Any game developers here?

[mid_gen]

Thank you for your reply. You make a good point.

I think the difference is that I'd like to make the engine an open source project and get some people who are interested in it involved with development. The game would be an off shoot on the engine and would be done by myself.

But I'll see about prototyping ideas on Unreal to start with as you suggest. At least then I'll be able to see what is going on.

Don't get me wrong, Unreal has many flaws But it does have a good solid implementation of most of the core tech you need to make most games.

If you want to go the engine route, I'd recommend Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory....gives a good overview of most stuff, and give some idea of the undertaking.

There are a lot of open source engines around...it will be very tough to persuade people to spend their time and effort contributing to your one, amongst all the far better established ones...and while being Linux only may be a positive in your eyes...the reality is that no-one is interested in an engine that only supports Linux...not when there are swathes of existing engines out there that support multiple platforms, including Linux.

Just trying to be realistic....you're not the first person to make a post like this. The reality is that you won't get any useful contributions, and if you are one of the tiny minority of people that sticks with it, will spend years building an engine, and get burned out/bored of it, before you ever think about making your game.

I may be a little biased as I'm an AI/gameplay programmer, rather than engine

 

[Rroff]

You have to bear in mind people who write game engines generally have come through a whole process starting often with simple 2D games in BASIC, etc. and progressing on through progressively more complex projects building up a robust understanding of areas well outside of just the core mechanical code of the game engine and how it all ties together and the usefulness of getting certain approaches right from the start (like how you handle the format and back end of your data for purposes like saving and loading a game) - without that you have a prohibitive task even with a good architectural book/guide to reference/read up on.

Something I pretty much advise anyone who wants to jump into the deep end of the more nitty-gritty side of game development is to grab one of the open source projects for the type of game they want to make, these days there tends to be some decent ones available, and do a bit of modding - Quake 2 being a good start if you are interested in FPS games - set some simple goals at first even things like just changing the amount of health the player has, etc. and you quickly start to see how the various bits of the puzzle come together even if that knowledge isn't directly transferable to the next game or project.

 

[jsmoke]

Yep, writing a game engine is a mammoth task. It's analogous to building the pyramids. I'd say it will take you around 20 years of hard work if you want all the latest bells and whistles. Not trying to put your off but I have a good idea of the complexities involved. You get the source code with Unreal also.

 

[Cromulent]

OK. Point made. I'll concentrate on learning the Unreal Engine in that case. Thank you all for being so honest with me. Sometimes you need someone to make you rethink your plans.

 

[jsmoke]

Did you ever get round to starting or creating your game?

I was going to try something with unity if your interested?

 

[Cromulent]

Did you ever get round to starting or creating your game?

I was going to try something with unity if your interested?

Unfortunately, I've been in hospital since August so I haven't really got much useful stuff done yet. I should be out before Christmas though which I when I'm going to be concentrating on this much more.

 

[dowie]

Unfortunately, I've been in hospital since August so I haven't really got much useful stuff done yet. I should be out before Christmas though which I when I'm going to be concentrating on this much more.

I remember you asked about maths stuff (for game development) 2 years ago, then I've seen threads where you want to create your own cryptocurrency, you were doing an OU degree but then a year later you're asking about re-doing a-levels etc..

And now it's back to game development and not just developing a game but initially, at least in the first post, you seem to want to do it from scratch. It's great to have ambitions but it's not so great if you can't commit and get stuff done.

Perhaps your first thing to read ought to be:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/1847941834/

Or:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/12-Rules-Life-Paperback-Job/dp/B07S69YC62/

(ignore the author's participation in the culture war etc.. he's a legit psychology prof & clinical psychologist practitioner first (or at least as legit as psych profs can be))

Disclaimer, I'm not a game developer but have you even made a game before? Would it not be easier to perhaps try to build a simpler 2d game first, then maybe move on to building something simple with an existing game engine or getting involved in modding an existing game (there seem to be communities of modders out there) that sort of stuff would make for more achievable projects? Especially if there are health issues to worry about too.

I'd look at setting achievable goals, work a bit on your project/towards a goal each day... even if it is a small amount of progress. That's the way you complete stuff, even small wins/achievements can go a long way.

 

[Rroff]

Hijacking the thread a bit but does anyone have any suggestions for a mid-level game development suit?

I don't have the time any more to build stuff like this from scratch with C/C++ - I've put some time into Unreal Engine, Unity, Leadworks, Godot and just don't feel they do what I want - also investigated stuff like BlitzBasic3D and DarkBasic Pro but Blitz is too old really, though otherwise suits what I want well, and I'd have to spend a lot of time updating the released source to get what I want which kind of defeats the purpose and DB Pro is somewhat awkward to work with and after spending some hours building proper object handling I got bored of it.

What I really am looking for it a fairly basic but extendable model/asset pipeline, ideally a built in UI or robust 3rd party plugin/library, ability to drop out to Windows API level and built in support for things like loading and manipulating models, audio, etc. but a fairly intuitive coding environment where I can build game logic, etc. from scratch with access to things like vertex data and so on.

Unreal Engine for instance the more basic visual approach/blueprints is way too basic for my needs and doesn't suit the kind of data and extensibility I want to work with while the more advanced approach often has huge gaps in the flow where documentation just kind of skips over steps and I don't have the patience to try and figure out or makes you jump through hoops with overly complex systems even when you only need a partial amount of the feature set they provide, etc.

 

[Jay85]

You have to bear in mind people who write game engines generally have come through a whole process starting often with simple 2D games in BASIC, etc. and progressing on through progressively more complex projects building up a robust understanding of areas well outside of just the core mechanical code of the game engine and how it all ties together and the usefulness of getting certain approaches right from the start (like how you handle the format and back end of your data for purposes like saving and loading a game) - without that you have a prohibitive task even with a good architectural book/guide to reference/read up on.

Something I pretty much advise anyone who wants to jump into the deep end of the more nitty-gritty side of game development is to grab one of the open source projects for the type of game they want to make, these days there tends to be some decent ones available, and do a bit of modding - Quake 2 being a good start if you are interested in FPS games - set some simple goals at first even things like just changing the amount of health the player has, etc. and you quickly start to see how the various bits of the puzzle come together even if that knowledge isn't directly transferable to the next game or project.

Ah this brings me back to my first year at uni doing games technology (which i dropped after 1st year, just wasn't for me), our end year project was to write a basic 2D game and i picked pong lol. Some lines of code later in C++ and you have the basic game more or less. Can't even remember half of it tbh, i struggled a lot with C++ despite learning it when i was around 14 cos my uncle is a programmer and introduced me to coding.

 

[Rroff]

Ah this brings me back to my first year at uni doing games technology (which i dropped after 1st year, just wasn't for me), our end year project was to write a basic 2D game and i picked pong lol. Some lines of code later in C++ and you have the basic game more or less. Can't even remember half of it tbh, i struggled a lot with C++ despite learning it when i was around 14 cos my uncle is a programmer and introduced me to coding.

Wish I still had some of my early 2D games. The courses I did were mostly based around Visual Basic 3 only later did a bit of C come into it.

First game I had to create for a programming course we had a choice of creating a building lift fully functional visually or creating a game with whatever you made demonstrating the use of 3 concepts for handling objects with multiple states switching between different tasks/states which I forget details of now. Only two of us created games mine was heavily inspired by Worms IIRC with mad grannies, exploding cows and UFO and turned out was unintentionally hilarious as you could do all kinds of silly combos I'd never intended. Other guy created something quite impressive though kind of boring procedurally generated side scroller platform game but the gameplay was really quite limited but the ever changing background and enemy was pretty impressive especially as it was made in VB3. Everyone else used the provided template to create a lift system heh.

 

[mid_gen]

Hijacking the thread a bit but does anyone have any suggestions for a mid-level game development suit?

I don't have the time any more to build stuff like this from scratch with C/C++ - I've put some time into Unreal Engine, Unity, Leadworks, Godot and just don't feel they do what I want - also investigated stuff like BlitzBasic3D and DarkBasic Pro but Blitz is too old really, though otherwise suits what I want well, and I'd have to spend a lot of time updating the released source to get what I want which kind of defeats the purpose and DB Pro is somewhat awkward to work with and after spending some hours building proper object handling I got bored of it.

What I really am looking for it a fairly basic but extendable model/asset pipeline, ideally a built in UI or robust 3rd party plugin/library, ability to drop out to Windows API level and built in support for things like loading and manipulating models, audio, etc. but a fairly intuitive coding environment where I can build game logic, etc. from scratch with access to things like vertex data and so on.

Unreal Engine for instance the more basic visual approach/blueprints is way too basic for my needs and doesn't suit the kind of data and extensibility I want to work with while the more advanced approach often has huge gaps in the flow where documentation just kind of skips over steps and I don't have the patience to try and figure out or makes you jump through hoops with overly complex systems even when you only need a partial amount of the feature set they provide, etc.

The problem is that what you're asking for sits in the market no man's land in between indie/amateur world (Unity/Unreal etc), and larger studios who just roll their own stuff.

You're probably best starting with a rendering engine like Ogre, and selecting your own libraries for asset handling, UI, audio, etc etc.

 

[Rroff]

The problem is that what you're asking for sits in the market no man's land in between indie/amateur world (Unity/Unreal etc), and larger studios who just roll their own stuff.

You're probably best starting with a rendering engine like Ogre, and selecting your own libraries for asset handling, UI, audio, etc etc.

Haven't looked at Ogre - probably similar to what I did years back though with DX7 and using Novadex physics and Miles for audio, etc. (think I got that right was like 20 years ago).

EDIT: Tell a lie did have a play with Ogre but that was a good few years ago - lot has changed since.

 

[mid_gen]

Haven't looked at Ogre - probably similar to what I did years back though with DX7 and using Novadex physics and Miles for audio, etc. (think I got that right was like 20 years ago).

EDIT: Tell a lie did have a play with Ogre but that was a good few years ago - lot has changed since.

Never used it myself....I understand it's just a rendering engine (or at least it used to be)....there are probably others out there these days.

 

[FredFlint]

I did a basic multi slice blocks game in .net/OpenGL just for fun and then ported it to android using .net. Also did a basic car in C++.

blocks desktop in .net

Mobile Blocks

Basic Car

Not complete games but fun to mess with.

 

[MatteRB26]

I did a basic multi slice blocks game in .net/OpenGL just for fun and then ported it to android using .net. Also did a basic car in C++.

blocks desktop in .net

Mobile Blocks

Basic Car

Not complete games but fun to mess with.

These actually look pretty impressive. The most I've done is projects that died in Unity and later Godot

 

[FredFlint]

These actually look pretty impressive. The most I've done is projects that died in Unity and later Godot

I have never used things like Unity, I was just messing with OpenGL. I started adding collision detection to the car and sort of got it working but not very well but i did implement Ackerman Steering which was cool.

 

[R.P.L]

I'm currently trying to learn Unreal with the aim of creating a multiplayer FPS, as I feel like the current crop are all lacking what I want in some way (I loved a lot about MW2019 but there are some things that I would change, and a lot of the game modes don't appeal to me). I'm giving myself until the end of the year to create something that resembles a playable game. I've always been crap at focusing on projects but I am hoping to actually achieve some kind of finished product with this one!