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Discussion on: Become a Game Designer: Step by Step Guide

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy πŸŽ–οΈ

What if I told you can write your own game engine?

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gabrielfallen profile image
Alexander Chichigin

Then you're a game engine programmer, not a game designer. Just a different job. 🀷

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy πŸŽ–οΈ • Edited

Not necessarily. The two go can totally hand in hand. It can be much better to build your own game engine, so it works exactly the way your game design requires - instead of making your design fit the limitations of the engine.

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gabrielfallen profile image
Alexander Chichigin

In practice -- no. I see a lot of developers developing their own engine and not developing actual game. Because 1. they are programmers, they're good at programming and bad at game design but this way they can trick themselves into thinking they do develop a game; and 2. good game engine is a ton of work, one can spend years and years on it.

Besides, game design is a lot of work too for a decent-size game, one can easily spend years on that too. And that's on producing good game design document only, without art and code.

As a well-known example Jonathan Blow was working on Braid for about 5 years developing both the engine and the rest of the game, and he already was experienced game developer and designer. For an inexperienced developer and designer that would be an impossible endeavour.

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy πŸŽ–οΈ

But ultimately a much more rewarding one

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gabrielfallen profile image
Alexander Chichigin

Are you referring to "an impossible endeavour"? I don't see how a project you can't finish is a rewarding one.

Or you're saying developing a game engine is more rewarding than developing an actual game? Yes if you're a programmer and like developing game engines. I heard Unity engine started like that, they set to develop a game but in the process realized they like developing an engine then dropped the game and started selling the engine (and tooling).

But if you're a game designer then engine development is just a distraction for you. Maybe even annoyance. 🀷

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unitybuddy profile image
Mr. Unity Buddy

Hello Jon! I noticed that you said the same thing on my previous post as well!

Whatever the reason may be, it’s not a good route go down. There are more than enough engines to use, and they’ll all save you time and money. Benefits to using an existing engine are uncountable! They have a lot of tutorials, there are many places to get help when you are stuck at something and you have pre-made assets so you don't have to everything yourself.

It's their choice to choose exactly what they need to do.

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy πŸŽ–οΈ • Edited

If we follow that logic back to its conclusion, we'd never have any new game engines

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gabrielfallen profile image
Alexander Chichigin

You make is sound like "new game engines" are a virtue on their own, but there's no point in new game engines that are just massively underdeveloped copies of existing ones (which is already the case with the wast majority of engines out there).

Besides, the new release of UE can be easily considered a new engine of its own compared to even previous release. And I remember UE1 and UE2, that's not even funny. πŸ˜„