As far I see, indie game dev world isn’t same as hacking world. No one call you kiddies, larva, or anything rude. Even some popular games are made using TOOL! (upper layer to engine, like GM, C2, Unity). What you need is make something playable and let the world judges it. Tool, engine, or raw language code is your call.

#6

[quote=“thermalburn,post:4,topic:39391”]
Practically no customer will ever notice whatever framework or engine you are using. It’s just some nice colorful logo’s, or some meaningless text sentences somewhere on application startup. So by all means, use the engine which lets you develop a cool game the fastest and which provides the best experience for gamers ;D

#7

You do need to make an informed decision about the capabilities of the engine you are using versus the size and complexity of your ambitions, mind. Not all engines are adept at all situations.

Cas :slight_smile:

#8

What counts for the enduser is:

#is it easy to install and run (no fizzing with files and setups oe downloading wired plugins)
#does it run (run at all on this machine and setup)
#does it run performant and stable (dont narrow down the game to highend machines)

everthing else is hidden under a layer of smoke for the casual user. So it does not matter much wich engine you use
from the user perspective.

#9

Use whatever tools give you the greatest edge. I once heard about a programmer who wanted to use nothing but a text editor to code. Unfortunately he had the lowest productivity of the team and had to be fired.

And most importantly, stand on the shoulders of giants. By using Java you’re already riding on top of Sun Microsystem’s Garbage Collection, Memory Management system and Virtual Runtime Environment, not to mention the Operating System that those technologies are running on top of. So no, feel no guilt or shame, all that matters at the end of the day is the quality of your product (and of course how gratifying the experience is).

#10

I’m a big believer of needing to understand what problems the tools you use are solving or else you won’t be able to effectively use that tool to do your job.

And thus in my opinion before you can use a graphics engine you need to understand how the videocard does its thing and how OpenGL works (and more importantly: when it does not work). Before you can use a physics engine you’d need to have an understanding of how the math behind all that works. Heck, when you want to deal with something as simple as input it is a good idea to know how the different devices communicate their signals. Before you can use a game engine it might be a good idea to know how you build a game without one first - the simplest game can do, as long as you have faced and conquered the problems that you’ll get when trying to create just any game including Pong or Tetris.

Why do I believe that? I don’t believe that you need to learn all that to be able to start creating something - trial and error can already get you to the point where something is happening on the screen. You learn all that to have something to fall back on when things don’t work as you expect them to. Which will happen, often. It just sucks when you can’t explain it yourself.

#11

Its a question of efficiency, timemanagement and focus.

A “low level” Programmer will want to invest time(x) into understanding
and rebuilding a problem (lets say communication with the graphics card)
to have a fallback or workaround in a future project.

An “artist” will just want to have the least hassle by using a tool
to spend time(x) on creating content. While not having all possible
functionality a selfmade engine could have and beeing somewhat locked to this tool and its flaws.

So first question is: what is your main focus.
Another one: does spending time in this tool or technology
pay off in the future.

#12

A practical suggestion:

make a list of 5 potential Engines.
Spend 1 day for each getting it set up, looking at some projects other made with it and doing some programming tests.

In the end, rank them and choose the one that you feel most productive with
and that has the features you require.

#13

I’d endorse what Damocles said: it’s all about where you want to be focusing your time. If there are engines that do the things you don’t want to do then great!

I’m not using an engine but only because I want to do deferred rendering which isn’t well supported in many engines at all (or any Java ones)

#14

Lol… your completly right, I’m totally the “low level” one :smiley:

#15

The “low level VS artist” is a little bit too black & white for me, but whatever floats your boat :wink: There are more realistic ranges in between those extremes.

#16

I like to save the most precious good you have: time
Currently I use about 10-15 3rd party libraries.