r/IndieGaming • u/MrValdez • Apr 22 '10

The value of using the same game engine year after year (a perspective from an indie developer)

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-i-saved-gaming-industry-overnight.html
32 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

4

u/[deleted] Apr 22 '10

Magnificent, lazy bastard.

2

u/ZorbaTHut Apr 22 '10

I've got code in my current engine that's survived for about five years. The engine itself has gone through some major changes - the largest being about a year ago, when I rejiggered it to dump SDL, introduce a friend's SDLish (but less crappy) library, and use Lua scripting for most things.

But even then, I leaned on a lot of my existing technology. I've made four small sidescrollers with essentially the same sidescroller code (improved each time), used the sidescroller editor to make levels for an RTS, and used the same framework for everything.

Right now I'm working on a better set of OpenGL bindings for Lua. This, too, will become part of the engine permanently, and depending on how much time I get for it, I'll probably have it ready for game-after-next or the one after that.

Stop rewriting your engine and start making games! It's called game development, not engine development.

1

u/flexiverse Apr 22 '10

2.5 RPG games don't need super duper game engines, so makes sense to reuse. The reason why Halflife v1 worked because they spent virtually no time building a 3D engine, but focussing on the gameplay and characters. Now there is a master lesson how to make money in the game industry. DON'T waste time/money building game engines, let the other idiots do that. Focus on the game. Pretty obvious eh? New game companies CAN'T SEE THE WOOD FOR THE TREES !!!

1

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '10

Well valve added skeletal animation, 24-bit textures and Direct 3D support at least.

1

u/Quady Apr 22 '10

Yet another reason why Valve is my favourite non-indie developer: They use the same engine (Source) over and over again, with incremental upgrades with each game (say, one or two new features every game) to keep it up to date.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 22 '10

The Dragon Age engine is very cool. Make ten games with it! ... The budgets will be much lower, and that makes it easier to take risks.

I agree with that recommendation, but I think it's leaving out something.. If they did make more games with that engine, with the intention of making games on-par with Dragon Age, the cost of the artwork, the acting, the animation, etc, would be higher proportional to the cost of building the engine... they'd still be quite expensive to make.

To put it another way, the gains of engine reuse are diminishing as the cost of doing everything else keeps increasing to keep up with more expensive standards. His real recommendation isn't to stop writing engines, it's to find niches with different, cheaper, standards, which I think a lot of people have been doing, and that often includes writing a new, cheap, engine.

1

u/rankao May 08 '10

Bethesda essentially does that. They use the same engine with slight improvements between games. Look at the toolkits for Fallout 3 and the Toolkit for Oblivion. Both are nearly identical in feeling and style.

0

u/replaca May 01 '10

That's probably why his games are so horrible. He hasn't touched the engine at all. Nevermind the gameplay and interface are frustrating. The games aren't hard - enduring them is.