Re:Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang
by cyber_kinetist on Monday October 18, 2021 @12:06PM
(#28907020)
Well, though I’ve also seen people do the same thing inside of existing engines, for example trying to use Unity but become so frustrated with its design so much that they begin to spending their time building their own external systems and tools. It seems more of a mindset problem than what engine you actually use (whether you build your own or not).
If you have some amount of self-discipline and implement your custom engine to be minimal and only tailored to your game (as many indie games have demonstrated), I don’t see how it can’t be done.
Re:Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang
by mbrodersen on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @07:15PM
(#28924918)
Unity is used more than any other game engine in the world to release successful commercial games. If you can’t figure out how to use Unity to make commercial games then the problem is you not Unity. I have released commercial games using 3D game engines I wrote from scratch years ago before Unity existed. I would never recommend doing that today when Unity is available and so easy to use compared with having to write everything from scratch.
That's it right there. You can spent years pretending to write a game while optimizing your from-scratch engine for features that probably no-one will ever use [1]. But I think it depends on what your goal is.
If it's a small hobby project, and you enjoy the process of writing your own engine (which, granted, can also be a great learning experience), then why not? You're probably in for the fun anyway.
I know some indie devs who learned the hard way that if your goal is in fact to eventually release a game, doing it without using an existing engine can reaaally drag things out.
I think it's tempting: you can get started on a new "engine" pretty easily, and get something up and running in a day or two. But then comes the long tail of adding all the other stuff, which often isn't so much fun.
A lot of the game development process isn't actually programming, so by writing everything from scratch, a programmer can artificially shift the focus into the direction they're more comfortable with.
[1] https://handmadehero.org/