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To be fair, most games today are built using Unity3D, Unreal Engine etc, which all support Metal already. Hardly anyone writes their own game engines these days

To be fair, most games today are built using Unity3D, Unreal Engine etc, which all support Metal already. Hardly anyone writes their own game engines these days, and if they do they probably have the resources to support Metal. Overall still a bummer though.

kbwt 8y ago
> most games today are built using Unity3D, Unreal Engine etc On PC: Maybe by number of games, but not by the number of players. (I count Fortnite as an outlier because it's technically not built on a third-party engine)
- piva00 8y ago
  So based on number of players, what is the most used engine today if not UE nor Unity? There's LoL, Dota 2 and Overwatch using their custom engines with huge numbers of players but... What else? CS:GO?
  - sgift 8y ago
    Battlefield, CoD, AC, all the sports titles, GTA. More or less everything build by one of the big three uses their own in-house engine.
    - luk32 8y ago
      Err at least some Battlefield games, fifa 17 and 18 use frostbite engine. I don't think one can call it custom.
      - sgift 8y ago
        > what is the most used engine today if not UE nor Unity? My answer was aimed at that part. But yeah, maybe we should define what "custom" is.
  - ethelward 8y ago
    The Witcher 3 is using RedEngine, GTA V RAGE, the Battlefields and SW:Battlefront {1,2} are using Frostbite IIRC, the two new Tomb Raider on Horizon, Rainbow 6 Siege and the Assassin's creed are on Anvil, Overwatch & SC2 have their own engines too, same for League of Legends, CoD are on a heavily customized id Engine, Minecraft is custom, Bethesda have their own engines too for Skyrim & Fallout, Path of Exile cutom too, all taken from Steam 100 most played.
    - lloeki 8y ago
      Also, the Forza (custom) and Far Cry (CryEngine/DuniaEngine) series. Titanfall uses a modified Source engine IIRC.
    - w0utert 8y ago
      That's a nice list, quite complete. Many console exclusives also use custom engines by the way, e.g. Decima for Horizon:ZD, KillZone and Death Stranding, Naughty Dog has their own engine (don't know the name), etc. The OP's point was that the companies that make these engines can afford to invest in supporting an additional back-end API though. I think it's hard to argue that any of the companies that develop these engines would not be able to also add a Metal back-end. Many of them already work across a pretty wide range of back-ends anyway. Xbox One, PS4 and Switch all use completely different API's, for example. I think most of the work is not in adding an additional backend like Metal, but in tuning the back-end for some specific piece of hardware (NVidia vs. AMD vs. mobile GPU, etc). Whether companies are actually willing to invest in a Metal back-end remains to be seen, but considering many of them license their engine for commerical use, I would be surprised if the major players will simply ignore Metal. I tend to agree with Jonathan Blow's comments on Twitter, that the low-level graphics API should be just that: as low level as possible, small, focussed, and not actually intended (but still allowing!) to be used directly. Engines or higher-level API's can be built on top of that, with the option to dive down to the lowest level when needed (which will probably be a rare occasion). DirectX will definitely not be this API because it is Windows specific. Likewise for Metal because it is Apple-specific. Blow appears to be of the opinion that Vulkan is also not moving in the right direction, because it is becoming too complex, and trying to be too many things for too many applications at the same time. If true, in a sense, it's not that surprising Apple is doubling down on their own API. I think they should consider making the API open-source though, and develop something like MoltenVK (but the other way around) for Windows/Linux.
  - kuroguro 8y ago
    CSGO and DOTA2 both run on different versions of the source engine.
  - Phrodo_00 8y ago
    The top 10 most played today in steam are using UE4 (2), Source 2, Source (2), and custom engines (5: AnvilNext, RAGE, Evolution). That's a lot of variety, there's almost no reuse.
lawlessone 8y ago
> Hardly anyone writes their own game engines these days more people than ever do.
vonmoltke 8y ago
> To be fair, most games today are built using Unity3D, Unreal Engine etc What's the "etc"? Are there any other engines in that set?
- Const-me 8y ago
  Cocos2D, CryEngine, MonoGame, Orge, Unigine, etc…
- Applejinx 8y ago
  With a bit of luck, Godot Engine. Sort of a dark horse, but I like it and my very smart corporate-programmer brother likes it. He says it's designed like a programmer would design it: everything's a node. I know I did a game in Unity (which has become overcomplicated) and had a surprisingly easy time jumping into Godot.
simondanisch 8y ago
The problem is still with apple forcing them to invest resources, without any reason, but to advance their vendor lock in. And if you're a developper of a small high performance 3d graphics and gpu computing library like me, its just a giant middle finger from apple and I will either need to drop opengl/opencl or apple - there is no way that i can afford to offer both, especially since i'd need to buy apple hardware to test things.

kbwt 8y ago

> most games today are built using Unity3D, Unreal Engine etc On PC: Maybe by number of games, but not by the number of players. (I count Fortnite as an outlier because it's technically not built on a third-party engine)

piva00 8y ago
So based on number of players, what is the most used engine today if not UE nor Unity? There's LoL, Dota 2 and Overwatch using their custom engines with huge numbers of players but... What else? CS:GO?
- sgift 8y ago
  Battlefield, CoD, AC, all the sports titles, GTA. More or less everything build by one of the big three uses their own in-house engine.
  - luk32 8y ago
    Err at least some Battlefield games, fifa 17 and 18 use frostbite engine. I don't think one can call it custom.
    - sgift 8y ago
      > what is the most used engine today if not UE nor Unity? My answer was aimed at that part. But yeah, maybe we should define what "custom" is.
- ethelward 8y ago
  The Witcher 3 is using RedEngine, GTA V RAGE, the Battlefields and SW:Battlefront {1,2} are using Frostbite IIRC, the two new Tomb Raider on Horizon, Rainbow 6 Siege and the Assassin's creed are on Anvil, Overwatch & SC2 have their own engines too, same for League of Legends, CoD are on a heavily customized id Engine, Minecraft is custom, Bethesda have their own engines too for Skyrim & Fallout, Path of Exile cutom too, all taken from Steam 100 most played.
  - lloeki 8y ago
    Also, the Forza (custom) and Far Cry (CryEngine/DuniaEngine) series. Titanfall uses a modified Source engine IIRC.
  - w0utert 8y ago
    That's a nice list, quite complete. Many console exclusives also use custom engines by the way, e.g. Decima for Horizon:ZD, KillZone and Death Stranding, Naughty Dog has their own engine (don't know the name), etc. The OP's point was that the companies that make these engines can afford to invest in supporting an additional back-end API though. I think it's hard to argue that any of the companies that develop these engines would not be able to also add a Metal back-end. Many of them already work across a pretty wide range of back-ends anyway. Xbox One, PS4 and Switch all use completely different API's, for example. I think most of the work is not in adding an additional backend like Metal, but in tuning the back-end for some specific piece of hardware (NVidia vs. AMD vs. mobile GPU, etc). Whether companies are actually willing to invest in a Metal back-end remains to be seen, but considering many of them license their engine for commerical use, I would be surprised if the major players will simply ignore Metal. I tend to agree with Jonathan Blow's comments on Twitter, that the low-level graphics API should be just that: as low level as possible, small, focussed, and not actually intended (but still allowing!) to be used directly. Engines or higher-level API's can be built on top of that, with the option to dive down to the lowest level when needed (which will probably be a rare occasion). DirectX will definitely not be this API because it is Windows specific. Likewise for Metal because it is Apple-specific. Blow appears to be of the opinion that Vulkan is also not moving in the right direction, because it is becoming too complex, and trying to be too many things for too many applications at the same time. If true, in a sense, it's not that surprising Apple is doubling down on their own API. I think they should consider making the API open-source though, and develop something like MoltenVK (but the other way around) for Windows/Linux.
- kuroguro 8y ago
  CSGO and DOTA2 both run on different versions of the source engine.
- Phrodo_00 8y ago
  The top 10 most played today in steam are using UE4 (2), Source 2, Source (2), and custom engines (5: AnvilNext, RAGE, Evolution). That's a lot of variety, there's almost no reuse.

lawlessone 8y ago

> Hardly anyone writes their own game engines these days more people than ever do.

vonmoltke 8y ago

> To be fair, most games today are built using Unity3D, Unreal Engine etc What's the "etc"? Are there any other engines in that set?

Const-me 8y ago
Cocos2D, CryEngine, MonoGame, Orge, Unigine, etc…
Applejinx 8y ago
With a bit of luck, Godot Engine. Sort of a dark horse, but I like it and my very smart corporate-programmer brother likes it. He says it's designed like a programmer would design it: everything's a node. I know I did a game in Unity (which has become overcomplicated) and had a surprisingly easy time jumping into Godot.

simondanisch 8y ago

The problem is still with apple forcing them to invest resources, without any reason, but to advance their vendor lock in. And if you're a developper of a small high performance 3d graphics and gpu computing library like me, its just a giant middle finger from apple and I will either need to drop opengl/opencl or apple - there is no way that i can afford to offer both, especially since i'd need to buy apple hardware to test things.