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I'm old school like you? I've been programming since TRS-80/Apple II,Atari 800 days. I know C/C++ and OpenGL, DirectX and can certainly get a simple game runni

I'm old school like you? I've been programming since TRS-80/Apple II,Atari 800 days. I know C/C++ and OpenGL, DirectX and can certainly get a simple game running faster with my own code than with Unity or Unreal at this point. But... I also go to game jams and watch the guys using Unity or Unreal run rings round those coding from scratch. I see many of my favorite games of all types being created with Unity (Threes, Monument Valley, Crossy Roads, Ori and the Blind Forest, Cities Skylines, Besiege) I also see the amount of time I'd save. I've written 6 game engines, animation systems, exporters, font renderers, image loaders, serialization systems, spooling systems, memory management systems, input systems, localization systems, etc etc etc. I've ported my engine to various systems. I don't want to do that anymore. > What the hell ever happened to writing code? If that what you like doing then do that but me I just want to get to the game. I can see very clearly learning one of these engines will get me there quicker. Sure the first time there will be learning curve but after I'm quite sure I'll be much more productive.

moron4hire 11y ago
No, I'm not really talking about not-implemented-here-syndrome. Yes, you are right, all of those things can be fun to write for fun's sake, but I agree that it's stupid to try to write all of that yourself if your goal is to be productive and complete a game. My point is, why do I have to use their dopey editor to get at it? Why aren't these things libraries, dependencies that I manage just like any other project I've built since the dawn of time? For Unity, I can definitely see the appeal of a good "game builder" type application. Game builders have been around forever. Traditionally, game builders were crap, so to see Unity create something that can be used to make games that people are selling, for real money, is pretty cool. Unity was never going to be my cup of tea, but that's fine. But for UE4, Epic has been a long-time vendor of AAA-quality game engines. I expected a series of libraries for doing the vast majority of things, plus workflow tools for things like baking lighting into textures. That's what I mean about "what ever happened to writing code?" The way you used to wire up a game engine with your models and your gameplay scripts was to write code, not draw boxes in a flowchart editor. Command-line oriented build tools for processing scripts and packing textures and encoding audio and cross compiling could be abstracted through a GUI, but were still available to plunk down on a build server so you weren't wasting cycles on your workstation. I still get the feeling that that is in there somewhere. But where? I just can't imagine a professional game dev house using the UE4 editor.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  > But where? I just can't imagine a professional game dev house using the UE4 editor. Why not? Most AAA games are done by designers, with developers just providing the engine tools for them to create the game content.
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    ... and those designers are beginners who A) can't read, and B) don't have years of practice in industry-grade tools and techniques? If anything, replacing something like 3DS-Max or Maya in the workflow is probably harder than replacing a code editor. And there are several other disciplines than 3D modeling involved.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      To a certain extent yes, at least from the articles that pop up on Gamasutra, Develop, Making Games and GDC(E).

moron4hire 11y ago

No, I'm not really talking about not-implemented-here-syndrome. Yes, you are right, all of those things can be fun to write for fun's sake, but I agree that it's stupid to try to write all of that yourself if your goal is to be productive and complete a game. My point is, why do I have to use their dopey editor to get at it? Why aren't these things libraries, dependencies that I manage just like any other project I've built since the dawn of time? For Unity, I can definitely see the appeal of a good "game builder" type application. Game builders have been around forever. Traditionally, game builders were crap, so to see Unity create something that can be used to make games that people are selling, for real money, is pretty cool. Unity was never going to be my cup of tea, but that's fine. But for UE4, Epic has been a long-time vendor of AAA-quality game engines. I expected a series of libraries for doing the vast majority of things, plus workflow tools for things like baking lighting into textures. That's what I mean about "what ever happened to writing code?" The way you used to wire up a game engine with your models and your gameplay scripts was to write code, not draw boxes in a flowchart editor. Command-line oriented build tools for processing scripts and packing textures and encoding audio and cross compiling could be abstracted through a GUI, but were still available to plunk down on a build server so you weren't wasting cycles on your workstation. I still get the feeling that that is in there somewhere. But where? I just can't imagine a professional game dev house using the UE4 editor.

pjmlp 11y ago
> But where? I just can't imagine a professional game dev house using the UE4 editor. Why not? Most AAA games are done by designers, with developers just providing the engine tools for them to create the game content.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  ... and those designers are beginners who A) can't read, and B) don't have years of practice in industry-grade tools and techniques? If anything, replacing something like 3DS-Max or Maya in the workflow is probably harder than replacing a code editor. And there are several other disciplines than 3D modeling involved.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    To a certain extent yes, at least from the articles that pop up on Gamasutra, Develop, Making Games and GDC(E).