7 ms·

About time. What makes a game unique in spirit is its engine.

rexpop 3y ago
What an absurdly facile perspective. While it's true that developers like Valve develop games only to take advantage of or exhibit new engine developments and Minecraft's revolutionary voxel engine likewise enabled a game that could not be built otherwise, you seem to be suggesting that eg all UE games throughout the last thirty years are undifferentiated "in spirit" because they share an engine. What an insult to writers, artists, and game designers! None of them have managed to imbue their works with "unique spirit?"
- kevingadd 3y ago
  Minecraft's engine wasn't remotely revolutionary, it was basically a 1:1 riff on an XNA game called Infiniminer that predated it. And its engine wasn't especially good. Minecraft's success is almost entirely due to its accessibility and the fundamental strength of its design - both things that are possible in any game engine. These days a large % of Minecraft installs are a C++ version of the game and not the original Java version, because it's really not about the engine.
  - outworlder 3y ago
    I am not sure I would even call Minecraft as having a "game engine". An engine is usually generalized so it can be extracted and used for many games. > And its engine wasn't especially good. It was good enough. It's non trivial to do, despite appearances. > These days a large % of Minecraft installs are a C++ version of the game and not the original Java version, because it's really not about the engine. But is the Bedrock version even the majority? It's been out for years and adoption is very slow. If it was not for game consoles it might not have taken off at all. And the main reason is mods. Which are not part of the "engine" as you put it, and were enabled by the technology choice.
    - kevingadd 3y ago
      We would need to know how many Minecraft installs are on mobile and console, where Java isn't an option. I would expect it's a large % of the overall userbase, but I don't have access to the numbers. Switch and Android both open Minecraft up to a huge number of people who either don't have a PC or can't install Minecraft on it. Agreed that mods are a big part of the experience and would only really have flourished using technologies like Java (what Notch chose), C# or JavaScript, not C++.
  - rexpop 3y ago
    Fine, "Infiniminer's revolutionary voxel engine."
- ghostzilla 3y ago
  "What an insult to writers, artists, and game designers! None of them have managed to imbue their works with "unique spirit?" As someone said, to the extent they have managed to do it -- and many have -- it was not because of engines like unity but despite them. I imagine all those people would have been happier if the engineers had made a custom engine for them (and quick).
qayxc 3y ago
There's two types of game developers: those who finish and publish games and those who write their own game engine. Every minute spent on re-inventing the wheel for the umpteenth time is time lost on actually writing and polishing the actual game. Tools like Unity were a godsent for small teams and solo devs who just wanted to write and publish games. While libraries like SDL can lighten the burden somewhat, they are still no replacement for solid asset pipelines, visual editors, performance analysing tools, and a mature pipeline for multi-platform packaging and publishing.
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  > There's two types of game developers: those who finish and publish games and those who write their own game engine. This is wrong, there are tons of finished games that use custom engines. For example one of the most recent indie games i bought was Zortch which was made by a single person and used a custom engine. EDIT: actually here is a page that collects some custom engines, ranging from big studios down to one man efforts, all with released games: https://gist.github.com/raysan5/909dc6cf33ed40223eb0dfe625c0de74 https://gist.github.com/raysan5/909dc6cf33ed40223eb0dfe625c0...
  - aaaaaalop 3y ago
    This is meaningless without percentages. How many devs didn't release their games for each game in this list?
    - badsectoracula 3y ago
      This is not meaningless as the message i replied to claimed that developers who write their own game engine do not finish and publish games. That was factually incorrect. What you are asking for is something completely different and unless humanity had some sort of hivemind to have universal knowledge, we can't really know as people start and abandon projects all the time. The best we can do is some heavily biased guesses - and mine would be that the abandoned games in engines like Unity, GameMaker, etc where it is trivial to start a new project would be much more than even other engines (let alone custom engines).
newobj 3y ago
You sure 'bout that?
derstander 3y ago
> What makes a game unique in spirit is its engine. This isn’t true about websites and frameworks or sculptures and chisels. There’s no reason why it should be true of games and their engines. It is a poetic statement though. My opinion is that, in all of these processes, people are the ones that bring the spirit and thus are its source in the final product.

What an absurdly facile perspective. While it's true that developers like Valve develop games only to take advantage of or exhibit new engine developments and Minecraft's revolutionary voxel engine likewise enabled a game that could not be built otherwise, you seem to be suggesting that eg all UE games throughout the last thirty years are undifferentiated "in spirit" because they share an engine. What an insult to writers, artists, and game designers! None of them have managed to imbue their works with "unique spirit?"

kevingadd 3y ago
Minecraft's engine wasn't remotely revolutionary, it was basically a 1:1 riff on an XNA game called Infiniminer that predated it. And its engine wasn't especially good. Minecraft's success is almost entirely due to its accessibility and the fundamental strength of its design - both things that are possible in any game engine. These days a large % of Minecraft installs are a C++ version of the game and not the original Java version, because it's really not about the engine.
- outworlder 3y ago
  I am not sure I would even call Minecraft as having a "game engine". An engine is usually generalized so it can be extracted and used for many games. > And its engine wasn't especially good. It was good enough. It's non trivial to do, despite appearances. > These days a large % of Minecraft installs are a C++ version of the game and not the original Java version, because it's really not about the engine. But is the Bedrock version even the majority? It's been out for years and adoption is very slow. If it was not for game consoles it might not have taken off at all. And the main reason is mods. Which are not part of the "engine" as you put it, and were enabled by the technology choice.
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    We would need to know how many Minecraft installs are on mobile and console, where Java isn't an option. I would expect it's a large % of the overall userbase, but I don't have access to the numbers. Switch and Android both open Minecraft up to a huge number of people who either don't have a PC or can't install Minecraft on it. Agreed that mods are a big part of the experience and would only really have flourished using technologies like Java (what Notch chose), C# or JavaScript, not C++.
- rexpop 3y ago
  Fine, "Infiniminer's revolutionary voxel engine."
ghostzilla 3y ago
"What an insult to writers, artists, and game designers! None of them have managed to imbue their works with "unique spirit?" As someone said, to the extent they have managed to do it -- and many have -- it was not because of engines like unity but despite them. I imagine all those people would have been happier if the engineers had made a custom engine for them (and quick).

qayxc 3y ago

There's two types of game developers: those who finish and publish games and those who write their own game engine. Every minute spent on re-inventing the wheel for the umpteenth time is time lost on actually writing and polishing the actual game. Tools like Unity were a godsent for small teams and solo devs who just wanted to write and publish games. While libraries like SDL can lighten the burden somewhat, they are still no replacement for solid asset pipelines, visual editors, performance analysing tools, and a mature pipeline for multi-platform packaging and publishing.

badsectoracula 3y ago
> There's two types of game developers: those who finish and publish games and those who write their own game engine. This is wrong, there are tons of finished games that use custom engines. For example one of the most recent indie games i bought was Zortch which was made by a single person and used a custom engine. EDIT: actually here is a page that collects some custom engines, ranging from big studios down to one man efforts, all with released games: https://gist.github.com/raysan5/909dc6cf33ed40223eb0dfe625c0de74 https://gist.github.com/raysan5/909dc6cf33ed40223eb0dfe625c0...
- aaaaaalop 3y ago
  This is meaningless without percentages. How many devs didn't release their games for each game in this list?
  - badsectoracula 3y ago
    This is not meaningless as the message i replied to claimed that developers who write their own game engine do not finish and publish games. That was factually incorrect. What you are asking for is something completely different and unless humanity had some sort of hivemind to have universal knowledge, we can't really know as people start and abandon projects all the time. The best we can do is some heavily biased guesses - and mine would be that the abandoned games in engines like Unity, GameMaker, etc where it is trivial to start a new project would be much more than even other engines (let alone custom engines).

newobj 3y ago

You sure 'bout that?

derstander 3y ago

> What makes a game unique in spirit is its engine. This isn’t true about websites and frameworks or sculptures and chisels. There’s no reason why it should be true of games and their engines. It is a poetic statement though. My opinion is that, in all of these processes, people are the ones that bring the spirit and thus are its source in the final product.