Mr. Hands

I'm sorry if I was part of the problem there 😅, I was in a moment of online-brain and included Maddy in a list of devs who have done custom engine work to end on a pithy note, obviously they (and others in that list) have done a lot of work in stock engines, (I also really love GM)

I quickly corrected that post, it's easy to slip into versus mentality when these things have nuance.

Also I agree with you here! Engine is given a lot of extra importance by individuals who don't understand that the longest hardest parts of a game is all the rest of it 😊

yeah 100%. I think it's helpful to remind trained coders that making a minimal game engine is a possibility, but the existence of ready-made engines of all sizes is hugely empowering (and still requires a ton of skill and work that should be respected).

sorry that people have been saying that! there are game designs where the current standard game engines won't help you much more than sdl, like you said, but pretty much every indie game design could be made in any big engine imo. i like my custom engine, but all my games would work fine in unity or unreal or game maker or anything else.

I like and appreciate what you're saying here, but I also feel obliged to represent the sentiment of a friend of mine, who spent years professionally porting Game Maker games to consoles and now makes his own engine for his own games: He'd say that it is misleading to say that GML is only "slightly" janky, and that Game Maker in particular is awful for both experts and beginners. Love2D and Godot he praises, so it's not a question of being anti-engine, just specifically anti-Game Maker. I guess he'd know.

very similar to my own thoughts. I often throw in the additional thought that as a solo dev with often limited attention/energy I am very interested in leveraging the collective work of dozens of talented people even if I need to put in some elbow grease to get it the way I want it.

still, it really sucks to have unity collapse out from under me

i started using game engines years ago because i was frustrated with how hard it was just to implement basic functionality in C++. it’s not even a question of “low level language vs high level engine”, it’s “not make a game vs actually finish a game in a reasonable amount of time”. these are tools specifically tailored to help you make the thing you are trying to make, and you’re not lesser for using/not using them. also… have the people saying this not played the games that came out of these engines? there are some really great ones that probably wouldn’t exists otherwise!