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> Games are some of the most complex and challenging kinds of software to write. Used to be. For many small devs/hobbyists, it's a matter of clicking in Unity

> Games are some of the most complex and challenging kinds of software to write. Used to be. For many small devs/hobbyists, it's a matter of clicking in Unity and not actually "writing" anything. Writing your own game engine (esp. 3D engine) is complex and challenging. Building a game in Unity is like putting Lego pieces together in comparison. Agree with your other points though.

krapp 9y ago
You have to know C# (or the other BS languages that don't matter) to do anything worth doing in Unity. It's not as complex as writing an engine from scratch (which almost no one actually does to the point of having an actual game running on it) but it's not "putting Lego pieces together" either.
- Away2017 9y ago
  They dropped other languages recently, so now it's just a very outdated version of C#.
  - galacticpony2 9y ago
    They haven't dropped any language yet. They're planning to update to a newer version of C# and they will drop the other languages as a part of that update.
everyone 9y ago
Unity happens to be my area of expertise. :) _ You could get lots of pre-made assets from the Unity store and cobble them together into some kind of 'game', but you'd be very limited in what you could do. Also more crucially you'd have diminishing returns as your project snowballs into a spaghettian nightmare, eventually becoming impossible to work on and unplayable for the bugs. _ The whole writing a rendering engine in C++ and so on, isnt that big of a deal imo, its a solved problem say. The bane of any poorly composed software project is complexity, no matter what framework or engine you use, even Unity, you need clean code and a suitable architecture to make something complex and/or maintainable.
- deleted 9y ago
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moron4hire 9y ago
As someone who has done both, you can either spend all your time writing complex PBR shaders, or you can spend all your time writing complex gameplay code. Unity is only "like putting together Lego blocks" in the sense that one very versatile brick and a few fairly trivial bricks are provided to you out of the box, but you'll still need to vacuum form your own set of specialized bricks for the rest of the game. I am never one to say "don't reinvent the wheel". I think the phrase is universally used by malcontents to berate newbs. I think there is still a lot of value to be had in people starting new game engine projects. But if you want to make a game, rather than a game engine, you should probably be using Unity or Unreal. Making a game in Unity is absolutely a complex undertaking. Just not in the rendering shader code. Which is only a small part of any project.

krapp 9y ago

You have to know C# (or the other BS languages that don't matter) to do anything worth doing in Unity. It's not as complex as writing an engine from scratch (which almost no one actually does to the point of having an actual game running on it) but it's not "putting Lego pieces together" either.

Away2017 9y ago
They dropped other languages recently, so now it's just a very outdated version of C#.
- galacticpony2 9y ago
  They haven't dropped any language yet. They're planning to update to a newer version of C# and they will drop the other languages as a part of that update.

everyone 9y ago

Unity happens to be my area of expertise. :) _ You could get lots of pre-made assets from the Unity store and cobble them together into some kind of 'game', but you'd be very limited in what you could do. Also more crucially you'd have diminishing returns as your project snowballs into a spaghettian nightmare, eventually becoming impossible to work on and unplayable for the bugs. _ The whole writing a rendering engine in C++ and so on, isnt that big of a deal imo, its a solved problem say. The bane of any poorly composed software project is complexity, no matter what framework or engine you use, even Unity, you need clean code and a suitable architecture to make something complex and/or maintainable.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

moron4hire 9y ago

As someone who has done both, you can either spend all your time writing complex PBR shaders, or you can spend all your time writing complex gameplay code. Unity is only "like putting together Lego blocks" in the sense that one very versatile brick and a few fairly trivial bricks are provided to you out of the box, but you'll still need to vacuum form your own set of specialized bricks for the rest of the game. I am never one to say "don't reinvent the wheel". I think the phrase is universally used by malcontents to berate newbs. I think there is still a lot of value to be had in people starting new game engine projects. But if you want to make a game, rather than a game engine, you should probably be using Unity or Unreal. Making a game in Unity is absolutely a complex undertaking. Just not in the rendering shader code. Which is only a small part of any project.