21 replies to this topic

[Jeff.Leigh]

If it's something you want to do, I say go for it.

You will certainly learn a lot in the process, and be more useful to future companies if you know not only how to use an engine, but how game engines work and how to solve problems other API-level programmers will struggle to fix.

I've developed several game engines myself, and each time I do it, I find better ways to do things along the way. Of course, building an engine isn't a weekend hobby. Getting a basic rendering core going is something that can be done in a few months - but really making a fully-featured engine can take years.

Edited by Jeff.Leigh, 31 May 2012 - 05:27 PM.

[Fredericvo]

Assembler isn't really THAT complicated once you get it. Trying to figure out how some complex problem could be coded in it is. But the language itself is really nothing more than "load value from mem location 1234 into register x" "add 5 to register x" "store value from x to mem location 4321" "is value in x greater than y" etc.
Whatever you really learned in a higher level language but with the necessity of breaking it down into very small steps thereby losing the insight C might give you. It will definitely help you understand how your pc (or mobile) works but not how to code a game or whatever. I personally "got" shaders from assembly versions because HLSL sort of eluded me since they didn't provide me with an insight of how GPU's work but I digress as you first have to understand mainstream CPU's in assembler before you try to understand other chips with their own instruction sets etc. I think if you got yourself a legacy computer such as the Amiga and teach yourself assembler on that you may understand my point as the Amiga had a few co-processors with their own instruction set.