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So Frameworks like Unity for game development are basically dead, making it so that indie developers who don't have the money/ability to write their entire engi

by tibbon 17y ago

So Frameworks like Unity for game development are basically dead, making it so that indie developers who don't have the money/ability to write their entire engines from scratch are nearly banished and putting only the AAA title makers in the running. Great...

ahi 17y ago
That is precisely the point. They don't need more apps, they need more AAA apps.
- Steve0 17y ago
  How about we let the consumer decide which apps are worthy of their cash. It's been going on for many years and this model works pretty good.
- wvenable 17y ago
  That might be true, but the implicit assumption here is that only EA can make AAA games and indie developers just produce crap. That assumption has been demonstrated to be false on both points.
  - lallysingh 17y ago
    Not at all! You can buy a few C++ game engines (e.g. Torque) and port them. I have Torque running on Linux, Solaris, Mac, & Windows. Considering it's normal posix underneath, you just have to redo some plumbing.
    - potatolicious 17y ago
      The iPhone is POSIX, but not to you as the developer. Porting Torque to the iPhone will have to be done by GarageGames, not by you - even if you pull it off it will certainly be violating a laundry list of App Store rules.
      - lallysingh 17y ago
        .. but you get the source & build tools. Why can't I do it?
        potatolicious 17y ago
        Well, for one thing, you have no file system - and that's just first among the list of POSIX-y things that Apple internally has access to, but you do not as a 3rd-party. The amount of plumbing to be ripped out is pretty extreme given that you don't have access to large bits of the OS. Not to mention Torque is not written with OpenGL ES in mind - so you'd have to rewrite not only plumbing, but some core graphics code. To make it an Apple-compliant app, porting Torque (or most desktop engines for that matter) is simply not feasible/worthwhile.
    - JabavuAdams 17y ago
      Um. Except maybe you can't use TorqueScript for your game logic. Unity is almost surely written in C++, but game logic is done in Javascript and C#, on Mono.
- fauigerzigerk 17y ago
  The question is who the next AAA title makers are going to be. What kind of culture will they emerge from? What will be the platform of choice for the first game of that as yet unknown small company that is going to be the next the AAA title maker?
tedunangst 17y ago
Why can't an indie developer use a game engine written in C, C++, or Objective-C?
- potatolicious 17y ago
  Nearly every major game engine out there uses scripting for actual game logic - it decouples the engine from game code, which is desirable (no rebuilds to alter basic game behavior, for example, enabling faster turnarounds and prototyping). Hell, the most popular game engine of our day (Unreal) uses its own proprietary JavaScript-like language for nearly all game code. Other engines like Gamebryo leverage Lua extensively - to the benefit of both developers as well as consumers, who can modify the game (not an iPhone advantage, but still).
  - barrkel 17y ago
    For the record, UnrealScript is closer to Java or C# than JavaScript. As an aside, it has some very interesting support for simultaneously running the same code in two network locations, with the authoritative version updating the non-authoritative ones after a network sync, to help eliminate some of the drawbacks of network lag. Also, modal behaviours (used for AI that needs to do different things when touched etc. depending on its state).

by tibbon 17y ago

ahi 17y ago

That is precisely the point. They don't need more apps, they need more AAA apps.

Steve0 17y ago
How about we let the consumer decide which apps are worthy of their cash. It's been going on for many years and this model works pretty good.
wvenable 17y ago
That might be true, but the implicit assumption here is that only EA can make AAA games and indie developers just produce crap. That assumption has been demonstrated to be false on both points.
- lallysingh 17y ago
  Not at all! You can buy a few C++ game engines (e.g. Torque) and port them. I have Torque running on Linux, Solaris, Mac, & Windows. Considering it's normal posix underneath, you just have to redo some plumbing.
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    The iPhone is POSIX, but not to you as the developer. Porting Torque to the iPhone will have to be done by GarageGames, not by you - even if you pull it off it will certainly be violating a laundry list of App Store rules.
    - lallysingh 17y ago
      .. but you get the source & build tools. Why can't I do it?
      - potatolicious 17y ago
        Well, for one thing, you have no file system - and that's just first among the list of POSIX-y things that Apple internally has access to, but you do not as a 3rd-party. The amount of plumbing to be ripped out is pretty extreme given that you don't have access to large bits of the OS. Not to mention Torque is not written with OpenGL ES in mind - so you'd have to rewrite not only plumbing, but some core graphics code. To make it an Apple-compliant app, porting Torque (or most desktop engines for that matter) is simply not feasible/worthwhile.
  - JabavuAdams 17y ago
    Um. Except maybe you can't use TorqueScript for your game logic. Unity is almost surely written in C++, but game logic is done in Javascript and C#, on Mono.
fauigerzigerk 17y ago
The question is who the next AAA title makers are going to be. What kind of culture will they emerge from? What will be the platform of choice for the first game of that as yet unknown small company that is going to be the next the AAA title maker?

tedunangst 17y ago

Why can't an indie developer use a game engine written in C, C++, or Objective-C?

potatolicious 17y ago
Nearly every major game engine out there uses scripting for actual game logic - it decouples the engine from game code, which is desirable (no rebuilds to alter basic game behavior, for example, enabling faster turnarounds and prototyping). Hell, the most popular game engine of our day (Unreal) uses its own proprietary JavaScript-like language for nearly all game code. Other engines like Gamebryo leverage Lua extensively - to the benefit of both developers as well as consumers, who can modify the game (not an iPhone advantage, but still).
- barrkel 17y ago
  For the record, UnrealScript is closer to Java or C# than JavaScript. As an aside, it has some very interesting support for simultaneously running the same code in two network locations, with the authoritative version updating the non-authoritative ones after a network sync, to help eliminate some of the drawbacks of network lag. Also, modal behaviours (used for AI that needs to do different things when touched etc. depending on its state).