Why I Don't Use Game Engines

Why I Don't Use Game Engines

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[janikcodes]

Not using a game engine is not like driving manual, it's more like building the car from scratch and then try driving it.
My opinion.

[bimboi]

I was in a game dev discord where I posted a video of my own navmesh and path finding algorithm I made for the fun of it. I was really surprised that there were people that felt the need to interject with 'why would u waste your time, it already exists'. As if enjoyment was not enough of a reason to learn and create something.

So basically I appreciate this video and it's sentiments.

[JanbluTheDerg]

It's definitely up to personal opinion! I've made a couple games without a game engine, but really, I'd rather have a game engine by my side. Not because I'm lazy, but because it lets me work on what I actually care about, implementing design, levels and iterating fast. Back-end code doesn't interest me much outside of a "Oh, that's really cool!" thing. Much respect to people who do that back-end stuff! Y'all are awesome!

[guadog]

Could not agree more, It's fun and satisfying to challenge yourself to make something without a game engine. If you were to make a steam game, what kind of game would it be?

[Kinos]

There are people out here who like building their own engines and I am all for it. Those people are the ones who will create or maintain game engines in the future.

For me, however, I want to make a game rather than build an engine. Therefore, game engines that do the job are for me.

Good luck to you.

[Gandalf_the_Black_]

I recently started making a game in C++ with no engine, after having experimented with Unity a bit. I think it's a really useful educational experience, because you know what everything is for and how it works, whereas going into a complex game engine blind, while it can be easy to make projects with little experience, you don't necessarily know how it all fits together.

[spiritwolf]

When you write your own engines you have a deeper understanding of what engines such as Unity actually do behind those abstractions. It makes you a better programmer and will probably enable you to write more efficient or higher quality code.

I definitely agree though that most people, if they don't care about being that low level and just want to have fun making a game, existing engines will work very well for them.

For me though, making stuff from scratch is fun :)

[bambukodev]

Well, a little story from my side about the thing, idk why i write it here, it just fits.
Long story short, i was writing a game in unity named Qwerty's Planet, unity started crashing and had problems everywhere with the engine itself, so i decided to leave it for good and switch to c++. Well, it is muuuuch harder, but the enjoyment when something finnally works is big asf. If you did read it all, thanks for listening.

[universallyepicnarwhal]

There is also a very big performance benefit if you know what you're doing. A general purpose engine will always have way more shit going on than a finely tuned handcrafted engine. Of course, to make that engine you have to be really good, have a lot of time, or both.

[Lebert]

As a person who is making his own game engine, I totally agree with you, don't let people tell you what to do, if it's more exciting for you to make a game engine, just do it.

[Fricasso]

Maybe I'm just old and set in my ways, but I never liked using an engine because it doesn't feel like making a game to me, it just feels like customising a game someone else already made.

[Spartan]

Unity is the extreme of doing everything under the hood and out of sight, but there are other game engines that don't, most often the ones made for use without an editor will do this, and I'd say even open source engines like Godot are a lot closer to a usable middle ground for this.

[jumanji]

Would you ever make your own game engine or programming language for fun?

[tandex]

my first game was made from scratch. I don't think I'll ever use game engine for my own games. Like, I want to make my programs have own structure (game files, physics and all other). And yes, it's way more fun thing to do and it can be smaller and faster game.

[ericd.]

0:15 I DID THE SAME THING IN MY FIRST DRIVING TEST

[MrCube]

Do you look at parrotx2, lifesteal, or minecraft videos in general? this is super random lol just curious :D

[handmadegamesdev]

Good video. I've always enjoyed the technical challenge of programming games without an existing engine. I'm also very interested in how engines work under the hood. For those that want to focus on other aspects of game development, existing engines are probably the way to go. For my own goals, I also considered that learning an existing engine would be a lot of work already, so I decided I may as well put that effort into programming games from scratch.

[jared_per]

I love the manual/automatic analogy. I drive automatic, love the efficiency and ease, but I code in a game framework (Love2d) where I get some basic stuff, like primitives. But l love making it as efficient as I can. I feel I learn way more computer science by doing it myself and iterating my knowledge more and more.

[MaIarky]

The only reason I know how to code is because when I opened blender I got annoyed by the complexity, buttons, jargon, and just desided it was easier to dedicated the next decade of my life to just making my own 3d graphics from the ground up. Im not gonna try and rationalize it, I just dont like buttons.

[arsenhere]

People, he finds joy in not using a game engine. He likes the background coding stuff. Entirely up to preference. Nice video man.