As some folks like to say, “the cat’s out of the bag”. I am surprised open source isnt a bigger deal in the game dev world. The web is ruled by it. As i’ve been looking at godot recently, coming from the open source world, it was a breath of fresh air being able to read the source to understand what the engine does, and even to be able to make changes that suit my needs. You dont have to pick godot. Any open source engine that works for you is a good choice. Imagine you are leveraging work done by people with a similar need and similar challenges, instead of a bunch of disconnected business folks and product managers that build engines for the sake of building them. The engineers working on unity are great but we all know how engineering is enshitified as soon as business folks take control.
I’d say this to game devs - if open source works just fine for some of the most complex web and operating systems out there it will work great for game dev. Dont be afraid of making the switch.
The lack of interest in developing a custom game engine today surprises me. It should go without saying that using a tool like Unity can help you get going quickly, but when it doesn't exactly fit your original game idea, it can and does often turn into an uphill battle. Directly utilising the SDKs without the use of middleware grants the most freedom, and technologies like DirectX were actually designed to simplify life to begin with.
99.99...(some arbitrary significant digit)% of "game ideas" are perfectly capable of being represented in Unity or most modern game engines. For the rest, it's easier to change your concept rather than put off shipping for several years to build a competitive engine just to scratch your specific programmer itches.
Plenty of people do start their own custom engines. The problem is, a general purpose game engine of any relevant quality is comparable in complexity to a modern web browser, most game developers don't have the time or talent to handle that, and once they get past a gee-whiz renderer and maybe loading textures, they wind up in the weeds and never ship anything again.
Don't get me wrong - I've done it. I've got the corpses of several "game engines" including the ersatz one I'm building around a roguelike that I haven't and may never finish, but it isn't a satisfactory general solution for most people.
There's a ton of interest in it. There are forums out there that are years old with people showing off game engines, whole subreddits dedicated to the topic, too.
The problem is, it's a massively difficult undertaking to make a custom 3D game engine. Rendering alone is a huge topic without getting into the specifics of interfacing with GPU drivers. Window management is incredibly complex, especially if you want to support multiple platforms, or multiple modes of input. And then once you have all of that figured out, you still have to make some system to integrate the state of your game with all of those systems, and then finally, add your game logic on top. All while still building out those lower level systems as you go.
This is way easier to do in 2D than it is in 3D, largely because most people have a better grasp of 2D geometry than 3D, but even just making something OG Mario Bros. needs a fairly substantial game engine. Sure you can code golf it into something tiny, but then you don't have an engine, you have a game program. Engines need a certain level of flexibility to explore.
And sure, there are libraries for doing all of those things, but wiring them up together often ends up with piles of adapter code between the libraries to let them all use each other's data structures, at which point natural groupings of libraries form, and you're effectively back to having a game engine, just by defacto standard instead of intentional assembly.
This whole spectacle belies a decided lack of ability to think like ones customers do .. if Activision had thought for a moment about what it would be like to have their own titles subject to these same license impositions, they'd have had ample warning about how the rest of the market would respond.
But, they simply didn't think about this from their customers' perspective - and this is itself a very shocking circumstance for a million-dollar industry to ignore.
It goes without saying that if you can't think like your customer will, then you're not ready to deliver them a product. If you think your customers are your product, you're in dark territory, as well.
Have Activision been treating their third-party developers like they are chattle? It sure seems like it in this case.
This one is going into the textbooks on how to not conduct a revenu model change.
Most of their customers are way to locked in for them to change engine in the short or even medium term, but this will have significant future impacts.
If you don't need the job, really do ask them these hard questions. Your personal financial stability is on the line, so be very careful about joining a company that is this detached from its customers.
gumballindie|2 years ago
I’d say this to game devs - if open source works just fine for some of the most complex web and operating systems out there it will work great for game dev. Dont be afraid of making the switch.
thaanpaa|2 years ago
krapp|2 years ago
Plenty of people do start their own custom engines. The problem is, a general purpose game engine of any relevant quality is comparable in complexity to a modern web browser, most game developers don't have the time or talent to handle that, and once they get past a gee-whiz renderer and maybe loading textures, they wind up in the weeds and never ship anything again.
Don't get me wrong - I've done it. I've got the corpses of several "game engines" including the ersatz one I'm building around a roguelike that I haven't and may never finish, but it isn't a satisfactory general solution for most people.
chris37879|2 years ago
The problem is, it's a massively difficult undertaking to make a custom 3D game engine. Rendering alone is a huge topic without getting into the specifics of interfacing with GPU drivers. Window management is incredibly complex, especially if you want to support multiple platforms, or multiple modes of input. And then once you have all of that figured out, you still have to make some system to integrate the state of your game with all of those systems, and then finally, add your game logic on top. All while still building out those lower level systems as you go.
This is way easier to do in 2D than it is in 3D, largely because most people have a better grasp of 2D geometry than 3D, but even just making something OG Mario Bros. needs a fairly substantial game engine. Sure you can code golf it into something tiny, but then you don't have an engine, you have a game program. Engines need a certain level of flexibility to explore.
And sure, there are libraries for doing all of those things, but wiring them up together often ends up with piles of adapter code between the libraries to let them all use each other's data structures, at which point natural groupings of libraries form, and you're effectively back to having a game engine, just by defacto standard instead of intentional assembly.
JumpCrisscross|2 years ago
This is 20% cheaper than Epic, correct?
malermeister|2 years ago
boffinAudio|2 years ago
But, they simply didn't think about this from their customers' perspective - and this is itself a very shocking circumstance for a million-dollar industry to ignore.
It goes without saying that if you can't think like your customer will, then you're not ready to deliver them a product. If you think your customers are your product, you're in dark territory, as well.
Have Activision been treating their third-party developers like they are chattle? It sure seems like it in this case.
PeterStuer|2 years ago
Most of their customers are way to locked in for them to change engine in the short or even medium term, but this will have significant future impacts.
ffgjgf1|2 years ago
compacct27|2 years ago
toomuchtodo|2 years ago
dehrmann|2 years ago
havnagiggle|2 years ago
rf15|2 years ago