6 ms·

What the hell are the downvotes for? Seriously?

SonOfLilit 7y ago
You are being downvoted because you're preaching a terrible game programming mistake as the only reasonable approach. I didn't downvote you, but I wrote enough games to hope no young programmer takes your advice. Games, as iteratively developed creative products, always interweave engine with content. Trying to write a generic engine in parallel to your game is a surefire way to never release a game. Even if you set out in advance to write an engine, you should do like most market leading engines and develope a game first, then extract the engine out from it (Quake, Half Life, Unreal, Far Cry... the only counterexample I can think of is Unity, wait no wiki says "Over the Edge released its first game, GooBall, in 2005.[4] The game failed commercially, but the three founders saw value in the game development tools that they had created to simplify game development, and so they shifted the company's focus to create an engine for other developers.")
- yodon 7y ago
  Can you cite the source for your Unity history quote? It's interesting and info I've not read before.
  - SonOfLilit 7y ago
    Wikipedia page for the company behind Unity. In general, when someone quotes something exactly and I want the source I google the quote, google is quite good at finding exact quotes :-)
- Beltiras 7y ago
  Thank you for making the point. I find it utterly silly that something that is taken from granted as Best Principles (tm) in other fields is considered harmful in game programming. I've programmed a few small games, never with features grand enough to have any sort of assets management but I would think that the scope of any AAA game would be such that assets and code were kept separate. Watched the Blizzcon video from the WoW classic team and they talked about the 3 pillars of their product being Code, Data and Assets. It's an interesting story. I recommend watching it.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    "but I would think that the scope of any AAA game would be such that assets and code were kept separate." Sure, they are. In different files at a minimum, and likely within a separate directory tree in the overall project. But not in a separate repository entirely! Look at how the overall software industry is going towards monorepos. Not just (or even primarily) games, but software in general.
aeorgnoieang 7y ago
From [the guidelines](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html): > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
- Beltiras 7y ago
  I get that this comment is downvoted. I honestly didn't understand the other one. I don't care about the points. I don't even know how they are used except for killing comments. I've also read discussions on voting on the site that I adhere to. If I downvote, I also leave a reason why in an answer to give the poster context (except if it's an obvious troll which I hardly think I qualify for). Someone posted what they think is a reasonable answer to what I proposed and I didn't agree. I could expand on the discussion and haven't changed my mind. I thought we all came here to do that.
  - aeorgnoieang 7y ago
    I fully sympathize and agree that downvotes shouldn't be used (here or any other site, generally) to signal disagreement. But they are, and I (mostly) agree with the guidelines about it not being fruitful to ask about it when it happens.
    - Beltiras 7y ago
      I'd willingly dock myself points if I just got feedback to the why. This isn't Instagram or Twitter. This site is supposed to be about exploring viewpoints different from yours coming from wicked smart people.
- 0-_-0 7y ago
  He didn't comment on it, he asked a question, to which he received an interesting and constructive answer. Your comment on the other hand didn't do any good, and it made boring reading.
  - 7y ago

You are being downvoted because you're preaching a terrible game programming mistake as the only reasonable approach. I didn't downvote you, but I wrote enough games to hope no young programmer takes your advice. Games, as iteratively developed creative products, always interweave engine with content. Trying to write a generic engine in parallel to your game is a surefire way to never release a game. Even if you set out in advance to write an engine, you should do like most market leading engines and develope a game first, then extract the engine out from it (Quake, Half Life, Unreal, Far Cry... the only counterexample I can think of is Unity, wait no wiki says "Over the Edge released its first game, GooBall, in 2005.[4] The game failed commercially, but the three founders saw value in the game development tools that they had created to simplify game development, and so they shifted the company's focus to create an engine for other developers.")

yodon 7y ago
Can you cite the source for your Unity history quote? It's interesting and info I've not read before.
- SonOfLilit 7y ago
  Wikipedia page for the company behind Unity. In general, when someone quotes something exactly and I want the source I google the quote, google is quite good at finding exact quotes :-)
Beltiras 7y ago
Thank you for making the point. I find it utterly silly that something that is taken from granted as Best Principles (tm) in other fields is considered harmful in game programming. I've programmed a few small games, never with features grand enough to have any sort of assets management but I would think that the scope of any AAA game would be such that assets and code were kept separate. Watched the Blizzcon video from the WoW classic team and they talked about the 3 pillars of their product being Code, Data and Assets. It's an interesting story. I recommend watching it.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  "but I would think that the scope of any AAA game would be such that assets and code were kept separate." Sure, they are. In different files at a minimum, and likely within a separate directory tree in the overall project. But not in a separate repository entirely! Look at how the overall software industry is going towards monorepos. Not just (or even primarily) games, but software in general.

aeorgnoieang 7y ago

From [the guidelines](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html): > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Beltiras 7y ago
I get that this comment is downvoted. I honestly didn't understand the other one. I don't care about the points. I don't even know how they are used except for killing comments. I've also read discussions on voting on the site that I adhere to. If I downvote, I also leave a reason why in an answer to give the poster context (except if it's an obvious troll which I hardly think I qualify for). Someone posted what they think is a reasonable answer to what I proposed and I didn't agree. I could expand on the discussion and haven't changed my mind. I thought we all came here to do that.
- aeorgnoieang 7y ago
  I fully sympathize and agree that downvotes shouldn't be used (here or any other site, generally) to signal disagreement. But they are, and I (mostly) agree with the guidelines about it not being fruitful to ask about it when it happens.
  - Beltiras 7y ago
    I'd willingly dock myself points if I just got feedback to the why. This isn't Instagram or Twitter. This site is supposed to be about exploring viewpoints different from yours coming from wicked smart people.
0-_-0 7y ago
He didn't comment on it, he asked a question, to which he received an interesting and constructive answer. Your comment on the other hand didn't do any good, and it made boring reading.
- 7y ago