| ▲ | kyzcdev 3 hours ago |
| I believe the instinct to develop a game engine or framework comes down from loving programming and being passionate about mastering a tool. We humans love mastering something and we love masters, when we build something from scratch we own it, we are master of it and we lead the decision. That's so comforting and pleasurable, and the reward we see at the end of the path motivates us. But on the process it's too hard. Nowadays I have the urge to combine a physics engine, rendering engine, ecs engine to develop my own game which I guess I'll quit in the middle. As developers I believe we should limit ourselves from doomcoding. |
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| ▲ | drivers99 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| What's doomcoding? (It's not mentioned in the article and it doesn't appear to be a related term when I google it.) It sounds negative ("doom" + "we should limit ourselves" from it) but everything you said in the context before that sounds good. |
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| ▲ | kyzcdev 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Coding for pleasure I mean. We start a project and then get bored. Like Doomscrolling, for pleasure. | | |
| ▲ | nsyne an hour ago | parent [-] | | I don't think I agree with this. Doomscrolling has a negative connotation - of wasting your time and being unhealthy for the mind. I don't see coding the same way. Sometimes, I code to finish a project and it's a major milestone and I feel accomplished. Other times, I just code something because it sounds like I'd enjoy it and it's fun. I feel fulfilled nonetheless, even if it goes nowhere. I wouldn't equate it to doomscrolling. | | |
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| ▲ | whstl 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I dunno if I agree it's doomcoding. I have worked briefly in the game industry long ago (not in engine teams though) and ended up writing a few engines for myself after leaving, a couple quite complete. It’s just a hobby like another. I have zero interest in writing a full game on top of it, or even publishing it. But do you know who NEVER gives me grief about it? People I know who work at Unity or [previous employer] writing AAA engines. My last monstrosity is a Rust one with zero dependencies other than the std-lib/OS, Metal/DX12/Vulkan, its own physics engine, spatial audio, vm for scripting and other stuff. I will probably do nothing with it other than having updated my skills in a lot of areas. |
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| ▲ | daledavies 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think we have to try these things at least once. My own attempt to write a javascript framework ended with me realising that I needed to put more effort into planning and research, which was a valuable lesson for me. |
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| ▲ | kyzcdev 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes building tools from scratch is a great way to learn. In my carrier a rewrote bunch of front-end frameworks, but then instead of rewriting everything from scratch I decided to simplify existing structures. Once I tried to create my own front-end framework from scratch. I created signal library, mounting/unmouting, context etc but never able to write v-dom diffing or using existing vdom libraries. Then I decided just implement my API on top of Preact. Preact did vdom-diffing for me and mounting/unmounting which was enough for my need. The final project looked nothing like Preact, it even had it's own context system, data loading, signals, setup + render and context which just hooks itself into Preact Context but taught me a lot about how a front-end framework work. | |
| ▲ | vector_spaces 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Right, I think the usual point here that if your goal is to make a game, then this is usually the painful route and conveniently one that up-fronts the likely more exciting and comfortable part for a software engineer, namely the software engineering. It also tends to defer the very important business of learning rather quickly whether our idea even leads to a fun game in the first place That said, it's still a worthwhile exercise that one can learn a lot from. | | |
| ▲ | kyzcdev an hour ago | parent [-] | | Balance is required for everything. There was a youtuber called Randy, he tried to build everything from scratch using C and it took him 6-7 years to finally release a game. Meanwhile I watched a youtuber who just made games from fake-ads in Unity and marketed it well and earned bunch of money. Do we want money or do we want to get the pleasure of being an engineer and make money as a side quest? There was a video of tsoding about why he doesn't have a job, he says "when I have enough money for my needs I just go into coding instead of working". I like his vision. He likes coding for the sake of programming and earns money as a side quest. | | |
| ▲ | lstodd an hour ago | parent [-] | | There is another angle: what if you want to express yourself, but, say, Unity is too limiting? Existing game engines were made to express existing ideas and while there is some stretch they do have hard limits. |
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| ▲ | indy 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| It helps to just write games and then over time an engine will emerge from the common code you carry across projects. Starting from a checklist of features for a game engine almost always ends in wasted effort |
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