Dana Callista Lexa 🏳️‍⚧️

that video on mario 64 invisible walls is incredibly impressive but also I feel like the sheer amount of "for some reason"s and "this game is soooo glitchy and buggy" comments in the video are going to do a lot of work disguising the fact that every single one of these optimizations are probably the only reason ANY of that shit runs on the n64 hardware to begin with

experienced gamedevs didn't take these shortcuts for fun, they likely were under signifiant time pressure, under a shifting technical landscape, and trying to optimize for complex collision on a processor whose clock speed is significantly outdone by any post-2007 graphing calculator

the fact that by and large ONLY speedrunners see these issues is frankly a real testament to how well they did

the apex of comedy is when you Google a problem you’re having and the top forum result is “this isn’t a good idea, maybe don’t do this”

Yes I know it’s not a great idea to make Gamemaker resize the window, camera, and main surface every single frame. I can tell by the engine creaking under the weight of the effort. If it was a good idea I wouldn’t be doing it, now either pass the duct tape or get outta here

my takeaway from all the articles about nintendo's Tears of the Kingdom physics talk at GDC is that they basically rolled their own physics system, yes, but that their real success was in managing to, from a design and structural standpoint, put that physics design at the core of their development goals, such that rather than it having to compromise for the sake of other departments' vision, all departments' goals and tools stemmed directly from the physics system and when the physics was getting in the way the solution was not to stopgap it but to iterate and even add to the physics system until it facilitated that gameplay.

That's like. Really hard to do. I can't overstate how hard it is to do that. It requires not just a really strong top-down vision but a willingness to throw away a lot of traditional game design principles and tricks that would interfere with said physics design in favour of coming up with ideas that facilitate it instead. The amount of testing and iteration and organization that must have gone into this whole thing on an every-department level... my god.

So often, you're greeted with the splash screen of Unreal Engine or "Made with Unity" when booting up a game, two of the most common game engines today. These are robust and mature engines, but they're not always the best options for independent developers, according to longtime developer Rez Graham. At a GDC 2024 talk titled "A Case for Making Your Own Game Engine," he advocated for building games on your own tech through frameworks and libraries—existing tools that offer some major advantages and, admittedly, some disadvantages developers should be aware of.

Graham has been making games independently under BleachKitty following his work at Electronic Arts on The Sims series. From his perspective and experience, the most popular game engines aren't always the best fit for development, and it really depends on your goals and the type of game you want to make. That makes sense on paper, but he outlined several factors that need to be considered when deciding whether to build your own tech or work with existing engines.

Read our full write-up of the talk at Game Developer.

I appreciate that there's an argument to be made here depending on the goals and scope of your game but also "C++ programmer with 20 years of professional experience says you should roll your own engine" is advice I'd caveat fairly heavily compared to if it was coming from someone in a less technical role