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I’ve been working in the games industry as a programmer for 21 years and I’ve seen this so many times. I also used to see it on gamedev.net and flipcode.com. Ve

I’ve been working in the games industry as a programmer for 21 years and I’ve seen this so many times. I also used to see it on gamedev.net and flipcode.com. Very technical people, engine programmers, think they can make a game and seem to think that all it takes is an engine and don’t even think about the game part. They tinker endlessly with file formats, memory allocators, vector math libraries, pooled string classes, etc and never finish anything when they could have just used json and png files and actually shipped something. On PC for the scale of game most indie developers will make all of that stuff isn’t really necessary. And if you find it is necessary then you can refactor later.

LarsDu88 2mo ago
This is the infamous "stack fallacy" https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/18/why-big-companies-keep-failing-the-stack-fallacy/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/18/why-big-companies-keep-fai... The idea that the layer above your own is trivial to build (e.g. biology is just chemistry, or chemistry is just applied physics) At some point I built a little 2d game engine, but the same amount of time would have been better served actually building a game in Unity. Eventually I solo developed a full 3d VR app for the MetaQuest.
- mabster 2mo ago
  I'm out of the industry now, but I kept doing this for a while. I would want to "scratch an itch" and build a game out of hours. After a few attempts I realised I don't actually want to build a game, I want to build an engine
  - bananaboy 2mo ago
    Haha I've been there! I was just browsing a few of your past comments and see you were in gamedev in Melbourne. Maybe we've crossed paths - I was at Blue Tongue until we were shut down by THQ, then Tantalus for a year or two, then freelance for a while, and the last seven years I've been at Sledgehammer Games Melbourne.

LarsDu88 2mo ago

This is the infamous "stack fallacy" https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/18/why-big-companies-keep-failing-the-stack-fallacy/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/18/why-big-companies-keep-fai... The idea that the layer above your own is trivial to build (e.g. biology is just chemistry, or chemistry is just applied physics) At some point I built a little 2d game engine, but the same amount of time would have been better served actually building a game in Unity. Eventually I solo developed a full 3d VR app for the MetaQuest.

mabster 2mo ago
I'm out of the industry now, but I kept doing this for a while. I would want to "scratch an itch" and build a game out of hours. After a few attempts I realised I don't actually want to build a game, I want to build an engine
- bananaboy 2mo ago
  Haha I've been there! I was just browsing a few of your past comments and see you were in gamedev in Melbourne. Maybe we've crossed paths - I was at Blue Tongue until we were shut down by THQ, then Tantalus for a year or two, then freelance for a while, and the last seven years I've been at Sledgehammer Games Melbourne.