5 ms·

It's great that Godot keeps improving. AFAIK it is still mostly for indie devs though. I don't know why valve isn't open sourcing Source 2. They barely even mak

It's great that Godot keeps improving. AFAIK it is still mostly for indie devs though. I don't know why valve isn't open sourcing Source 2. They barely even make games anymore and it would make them money in the long term if it means games could be made cheaper and better. UE5 on the other hand is leaps and bounds greater than both Source 2 and Godot judging from the few games that have released with it so far. There's also O3DE which last I checked isn't ready.

krapp 3y ago
The AAA industry is eating itself right now. Indie seems like a good place to be. Also, indie games are a billion dollar market. Maybe it's time to stop using it as a synonym for "not serious." The consumer doesn't care that Undertale was made with Game Maker. >There's also O3DE which last I checked isn't ready. Literally no one cares about O3DE.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I don't think "indie" is synonymous with "not serious," at least if people use it that way I think they're wrong and I think there a lot of people who use it the same way I do. To me "indie" is usually more a reflection of budget, which heavily impacts graphical sophistication, size of the game (as in how many levels, how many hours of play, etc), and usually means the price of the game will be between $5 and $30. AAA I expect $60 and 100+ hours of playable content. Indie game I expect 5 to 6 hours and I'm pleasantly surprised when it's more. When it comes to choice of game engine, that usually means they prefer less flexibility but more simplicity and "free stuff" from the framework, whereas a AAA game might prefer maximum flexibility, but that comes with complexity. As in all things it's a budget (time & money) tradeoff, not necessarily an "are we serious" tradeoff.
  - filleduchaos 3y ago
    > AAA I expect $60 and 100+ hours of playable content. Indie game I expect 5 to 6 hours and I'm pleasantly surprised when it's more. My experience is much more the opposite, with plenty of indie games providing many hours of actual gameplay (including replayability) and plenty of AAA games inflating their runtime with long cutscenes and other fluff (or milking people for all they're worth through live service).
    - freedomben 3y ago
      Thank you yes, fair point. the cutscenes can get quite outrageous, and I refuse to play the games that do in app purchases and the like, so I have an unrepresentative sample in my experience.
jsheard 3y ago
Valve doesn't try to make general purpose engines, they make engines that suit their own games, so unless you happen to be making a game which is shaped very much like HL:Alyx or CS2 you would probably be underwhelmed with Source 2. That includes platform support, Source 2 doesn't officially support any of the consoles because Valve hasn't needed it to, having only ever shipped it on PC and (briefly) Android/iOS.
- snoutie 3y ago
  Then again there is s&box which I would not consider being close to either, well the games that can be made with s&box at least. But I agree that it would probably be hard to build something like Teardown inside the Source 2 Engine. On the other hand: Teardown does not use Unity either.
  - jsheard 3y ago
    S&box licensing Source 2 is a bit of an enigma to me, I get the impression that they're having to rewrite huge swaths of the engine so I don't know what they're getting out of it. They've gone to the lengths of integrating C# scripting from scratch rather than using the scripting facilities that Source 2 comes with. Nobody else has licensed Source 2 in the 4 years since s&box adopted it, so they're the lone outlier in any case. Respawns use of Source 1 was a similar story, they ended up rewriting practically everything in the course of developing Titanfall and Apex Legends, to the point that it's almost unrecognisable as Source at this point.
    - jna_sh 3y ago
      I don’t think there is (or needs to be) much more to it than Garry’s personal history and success with Source
    - meibo 3y ago
      Garry has publicly expressed regret over choosing Source 2 for this reason, but they might be in too deep now. Generally, the tooling is really great, so I guess that's the primary benefit.
pests 3y ago
Valves doesn't make games anymore because they are making piles of money running a platform.
- rowanG077 3y ago
  That and the skin trade is literally a multi billion dollar business. It boggles the mind.
andrewmcwatters 3y ago
Valve does not have a great reputation with its licensees anymore or its former mod developer community. This is probably a large part of it.
genocidicbunny 3y ago
> AFAIK it is still mostly for indie devs though There was a time when Unity was the 'indie game engine' as well. Give Godot some time (especially since it's progress seems to be picking up steam.) > UE5 on the other hand is leaps and bounds greater UE5 has the benefit of standing on the shoulders of giants, not to mention giant-sized pockets of cash to spend on developing it. UE has been around since 1998, so we're talking a quarter of a century of development leading up to what UE5 is today. It also has the added benefit of having been used for a huge number of different games, so there's an additional level of refinement in the toolset that it offers, since it's had to adapt to suit so many games.
- Narishma 3y ago
  > There was a time when Unity was the 'indie game engine' as well. That's still the case, depending on how you define indie. I'm not aware of any major AAA game made with Unity.
  - genocidicbunny 3y ago
    I don't know if it's quite considered AAA, but Cities Skylines was made in Unity, and that was a pretty big game.
  - naet 3y ago
    Not sure how you define AAA, but a lot of popular games have been made with Unity. Some major studios have used Unity for mobile games related to bigger properties too. Some Unity games I know of: Genshin Impact (maybe the closest to "AAA") Rust Fall Guys Escape from Tarkov Cuphead Fallout Shelter The Elder Scrolls: Legends Magic: The Gathering Arena Super Mario Run Mario Kart Tour Hollow Knight Untitled Goose Game

krapp 3y ago

The AAA industry is eating itself right now. Indie seems like a good place to be. Also, indie games are a billion dollar market. Maybe it's time to stop using it as a synonym for "not serious." The consumer doesn't care that Undertale was made with Game Maker. >There's also O3DE which last I checked isn't ready. Literally no one cares about O3DE.

freedomben 3y ago
I don't think "indie" is synonymous with "not serious," at least if people use it that way I think they're wrong and I think there a lot of people who use it the same way I do. To me "indie" is usually more a reflection of budget, which heavily impacts graphical sophistication, size of the game (as in how many levels, how many hours of play, etc), and usually means the price of the game will be between $5 and $30. AAA I expect $60 and 100+ hours of playable content. Indie game I expect 5 to 6 hours and I'm pleasantly surprised when it's more. When it comes to choice of game engine, that usually means they prefer less flexibility but more simplicity and "free stuff" from the framework, whereas a AAA game might prefer maximum flexibility, but that comes with complexity. As in all things it's a budget (time & money) tradeoff, not necessarily an "are we serious" tradeoff.
- filleduchaos 3y ago
  > AAA I expect $60 and 100+ hours of playable content. Indie game I expect 5 to 6 hours and I'm pleasantly surprised when it's more. My experience is much more the opposite, with plenty of indie games providing many hours of actual gameplay (including replayability) and plenty of AAA games inflating their runtime with long cutscenes and other fluff (or milking people for all they're worth through live service).
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Thank you yes, fair point. the cutscenes can get quite outrageous, and I refuse to play the games that do in app purchases and the like, so I have an unrepresentative sample in my experience.

jsheard 3y ago

Valve doesn't try to make general purpose engines, they make engines that suit their own games, so unless you happen to be making a game which is shaped very much like HL:Alyx or CS2 you would probably be underwhelmed with Source 2. That includes platform support, Source 2 doesn't officially support any of the consoles because Valve hasn't needed it to, having only ever shipped it on PC and (briefly) Android/iOS.

snoutie 3y ago
Then again there is s&box which I would not consider being close to either, well the games that can be made with s&box at least. But I agree that it would probably be hard to build something like Teardown inside the Source 2 Engine. On the other hand: Teardown does not use Unity either.
- jsheard 3y ago
  S&box licensing Source 2 is a bit of an enigma to me, I get the impression that they're having to rewrite huge swaths of the engine so I don't know what they're getting out of it. They've gone to the lengths of integrating C# scripting from scratch rather than using the scripting facilities that Source 2 comes with. Nobody else has licensed Source 2 in the 4 years since s&box adopted it, so they're the lone outlier in any case. Respawns use of Source 1 was a similar story, they ended up rewriting practically everything in the course of developing Titanfall and Apex Legends, to the point that it's almost unrecognisable as Source at this point.
  - jna_sh 3y ago
    I don’t think there is (or needs to be) much more to it than Garry’s personal history and success with Source
  - meibo 3y ago
    Garry has publicly expressed regret over choosing Source 2 for this reason, but they might be in too deep now. Generally, the tooling is really great, so I guess that's the primary benefit.

pests 3y ago

Valves doesn't make games anymore because they are making piles of money running a platform.

rowanG077 3y ago
That and the skin trade is literally a multi billion dollar business. It boggles the mind.

andrewmcwatters 3y ago

Valve does not have a great reputation with its licensees anymore or its former mod developer community. This is probably a large part of it.

genocidicbunny 3y ago

> AFAIK it is still mostly for indie devs though There was a time when Unity was the 'indie game engine' as well. Give Godot some time (especially since it's progress seems to be picking up steam.) > UE5 on the other hand is leaps and bounds greater UE5 has the benefit of standing on the shoulders of giants, not to mention giant-sized pockets of cash to spend on developing it. UE has been around since 1998, so we're talking a quarter of a century of development leading up to what UE5 is today. It also has the added benefit of having been used for a huge number of different games, so there's an additional level of refinement in the toolset that it offers, since it's had to adapt to suit so many games.

Narishma 3y ago
> There was a time when Unity was the 'indie game engine' as well. That's still the case, depending on how you define indie. I'm not aware of any major AAA game made with Unity.
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  I don't know if it's quite considered AAA, but Cities Skylines was made in Unity, and that was a pretty big game.
- naet 3y ago
  Not sure how you define AAA, but a lot of popular games have been made with Unity. Some major studios have used Unity for mobile games related to bigger properties too. Some Unity games I know of: Genshin Impact (maybe the closest to "AAA") Rust Fall Guys Escape from Tarkov Cuphead Fallout Shelter The Elder Scrolls: Legends Magic: The Gathering Arena Super Mario Run Mario Kart Tour Hollow Knight Untitled Goose Game