2 hours ago, fleabay said:

How can you consider yourself a lone developer when you have an entire team off dozens creating the bulk of your game engine?

lol, picking nits a bit aren't we? 

So, by your logic, nobody that uses a compiler is a lone developer either..   Nice. 

Everybody has a team now!!!  WOOOO!!

3 hours ago, fleabay said:

How can you consider yourself a lone developer when you have an entire team off dozens creating the bulk of your game engine?

Because it's about factoring in how much time you can invest into a project and what kind of results you want to achieve. If I start from nothing in C++ I am going to be coding for a very long time and not see any real results for a long time. I just want to get what is in my head out into the real world. Engines like Unity 3D just streamline the process.Why reinvent the wheel when someone has done it for me?

The post had nothing to do with actually quantifying the man-hour comparrisons between working with an engine or building it all yourself either.  So which straw man are we attacking first? 

I just want to make a game. The tools available nowadays are incredible. Why not take advantage? My actual line of work isn't related to programming in any way so again it comes down to factoring in how much time I can invest into the project and what kind of results I want to achieve.

Thanks for reading. Wasn't expecting to stir up a convo ?

19 hours ago, Nick Slusarczyk said:

Wasn't expecting to stir up a convo ?

Behold the power of the Magic Bonus Combination! 

What is the Magic Bonus Combination?  The use of the name Unity3D in combination with a narrative that can be considered either encouraging or discouraging of its further use. 

You must not do these things if you don't want to see people convo.  bwahahaha!!

Hahahah! So this is basically like every other community that shuns new tools that make life easier? Gotcha!!!

5 minutes ago, Nick Slusarczyk said:

Hahahah! So this is basically like every other community that shuns new tools that make life easier? Gotcha!!!

Not entirely, but convo happens.

2 hours ago, Nick Slusarczyk said:

Hahahah! So this is basically like every other community that shuns new tools that make life easier? Gotcha!!!

There is a real schism for people in this community, particularly when it comes to 'development motivations'.

These motivations can be anything for anyone.

There are a large number of lets say - 'engine purists' or 'Monolithics' - who's motivation is not only making the 'game' aspect of the programming, but also being able to develop the whole system and its supporting systems. You will find this argument popping up all the time in the 'engine' and 'for beginners' forums. The justifications often range in the realm of 'i'm doing this to learn' (one I've used myself), 'i don't trust other people's work', 'i don't want to beholden to someone else's development cycle', and 'i want to be in control of the whole system so i can add and remove features at will'. These are all valid reasons, provided they align with your skills, capabilities, and objectives. It makes little sense as a 'solo game developer' to forsake tools to improve your productivity if your primary objective is to produce a game in a short to middle term.

Part of the challenge with this site, and particularly with the blog section, is that there is a perception that this is authoritative. That is, you're giving hard and fast advice and personally i think this perception is undeserved, so some people will specifically challenge you on insights that you make in blogs and not always constructively. There are a few people who have been on this site for a very long time who i respect as content providers (L. Spiro, Hodgeman, to name a couple), all others i see as interesting alternatives to doing things, or opportunity for insight that i might not have considered.

At the end of the day though, i find this community to be reasonable when it comes to making use of commercial engines, libraries, and other 'accelerators' - everyone has their opinion on which is best though. Throw away comments such as what has happened here are going to happen, but the community as a whole, in my opinion is much more open to the idea of making games vs. making engines - provided that's your objective.

I'd be keen to see more about your game that you're working on, so i hope you stick around and continue to blog your progress.

If using anothers work still bothers you then pay it forward.  Perhaps someone will use the assets you make, someday.

Hi!

i did exactly the same as you, writing my game from scratch and then discovering the productivity gains of using an off the shelf engine.

youre right in that it will help you but in my case I’m only just surpassing the progress of my best previous attempt now, several years later because often you find you don’t have the free time you once had, and secondly you have to learn the quirks of the engine you choose.

in my case I chose unreal engine 4 and although I already felt competent in C++ and had written several large projects in modern C++ I quickly found out that unreal kind of chews up standard c++ and adds lots via macros and custom preprocessors and it’s like learning some things all over again. Standard library and STL are out, a custom template library and classes are in.

dont underestimate the time taken to become competent in a new engine but above all good luck and have fun!

10 hours ago, Stragen said:

I'd be keen to see more about your game that you're working on, so i hope you stick around and continue to blog your progress.

Thanks! So far I would say the experience on here has been very positive. I definitely look forward to getting acquainted around here some more. It's hard to convey in text but there definitely was a good amount of sarcasm in my comment but also a good amount of truth  Ultimately the core members of a good community tend to outweigh the vast majority that usually just come and go.

3 hours ago, Brain said:

dont underestimate the time taken to become competent in a new engine but above all good luck and have fun!

Thanks for sharing your experience! I think I originally picked Unity 3D because it seemed to have an edge for 2D games which is what my original aim was. But, that has obviously changed  
I'm definitely taking the time to get acquainted with the engine. Seeing what is possible with either engine just tells me that the only limitation is the person using the tool. I actually never used C# before getting into Unity 3D but I've found it pretty intuitive to use coming from C++, PHP and Java. 

No one even said that though. Is that what is really on your mind? ?

lol

There is a subculture of people (mostly gamers and reviewers on YouTube) who might consider a unity game some kind of lesser thing, like the effort taken isn’t the same somehow. They base this opinion on seeing one too many cheap asset flips on steam green light.

You don’t generally see the same response from developers, and fleabay certainly isn’t one of them.

pay the real naysayers no heed and plow on your own way!

It's not "just a subculture of people" as you claim it to be. It's certainly much less effort and engagement to copy-paste a game together instead of doing the assets, scripts, code (if required), sound, music, UI and what not else yourself (alone or with a team). Most of the time these C&P games are bad since you need to understand what you are doing. Just slapping things together is what the majority of people do but real game developers don't. That's why Unity has the negativity attached to it. That and the fact it's a horrible engine to work with. Better use UE4 or some other engine. It's cumbersome to work with too but less of a problem.

(Bracing for fanboy down-voting... 1...2...)

Nobody is promoting copy-paste game making here.  But it's silly not to use a tool if it fits your workflow, skill set and timeline.  Many people, myself included have had the exact opposite experience with Unity than you apparently have.  Nothing wrong with that.   

16 minutes ago, RPTD said:

It's not "just a subculture of people" as you claim it to be. It's certainly much less effort and engagement to copy-paste a game together instead of doing the assets, scripts, code (if required), sound, music, UI and what not else yourself (alone or with a team). Most of the time these C&P games are bad since you need to understand what you are doing. Just slapping things together is what the majority of people do but real game developers don't. That's why Unity has the negativity attached to it. That and the fact it's a horrible engine to work with. Better use UE4 or some other engine. It's cumbersome to work with too but less of a problem.

(Bracing for fanboy down-voting... 1...2...)

No I can’t downvote that, it’s the commonly held belief. It’s true that people do asset flip things from the unity store and just drag and drop them together, and battle through the inevitable compile errors until it builds, consider it done, and pay $100 to list it on steam. This has given unity a bad name.

you don’t see as many of these in ue4 for two reasons: the asset store is less detailed and has less for sale and secondly the steeper learning curve makes it less simple to just bumble through the compile errors caused.

If you’ve put effort into unique gameplay it doesn’t matter who’s assets you use - I tend to “kitbash” eg buy many assets from turbosquid on the cheap and modify them into more complex assets (see the grab claw in my game on my YouTube channel).

People like Jim Sterling and digital homicide haven’t helped with unity’s reputation one bit.

Again pay it no heed and make your game the best it can be...

On 12/29/2018 at 3:32 PM, fleabay said:

How can you consider yourself a lone developer when you have an entire team off dozens creating the bulk of your game engine?

Just going back to this original comment here: when I release my game I plan to credit everyone who has authored any asset regardless of license. Even CC0/Public domain will get credit.

Why? Because it feels to me to be the professional and nice guy thing to do.

4 hours ago, RPTD said:

It's certainly much less effort and engagement to copy-paste a game together instead of doing the assets, scripts, code (if required), sound, music, UI and what not else yourself (alone or with a team). Most of the time these C&P games are bad since you need to understand what you are doing.

I agree, the lesser effort required to get to a 'minimum viable product' or a real outcome can be seen as a cheat, however we teach in programming that cheating in this way isn't necessarily a bad thing. We frequently promote the concept of re-use of code, templatising, making code modular so that it can be ported between projects, and when identified as being the 'more efficient' way of getting the job done that we use these shortcuts to do so. Work smarter - not harder... etc.

There is a large divide between making use of Unity/Unreal/GameMaker/etc, and being an 'asset flipper' or 'C&P' game, but i absolutely see where you're coming from. Steam has been doing a moderate job (lets not be too generous) of removing obvious asset flip games off the store.

Being a Unity hobbyist myself (i simply picked an engine and have kept with it for simplicity sake), i see the challenge with the perception of unity games is that because of the low barrier to entry, low skilled people are producing low value productions, and putting them on steam/itch indiscriminately, watering down the perception of unity being a quality development platform... Unreal has a somewhat higher barrier to entry, leading to somewhat fewer 'low value productions' being out there in the world.

Further compounding this issue of 'asset flipping' is that these engines encourage development of "asset kits", for example the "uMMORPG" asset that is in essence an mmo in a box, and such allow for quick to market release of 'products' with no effort. I think people putting these 'games' for sale without producing original content within that asset kit should be called what they are, scammers, but people who use them as the foundation to make the game - tell a story, inspire learning, or produce a challenge for a player - should be exempt from the hate.

This all boils down to quality of resulting product - if your product is well-designed, and execution is done in a good way ... then it doesn't really matter whether you've used Unity or in-house engine at all.

I have noticed 2 groups of people that are the loudest around 'Unity' topic though (both groups are full of zealots, with whom no discussion is possible):

• First that hate Unity because bad products has been made from it, and therefore initiating flame war against anyone who wants or uses Unity.
• Second that are pushing Unity everywhere, and literally stating: 'why would you deploy another game engine when Unity is the final solution for everything'.

Neither of these 2 groups is right, and it is better to just walk away from any person in these 2 groups.

Unity is a tool, it may be useful for some things - but it isn't the best solution for everything. The same goes for other engines ... even for whole languages (example: using Python for implementation of high performance networking server is really a bad idea). Everything boils down to "Use the right tools for the right job".

Using assets from Asset Store is a thing with which I generally have huge problem though (ignoring the mentioned scamming - because it produces poor quality and boring products), for most of my scenes - the models simply won't fit the whole scene at all. While their quality is often high, they just don't look right when you put multiple together (there are some exceptions though).

This is the blurred line between programming and game design, which I have talked about many times before, that has always existed in the computer game industry.  It's comprised of programmers and artists who have never had a clear definition of "game design" means.  Most of them think it means programming, which you are seeing in this apparently "old debate".  The programmers don't think it's "game design" if you didn't build it all from scratch, then this other group has this instinctive belief that the underlying code doesn't really matter. 

That's because programming and code are not "game design" and never have been.  If you are going to make games on a computer, obviously you are going to need programmers writing code, and those programmers might even also be "slash designers".  But the programming and code are simply the building blocks of a computer game.  The 2x4s, support beams, and dry wall that the game is built out of.  No different than a cardboard map, counters, and dice in a board game.  In relation to board game production the programmers and artists are replacing the printing company, not the game company.  

The engine is not "game design", the engine is the equivalent of the game components.  Someone could, very easily, make what many called "the best game ever made, the Star Wars of games" out of Unity tomorrow.  "It's not the engine, stupid..."

I am not fond of the term "game design" as used in the west. I personally prefer how the Japanese label the role/similar role. Game Planner.

The term 'design' lends itself too close to art when planning a game should be isolated on its own separate from art. An example, level design should not be tackled from an artist standpoint in its first stages. While I believe the Game Planner generally should not plan a game from an artist standpoint, they should have a general idea of aesthetics and potential art direction to pass onto the artists. Also have general idea of programming to assist or give suggestions to the programmers.

'Game Planner' is a term that should be adopted into the western industry/dev community. Separate from both art and programming. Something perhaps closer to an architect? (vs Interior Design vs Construction Workers/builders)

Quote

 As I started to plan the game out I started to draw up the assets for it. Talk about biting off more than I can chew. 2D pixel art does not happen quickly. If you aren't proficient at it... the time it takes to draw up acceptable sprites can be pretty long. I've spent countless hours in photoshop drawing up naked sprites that I could paint clothes on, etc. The inevitable happened and I got pretty burnt out from doing something that was necessary but ultimately not that stimulating for me. At the end of the day I enjoy coding a lot more than doing the actual design stuff.

@Nick Slusarczyk, this is a really interesting point.  I think that what you're describing is quite common amongst solo developers, I fall under this too.  I assume most solo developers who come here have experienced something similar if not very similar.  Many of us solos are inspired by computer games and have chosen to try and make one ourselves.    At the outset the progress we make seems rather revolutionary to us individually because we see what we can accomplish with modern technology.  But inevitably the quick rewards of doing things for the first time ware off and crave more of something else.  I think this is also why some solo developers swing from idea to idea.  They suck up all the reward it has to offer and then move on to the next.  I'm betting that this is a road block you'll encounter more than once along your journey.  It's always a challenge balancing motivation and perseverance.  

Like others have mentioned, you should post something showing us your game, we'd all like to see what you're cookin up.

It's been great to hear from everyone. I guess a lot of us share pretty similar experiences.

I've spent the last few days getting caught up on these new features in Unity 3D. The Job system, the burst compiler, the HD SRP, GPU Skinning / Instancing. Basically looking to take an efficient approach right from the beginning eliminate refactoring down the road.

I just discovered the FPS Sample Project and got it up and running so it's going to be a lot of fun to dissect that and see how they employ all these new systems. The project itself runs extremely well on my PC. Had four clients up and running to test the multiplayer mode on my PC. The performance is pretty amazing and the graphics look fantastic. The new high definition render pipeline is a huge step up.

The ECS approach reminds me a lot of when I used PHP and created a website framework using MVC. When I started my 2D version it was in Unity 3D 5.xx or something like that and now I'm testing out 2018.3 which seems to bring a lot more to the table.

Exciting stuff!

it's a great topic nick, and one I hope many people will question before falling into the pit of no return !
I just hope it doesn't scare too many away from going solo as a dev. It's a very fine balance between skills and ambition.

What i find intesting is how many people start with a project and end up with nothing more than a test fragment of elements which you enjoyed making. The dirty work is where the battles are fought and lost much of the time, if not that, time/money beats the creator into submission. Sad considering what people could probably achieve given the right conditions.

Technology is definately making things easier/quicker to approach projects as a solo dev, but it still has a risk of complacency attached. The dirty work is where it's at for the solo dev, once you know you can hit the difficult (often boring) stuff without too much interuption, then you can crack on and make waves.