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It might be time for them to try out Unity or Unreal engine for switch games. Pokemon's inhouse engine doesn't seem to be doing that great. I think even Pokemo

It might be time for them to try out Unity or Unreal engine for switch games. Pokemon's inhouse engine doesn't seem to be doing that great. I think even Pokemon Arceus had a difficult development as well. The original in house engine was replaced with a modified version of Zelda's Breath of the Wild engine. I know Mario kart tour was written in unity I think, and it works well across my families wide range of devices. Edit: It seems some pokemon remakes were done with unity too: https://exputer.com/news/nintendo/pokemon-brilliant-diamond-shining-pearl-unity/ https://exputer.com/news/nintendo/pokemon-brilliant-diamond-...

capableweb 4y ago
It doesn't really matter engine you choose between, no matter if it's inhouse/unity/unreal/godot or whatever. What matters is what expertise you already have, skills of current/future developers and how your development process works. If all those things are shit, the output will be shit. If all those things are OK, the output will be OK, no matter what engine you choose/develop.
- smt88 4y ago
  > If all those things are OK, the output will be OK, no matter what engine you choose/develop. This is just not true in any domain. If your tools are bad, buggy, or inefficient, it's very possible for your talented people to be unable to overcome them. For example, if a game engine takes even 2x developer time vs. another engine, it's probably not possible to achieve a similar level of polish because the developer time isn't going to double accordingly.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Well, I guess our experience differs then, which is not that weird. I'm my own experience, good developers are able to work around bad tooling much easier than bad developers. Or even being able to recognize bad tooling requires the developer to not be bad themselves. The matter of "it's working fine, let's move on" VS "I can't take this bad experience, lets fix it before moving on" is often choices bad developers won't even engage in.
    - Sakos 4y ago
      We see the effects of bad tooling and game engines all the time. Just look at the disastrous development histories of games like Destiny, FF13, FF15, any number of Battlefield games, or Mass Effect Andromeda. edit: At this point, I think it's clear that it's not just their tooling and engine though. I mean, clearly these are big issues, but I'd say it largely stems from a lack of technical expertise and/or investment in R&D and engine/tool development.
      - smt88 4y ago
        Frost Engine is notorious, as is whatever was used in Cyberpunk 2077. They're apparently going to abandon it after that disaster.
- stuckinhell 4y ago
  For videogames development. Engines is kinda synonymous with ecosystem. Videogames use tons of third party libraries with various engine support either from library developers or third parties. Alot of studios do not have the inhouse talent/money to support all the skills required for inhouse development, so they use a ton of libraries. If you have to reimplement all the third party library support in your custom engine, well you are going to have a bad time. I think this why unreal/unity consolidation is occurring and honestly not the worst approach for practical game development. - I'm not in the videogame industry, but I'm interested in becoming a project manager in it after pseudo-retirement
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  Unless they’re total amateurs - they’ve released tens of games and sold hundreds of millions - so they’re not, a commercial game engine will give you great optimizations and it’s pretty difficult to shoot itself in the foot in a way that totally kills your performance. It seems to me like they wanted their own engine but it’s just not ready so it’s struggling with a very basic looking game immensely
lemoncookiechip 4y ago
> It might be time for them to try out Unity or Unreal engine for switch games. EDITED: They used Unity for Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl. I'm not sure why they switched back to in-house for Arceus and these newer ones. The main issue seems to be their release schedule as well as their inexperience with games of this scope, and likely not the engine itself (although it's likely a contributing factor). Digital Foundry put out a good video showcasing how the game performs and comparison to Arceus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBZqt7D24Zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBZqt7D24Zc Honestly, Arceus which was already rather ugly compared to Breath of the Wild and certain other 3rd party titles on the Switch, is a much better looking and detailed game then this new generation.
- stuckinhell 4y ago
  Sword and Shield didn't use unity. People have peaked into the nsp file structure, and have confirmed Brilliant Diamond/Pearl did but Sword/Shield was a modified version of the 3d pokemon engine.
- fantyoon 4y ago
  Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were created by a third party studio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Brilliant_Diamond_and_Shining_Pearl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Brilliant_Diamond...

capableweb 4y ago

It doesn't really matter engine you choose between, no matter if it's inhouse/unity/unreal/godot or whatever. What matters is what expertise you already have, skills of current/future developers and how your development process works. If all those things are shit, the output will be shit. If all those things are OK, the output will be OK, no matter what engine you choose/develop.

smt88 4y ago
> If all those things are OK, the output will be OK, no matter what engine you choose/develop. This is just not true in any domain. If your tools are bad, buggy, or inefficient, it's very possible for your talented people to be unable to overcome them. For example, if a game engine takes even 2x developer time vs. another engine, it's probably not possible to achieve a similar level of polish because the developer time isn't going to double accordingly.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Well, I guess our experience differs then, which is not that weird. I'm my own experience, good developers are able to work around bad tooling much easier than bad developers. Or even being able to recognize bad tooling requires the developer to not be bad themselves. The matter of "it's working fine, let's move on" VS "I can't take this bad experience, lets fix it before moving on" is often choices bad developers won't even engage in.
  - Sakos 4y ago
    We see the effects of bad tooling and game engines all the time. Just look at the disastrous development histories of games like Destiny, FF13, FF15, any number of Battlefield games, or Mass Effect Andromeda. edit: At this point, I think it's clear that it's not just their tooling and engine though. I mean, clearly these are big issues, but I'd say it largely stems from a lack of technical expertise and/or investment in R&D and engine/tool development.
    - smt88 4y ago
      Frost Engine is notorious, as is whatever was used in Cyberpunk 2077. They're apparently going to abandon it after that disaster.
stuckinhell 4y ago
For videogames development. Engines is kinda synonymous with ecosystem. Videogames use tons of third party libraries with various engine support either from library developers or third parties. Alot of studios do not have the inhouse talent/money to support all the skills required for inhouse development, so they use a ton of libraries. If you have to reimplement all the third party library support in your custom engine, well you are going to have a bad time. I think this why unreal/unity consolidation is occurring and honestly not the worst approach for practical game development. - I'm not in the videogame industry, but I'm interested in becoming a project manager in it after pseudo-retirement
coffeebeqn 4y ago
Unless they’re total amateurs - they’ve released tens of games and sold hundreds of millions - so they’re not, a commercial game engine will give you great optimizations and it’s pretty difficult to shoot itself in the foot in a way that totally kills your performance. It seems to me like they wanted their own engine but it’s just not ready so it’s struggling with a very basic looking game immensely

lemoncookiechip 4y ago

> It might be time for them to try out Unity or Unreal engine for switch games. EDITED: They used Unity for Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl. I'm not sure why they switched back to in-house for Arceus and these newer ones. The main issue seems to be their release schedule as well as their inexperience with games of this scope, and likely not the engine itself (although it's likely a contributing factor). Digital Foundry put out a good video showcasing how the game performs and comparison to Arceus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBZqt7D24Zc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBZqt7D24Zc Honestly, Arceus which was already rather ugly compared to Breath of the Wild and certain other 3rd party titles on the Switch, is a much better looking and detailed game then this new generation.

stuckinhell 4y ago
Sword and Shield didn't use unity. People have peaked into the nsp file structure, and have confirmed Brilliant Diamond/Pearl did but Sword/Shield was a modified version of the 3d pokemon engine.
fantyoon 4y ago
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were created by a third party studio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Brilliant_Diamond_and_Shining_Pearl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Brilliant_Diamond...