So for now, I avoid the engine hype and just stick with the low-level stuff.Īnd engines do have their place. I'd rather make my own game one step at a time, refactoring out useful functions and collecting those functions into a library which one day I might consider an "engine". I'm much more of a baby step kind of person. I loved the idea of an engine, it impressed me and got me motivated to make something, but my knowledge of actual development was so limited that even after knowing how to add the engine to the build path, and maybe writing a few lines to start the engine and then shut it down again, beyond that I never made anything worthwhile. I didn't know how to start from nothing and make something. I'd write some code, I might learn from and base it off of the demo projects, but those were just demos. Then I'd create a new project in my IDE and wouldn't know where to start. I now typically avoid them like the plague, though I understand they should be used wisely and in moderation.įor me, I'd get obsessed over all the possibilities! Looking at a long list of features in engine X, it's like "Wow I could do all this! My game could be great!" So I'd download it, run the demos and be dazzled by those features in action, etc. In my case, I spent a lot of time (months) floundering around getting nothing done because of game engines. If your game engine also has any editors or tools, you will have to build and test those as well before turning them over to artists or relying on them yourself.ĭon't let the fact that the list of disadvantages is longer: when the time spent coding and testing all the systems you need is too long for your production cycle, or if you have more skill with art than code, using a game engine is definitely a good idea.Ī comparison of game engines is in the works in this question: Pro's and Con's of Various 3D Game Engines.If a game is small, the overhead of using an engine may not be worth the time invested to write code yourself.The engine was not designed specifically for your game, so it may be less efficient than code you write specifically for your game.If there is a bug in the engine, unless it is open source you can't fix it.If you are modifying anything, you now need to become familiar with a new codebase.Most if not all of the coding is done for you, so all you have to worry about is content, level layout, etc.Īlong those lines, memory management, asset loading, lighting (in complex engines), etc has all been designed and tested thoroughly (hopefully).Īs mentioned below, if the engine is cross platform you will have to do little to no work to port your game.
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