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> If you think of how Unity made it easy for devs to build cross-platform games, the idea is to do the same thing for all visual applications. But why wouldn't

> If you think of how Unity made it easy for devs to build cross-platform games, the idea is to do the same thing for all visual applications. But why wouldn't I "just" use Unity? I agree with you. Nobody cares about the platform specific details anymore, and people are willing to pay a little bit of money for an end-all-be-all middleware. I have gone my whole life not paying attention to a single Apple-specific API, and every single time, someone has written a better, more robust, cross-platform abstraction. But Unity is already this middleware. I already can make a whole art application on top of Unity (or Unreal). People do. Sometimes people build whole platforms on top of Unity and are successful (Niantic) and some are not (Improbable). You're one guy. You are promising creating a whole game engine - you're going to get hung up on not using the word game engine, but that is intellectually honest, it is a game engine - which a lot of people 1,000x better capitalized than you have promised, and those people have been unable to reach parity with Unity after years of product development. So while I want you to succeed, I feel like a lot of Y Combinator guys have this, "We make no mistakes, especially we do not make strategic mistakes." It's going to be a long 3 years!

dartos 3y ago
Unity is so much larger and more complex than a graphics middleware. It comes with physics engines, telemetry, networking, a c# runtime and probably even more. I don’t think that any of the adobe suite would ever be built in unity bc why do they need to ship a physics engine with their photo editor. Not to mention that unity is backed by an, imo, untrustworthy company who’s obviously willing to change pricing structure on a dime and retroactively.
- pphysch 3y ago
  I agree, I think "game engine" is a misnomer for what are better termed "game (dev) studio", like Unity. They include a sophisticated game engine but also a lot of supporting tools and GUIs.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  > ever be built in unity bc why do they need to ship a physics engine with their photo editor. I know you narrowly mean "rigidbody physics for the purpose of videogames." But Adobe did ship a physics engine with their photo editor! They discontinued their "3D" support, and raytracing is most definitely physics with a capital P, but they were shipping it for a long time. If you have an even more normal definition of physics, to include optical physics, well they have a CV solution for many features like camera RAW processing, removing distortion, etc. > It comes with physics engines, telemetry, networking, a c# runtime and probably even more. Because that is what people need to make multimedia applications.
seanisom 3y ago
Without going into the motivations for building a startup and doing Y Combinator, I do agree with many of your points. People can use Unity to build games and non-games. I personally don't think it fits a lot of different use-cases or application models and that it tends to be most successful in specific gaming verticals, but if it works well for you, by all means use it! I'm strategically betting both on the lines between what is viewed as a game and not blurring, as well as developers needing a friendlier, more flexible way of building this kind of interactive content. I'm by no means under the illusion that strategic mistakes won't be made, or that this won't be a 10-year+ journey - realistically many (most?) successful companies have a very nonlinear path, including Unity themselves.
- mentos 3y ago
  I agree Unreal and Unity are not appropriate but I do wonder about Godot. Its early enough where it doesn't have the strong connotations of being a game engine yet. I've seen some cool applications made in it too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kKp0oguzr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kKp0oguzr8). So I wonder if you could apply your energy to making it more cross platform using WASM (if that's even necessary) and extend it with your own UI language instead of rolling your own?
  - seanisom 3y ago
    I think Godot is the closest thing to this today, and I agree, would love to work with them! Particularly on the Wasm and packaging side of things.
joeyjojo 3y ago
There absolutely is a need for a robust cross-platform rendering/multimedia solution, more in a similar vein to SDL than Unity or Unreal. The offering of Unity, Unreal, and perhaps Godot is just abysmal when considering that for all of the man hours put into the game development space, that is basically all we got. There should be hundreds of viable cross platform game engines catering to a wide variety niches that continually stretch the bounds of what a game actually is and how it can be represented. Game libraries such as Monogame, Heaps, Raylib, Love2D, etc just wouldn't be that popular if Unity and Unreal are the be all and end all. Adobe Air was once a popular choice (a very large number of top 50 app store games were built with Adobe Air) and I'd wager still would be if it didn't collapse under its technical weight. Currently it is the low level, cross platform layer that is the most complex and the biggest hurdle towards making a game engine viable. If it wasn't so insanely complex, and the technical barrier towards making your own engine is reduced, the tired cliche of "don't build an engine" wouldn't hold as much weight, and it opens the doors to building a bespoke, fit for purpose engine for every game you create. Don't underestimate what an individual or small teams can produce if they are operating on a solid platform that facilitates a rich ecosystem of tools.
- seanisom 3y ago
  > Currently it is the low level, cross platform layer that is the most complex and the biggest hurdle towards making a game engine viable I couldn't agree more. My goal is not to simply build "a better game engine", but to make this kind of low-level tech accessible at a higher level and with much better dev tools to a broader class of developers and applications > Don't underestimate what an individual or small teams can produce if they are operating on a solid platform This gets into my motivations for building a company - larger companies have the resources to build moats, but often can't quickly realign themselves to go after novel technical opportunities. It's not either / or - both models exist for very valid reasons.
  - joeyjojo 3y ago
    I am glad people are working on it!! Have you seen Kha by any chance? It has similar goals. I find it quite awesome, but it won't gain mass adoption for a bunch of reasons. https://github.com/Kode/Kha https://github.com/Kode/Kha Someone built an immediate mode renderer on top https://github.com/armory3d/zui https://github.com/armory3d/zui, which is utilised by ArmorPaint https://armorpaint.org https://armorpaint.org. I also use Zui for my own bespoke 2D game engine. I find this tech and tooling really quite amazing (just look at how little source code Zui has) given just how small the ecosystem around it is. I think Kha really illustrates what can be achievable if the lower levels have robust but simple APIs, just exposing the bare minimum as a standard for others to build upon. It really suggest taking a look at the graphics2 (2d canvas like) api. For the kind of project I work on (mostly 2d games), I think it would really awesome if your framework also supported low level audio, and a variety of inputs such as keyboard, mice, and gamepads. If it also had decent text rendering support it would basically be my dream library/framework.

dartos 3y ago

Unity is so much larger and more complex than a graphics middleware. It comes with physics engines, telemetry, networking, a c# runtime and probably even more. I don’t think that any of the adobe suite would ever be built in unity bc why do they need to ship a physics engine with their photo editor. Not to mention that unity is backed by an, imo, untrustworthy company who’s obviously willing to change pricing structure on a dime and retroactively.

pphysch 3y ago
I agree, I think "game engine" is a misnomer for what are better termed "game (dev) studio", like Unity. They include a sophisticated game engine but also a lot of supporting tools and GUIs.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
> ever be built in unity bc why do they need to ship a physics engine with their photo editor. I know you narrowly mean "rigidbody physics for the purpose of videogames." But Adobe did ship a physics engine with their photo editor! They discontinued their "3D" support, and raytracing is most definitely physics with a capital P, but they were shipping it for a long time. If you have an even more normal definition of physics, to include optical physics, well they have a CV solution for many features like camera RAW processing, removing distortion, etc. > It comes with physics engines, telemetry, networking, a c# runtime and probably even more. Because that is what people need to make multimedia applications.

seanisom 3y ago

Without going into the motivations for building a startup and doing Y Combinator, I do agree with many of your points. People can use Unity to build games and non-games. I personally don't think it fits a lot of different use-cases or application models and that it tends to be most successful in specific gaming verticals, but if it works well for you, by all means use it! I'm strategically betting both on the lines between what is viewed as a game and not blurring, as well as developers needing a friendlier, more flexible way of building this kind of interactive content. I'm by no means under the illusion that strategic mistakes won't be made, or that this won't be a 10-year+ journey - realistically many (most?) successful companies have a very nonlinear path, including Unity themselves.

mentos 3y ago
I agree Unreal and Unity are not appropriate but I do wonder about Godot. Its early enough where it doesn't have the strong connotations of being a game engine yet. I've seen some cool applications made in it too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kKp0oguzr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kKp0oguzr8). So I wonder if you could apply your energy to making it more cross platform using WASM (if that's even necessary) and extend it with your own UI language instead of rolling your own?
- seanisom 3y ago
  I think Godot is the closest thing to this today, and I agree, would love to work with them! Particularly on the Wasm and packaging side of things.

joeyjojo 3y ago

There absolutely is a need for a robust cross-platform rendering/multimedia solution, more in a similar vein to SDL than Unity or Unreal. The offering of Unity, Unreal, and perhaps Godot is just abysmal when considering that for all of the man hours put into the game development space, that is basically all we got. There should be hundreds of viable cross platform game engines catering to a wide variety niches that continually stretch the bounds of what a game actually is and how it can be represented. Game libraries such as Monogame, Heaps, Raylib, Love2D, etc just wouldn't be that popular if Unity and Unreal are the be all and end all. Adobe Air was once a popular choice (a very large number of top 50 app store games were built with Adobe Air) and I'd wager still would be if it didn't collapse under its technical weight. Currently it is the low level, cross platform layer that is the most complex and the biggest hurdle towards making a game engine viable. If it wasn't so insanely complex, and the technical barrier towards making your own engine is reduced, the tired cliche of "don't build an engine" wouldn't hold as much weight, and it opens the doors to building a bespoke, fit for purpose engine for every game you create. Don't underestimate what an individual or small teams can produce if they are operating on a solid platform that facilitates a rich ecosystem of tools.

seanisom 3y ago
> Currently it is the low level, cross platform layer that is the most complex and the biggest hurdle towards making a game engine viable I couldn't agree more. My goal is not to simply build "a better game engine", but to make this kind of low-level tech accessible at a higher level and with much better dev tools to a broader class of developers and applications > Don't underestimate what an individual or small teams can produce if they are operating on a solid platform This gets into my motivations for building a company - larger companies have the resources to build moats, but often can't quickly realign themselves to go after novel technical opportunities. It's not either / or - both models exist for very valid reasons.
- joeyjojo 3y ago
  I am glad people are working on it!! Have you seen Kha by any chance? It has similar goals. I find it quite awesome, but it won't gain mass adoption for a bunch of reasons. https://github.com/Kode/Kha https://github.com/Kode/Kha Someone built an immediate mode renderer on top https://github.com/armory3d/zui https://github.com/armory3d/zui, which is utilised by ArmorPaint https://armorpaint.org https://armorpaint.org. I also use Zui for my own bespoke 2D game engine. I find this tech and tooling really quite amazing (just look at how little source code Zui has) given just how small the ecosystem around it is. I think Kha really illustrates what can be achievable if the lower levels have robust but simple APIs, just exposing the bare minimum as a standard for others to build upon. It really suggest taking a look at the graphics2 (2d canvas like) api. For the kind of project I work on (mostly 2d games), I think it would really awesome if your framework also supported low level audio, and a variety of inputs such as keyboard, mice, and gamepads. If it also had decent text rendering support it would basically be my dream library/framework.