I see. My post came off as arrogant. My apologies.
Yeah, because Mr. JoeAverageNobody is probably that much smarter than the engineers who designed the most complex game engine to date and who are all experts in their respective fields and have written numerous white papers on the subject. Oh, but maybe you were being ironic...?
Your technology would have to be earth shatteringly groundbreaking to be considered an advancement from either of those two mentioned above - otherwise, it's simply unfeasible to even replicate their technology to the full extent within any reasonable amount of time without a highly experienced team of programmers. Frankly, your comment comes off no better than the Euclideon guys...
Most teams are actually composed of a few good guys and a bunch of pawns. It is true that teams can produce results on more subsystems at the same time, but one person working alone (and often) does not have the hassle of making daily progress reports, attending meetings, and synchronizing with others.
Additionally, that one person has the full grasp of every subsystem in the engine, and in detail. Bugs are less frequent and fixed faster, etc.
And in my particular case, this is the 3rd game engine I have made and the second commercial-sized one. So I have a lot of source code at my disposal for referencing (and sometimes copying), helping me be just that much faster.
No, it is still not as fast as a large team, but not as slow as you would think.
I'm a bit curious here. I believe that a single programmer with a lot of motivation and work ethic can make a usable 3D engine by himself, but for a single programmer to make an engine on par with Cry or UDK.... that person would have to be an MIT prodigy and the most gifted programmer in the world. Which brings to question why they would even make a 3D engine as they could have a multimillion dollar salary.
Unless that person has a goal of starting his or her own middleware company.
No one person can compete with a team of experienced programmers in engine production speed. Even if you have the most solid understanding of the underlying math, you cannot physically program and test faster than that team.
Does that mean you cannot produce an engine with many of the same bells and whistles? No. You can. Is it a waste of time? depends on if there is an engine with a license you can use to your advantage and it suitable to your game.
Agreed, but as for wasting time, I hinted at starting a middleware company later.
So for me this is the future. And I don’t even need to fully reach Unreal Engine 3, CryEngine 3, or Frostbite 2. Actually, realistically, I feel I probably cannot match Frostbite 2 alone.
I only need to make my product competitive, and then I plan to hire a team mainly to flesh out the tools.
In case I came off as arrogant before, actually I have asked and probably still will some of the stupidest questions on these boards. It is not really about how much you know. It is about how much you know how to learn.
I am realistic, so I won’t feel terribly disappointed if I do not meet or beat CryEngine 3, but I will have a blast during the journey and will walk away with much more experience.
As for the future of Frostbite 2…
Both DICE and Unity 3D are aware of this so I think it is not a secret.
I
mentioned that Unity 3D has the right people for competing with Frostbite 2 once. It turns out that 4 of the best programmers of the Frostbite 2 engine left DICE and now work for Unity 3D. I also met one of the senior staff of Unity 3D who used to work for CryTech.
These big middleware companies are losing a lot of their top staff. You would be surprised to see just how few strong programmers they really have left.
L. Spiro
