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I often hear the advice to "make games, not game engines", and it's refreshing to hear it from someone who is actually working on an engine themselves, because

I often hear the advice to "make games, not game engines", and it's refreshing to hear it from someone who is actually working on an engine themselves, because usually when I hear this advice it's from devs who use Unity/Godot/Unreal, and the implication I get is that if you're not using one of those engines, you're wasting your time and won't ever make a game. But I'd say there's a middle ground between using an existing engine and making your own general-purpose engine from scratch. I've been making a 2D RTS using C++/SDL, and it's taken me longer to write it this way than if I had used an existing engine, but in only a few months I've reached the point where I have a prototype and have had multiple playtests and am iterating the prototype based on feedback from those playtests. So, while the advice "make games, not game engines" is still definitely true, it doesn't mean that if you code "from scratch" that your game will necessarily be a long 4-year engine project (unless you want it to be!). The trick is to keep the code specific to the game you're working on and to avoid the urge to abstract everything / make everything general-purpose.

samiv 2y ago
Yep this is of course one possible way too. Make a game from scratch but don't make an engine. I personally I'm not capable of executing this strategy because my mind is always thinking in terms of abstractions and how to make things so re-usable in another context/project when the time comes. For better or worse this means that for me any "game from scratch" project will immediately turn into "engine + game from scratch" project :)
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
I suspect it also helps if your engine can ingest content made in existing editors, or uses off-the-shelf libraries for e.g. the nitty gritty.
SleepyMyroslav 2y ago
I want to make sure you understand that games as art genre and old resource limited and low level programs are far away from each other now. And moving in different directions at light speed. Unless one builds something that should be donated to a museum on release one does not need more of C++/SDL. I say that as someone who keeps working as mostly C++ contributor into internal game engines for various projects. I would want people to look forward and make works of art that expand what we thought was possible more instead of 'learning low level programming'.

samiv 2y ago

Yep this is of course one possible way too. Make a game from scratch but don't make an engine. I personally I'm not capable of executing this strategy because my mind is always thinking in terms of abstractions and how to make things so re-usable in another context/project when the time comes. For better or worse this means that for me any "game from scratch" project will immediately turn into "engine + game from scratch" project :)

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

I suspect it also helps if your engine can ingest content made in existing editors, or uses off-the-shelf libraries for e.g. the nitty gritty.

SleepyMyroslav 2y ago

I want to make sure you understand that games as art genre and old resource limited and low level programs are far away from each other now. And moving in different directions at light speed. Unless one builds something that should be donated to a museum on release one does not need more of C++/SDL. I say that as someone who keeps working as mostly C++ contributor into internal game engines for various projects. I would want people to look forward and make works of art that expand what we thought was possible more instead of 'learning low level programming'.