5 ms·

This. When working on your own engine you also feel as if 90% of the time is spend on user interface creation if you actually want to have an visual editor. P

This. When working on your own engine you also feel as if 90% of the time is spend on user interface creation if you actually want to have an visual editor. People don't realize that they will spend 95% of the time on the engine and 5% on the game. Which is ok if you don't want to make a commercial living out of it. But unless you are making a game with extremely specific needs (eg Factorio) using your own engine will probably kill you commercially.

jeffhuys 1y ago
Even factorio started out on tried-and-tested libraries before moving away from them primarily because of optimization concerns (right?)
- xandrius 1y ago
  Yep, people forget one of the core notions of development which is not to prematurely optimise stuff. Especially something as complex as a game. Keep it super simple. Or that game will never come out.
  - ms-menardi 1y ago
    some games require a certain level of scale and for those games you should optimize in the pre-planning stage.
    - brulard 1y ago
      I think you are missing the point. The larger the scale is, the more things may be optimized and the more you need to be careful to focus on the important "3%". That said, it doesn't hurt to analyse in advance which parts might be critical and steer the architecture based on those observations.
    - xandrius 1y ago
      Statistically speaking, 99% of game devs won't ever make a game like that. And if they do, they will probably know ahead of time they are making it.
      - danielscrubs 1y ago
        100% of hobby game devs do it as a hobby. The learning process is the fun part. Which is also why 99% give up on their game when they see more learning potential in another area.
  - meheleventyone 1y ago
    The full quote is: > Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%. Sometimes the best way to tackle that 3% is upfront when you're deciding on your system architecture.
  - nkrisc 1y ago
    Just the other day on reddit I saw someone asking about efficiently removing an item from an array for the game they’re working on. It became this whole CS debate and then someone asked how big the array is and how often do you remove items. The OP responded that it’s just a list of levels in their game, so not more than 20 items or so and is modified once every 5-10 minutes… So a day on their game wasted over efficiently removing an item from an array of 20 items every 5-10 minutes.
    - corysama 1y ago
      I used to make 3D engines and asset pipelines professionally. High performance really is critical in both. So, I’d have to check myself frequently: > If I optimize this, how much time is it going to save the whole world? What will be the sum of time saved by everyone who will ever run this code? Is that less than the time required of me to do the optimization? Then, don’t do it! That question was relevant quite often. The big optimizations though really mattered. And, required planning before initial implementation to set the system up to be optimizable.
    - johnnyanmac 1y ago
      Really highlights the divide between industry and acedemia. Reminds me of when another subreddit was mocking some legacy code (I think Motorola? Some mobile device stuff) for using bubble sort. Meanwhile, the sort probably wasnt on more than a fee hundred items and the mobile embedded is constrained for space. Bubble sort is easy to read, write and has O(1) space. Performance isn't a concern at the scale being worked at. We're talking maybe microseconds of difference. It's not necessarily a bad thing that acedemia focuses on theory. But we keep using school to put a square peg into a round hole and wonder why students are so unprepared for actual production. It's ultimately the company's fault. If you want certain skills, you need to train for it. Your processes aren't public, so you can't just expect candidates to magically know what matters to their role. ---- now acedemically: the answer is to swap an item to the end and reduce the buffer size. I don't think that's taught in acedemia either, but that's a trick you learn on the job. When and if you do need it.
monkeyelite 1y ago
> using your own engine will probably kill you commercially. No - spending a lot of time making tools you don’t need is the problem. You can write your own engine and leverage existing tools.
dismalaf 1y ago
Visual editors are a waste of time. For 2D, lots of solutions exist (Tiled for example). For 3D, you can use Blender as your editor. The key to making no engine work is to make only what you actually need.
- whstl 1y ago
  That’s a great idea. I have limited experience scripting Blender, but there is a BPY API to add custom panels, so adding metadata to “entities” and simplifying the export workflow is probably feasible to the point it will be very close to an editor.
  - dismalaf 1y ago
    Even without scripting Blender, GLTF is a "scene" format. GLTF files hold information about models, textures, lights, etc... So you can create your scene then import straight into your game with GLTF (open source, super common). And of course since Blender is used for movies, it does scenes well already.
- Supermancho 1y ago
  Visual editing is how all UI is designed. It's not a waste of time. Visual editing is the primary way to prototype, which means it's heavily used at the beginning and less as development goes forward. Projects have some process to translate the prototypes into scaffolding UI in the Editor, then modify with state where necessary. This pipeline is common across all types of software.
  - dismalaf 1y ago
    Sorry, I thought the context was clear given the parent. Making your own visual editor is a waste of time when ones exist that will output a format you can simply put into your game.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  > For 3D, you can use Blender as your editor. Really depends on the team size, composition, and game. If you have designers on the team who aren't dedicated programmers, I don't think blender will cut it for them.

jeffhuys 1y ago

Even factorio started out on tried-and-tested libraries before moving away from them primarily because of optimization concerns (right?)

xandrius 1y ago
Yep, people forget one of the core notions of development which is not to prematurely optimise stuff. Especially something as complex as a game. Keep it super simple. Or that game will never come out.
- ms-menardi 1y ago
  some games require a certain level of scale and for those games you should optimize in the pre-planning stage.
  - brulard 1y ago
    I think you are missing the point. The larger the scale is, the more things may be optimized and the more you need to be careful to focus on the important "3%". That said, it doesn't hurt to analyse in advance which parts might be critical and steer the architecture based on those observations.
  - xandrius 1y ago
    Statistically speaking, 99% of game devs won't ever make a game like that. And if they do, they will probably know ahead of time they are making it.
    - danielscrubs 1y ago
      100% of hobby game devs do it as a hobby. The learning process is the fun part. Which is also why 99% give up on their game when they see more learning potential in another area.
- meheleventyone 1y ago
  The full quote is: > Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%. Sometimes the best way to tackle that 3% is upfront when you're deciding on your system architecture.
- nkrisc 1y ago
  Just the other day on reddit I saw someone asking about efficiently removing an item from an array for the game they’re working on. It became this whole CS debate and then someone asked how big the array is and how often do you remove items. The OP responded that it’s just a list of levels in their game, so not more than 20 items or so and is modified once every 5-10 minutes… So a day on their game wasted over efficiently removing an item from an array of 20 items every 5-10 minutes.
  - corysama 1y ago
    I used to make 3D engines and asset pipelines professionally. High performance really is critical in both. So, I’d have to check myself frequently: > If I optimize this, how much time is it going to save the whole world? What will be the sum of time saved by everyone who will ever run this code? Is that less than the time required of me to do the optimization? Then, don’t do it! That question was relevant quite often. The big optimizations though really mattered. And, required planning before initial implementation to set the system up to be optimizable.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    Really highlights the divide between industry and acedemia. Reminds me of when another subreddit was mocking some legacy code (I think Motorola? Some mobile device stuff) for using bubble sort. Meanwhile, the sort probably wasnt on more than a fee hundred items and the mobile embedded is constrained for space. Bubble sort is easy to read, write and has O(1) space. Performance isn't a concern at the scale being worked at. We're talking maybe microseconds of difference. It's not necessarily a bad thing that acedemia focuses on theory. But we keep using school to put a square peg into a round hole and wonder why students are so unprepared for actual production. It's ultimately the company's fault. If you want certain skills, you need to train for it. Your processes aren't public, so you can't just expect candidates to magically know what matters to their role. ---- now acedemically: the answer is to swap an item to the end and reduce the buffer size. I don't think that's taught in acedemia either, but that's a trick you learn on the job. When and if you do need it.

monkeyelite 1y ago

> using your own engine will probably kill you commercially. No - spending a lot of time making tools you don’t need is the problem. You can write your own engine and leverage existing tools.

dismalaf 1y ago

Visual editors are a waste of time. For 2D, lots of solutions exist (Tiled for example). For 3D, you can use Blender as your editor. The key to making no engine work is to make only what you actually need.

whstl 1y ago
That’s a great idea. I have limited experience scripting Blender, but there is a BPY API to add custom panels, so adding metadata to “entities” and simplifying the export workflow is probably feasible to the point it will be very close to an editor.
- dismalaf 1y ago
  Even without scripting Blender, GLTF is a "scene" format. GLTF files hold information about models, textures, lights, etc... So you can create your scene then import straight into your game with GLTF (open source, super common). And of course since Blender is used for movies, it does scenes well already.
Supermancho 1y ago
Visual editing is how all UI is designed. It's not a waste of time. Visual editing is the primary way to prototype, which means it's heavily used at the beginning and less as development goes forward. Projects have some process to translate the prototypes into scaffolding UI in the Editor, then modify with state where necessary. This pipeline is common across all types of software.
- dismalaf 1y ago
  Sorry, I thought the context was clear given the parent. Making your own visual editor is a waste of time when ones exist that will output a format you can simply put into your game.
johnnyanmac 1y ago
> For 3D, you can use Blender as your editor. Really depends on the team size, composition, and game. If you have designers on the team who aren't dedicated programmers, I don't think blender will cut it for them.