These seem to be like the backbone of a game, but is it just the software to run it?
I assume you build your assets in other software and you import them into your engine, unless the engine does most of the heavy lifting these days?
If licensing good engines like unreal are relatively cheap these days, why is it so impressive to build your own? Some companies like Rockstar have used the RAGE engine reliably, whereas other games like halo infinite and cyberpunk crashed and burned. How could this happen when the developers should be intimately familiar with tech they built themselves?
I have been playing games my whole life but I have no idea how they work.
In: Engineering
Imagine you wanted to build a shelf. Using a game engine would be like a friend letting you use his fully equipped wood shop – there’s saws, drills, glue, etc. All the tools needed to build the shelf yourself. You’d still need to design the shelf and supply the wood, but having access to the wood shop lets you get started building the shelf almost immediately.
Building your own game engine would be akin to having to make your tools yourself too, so you start with practically nothing and have to design and build your own saw, drill, etc. This is not only significantly more complex and time consuming, but creates a lot more potential for something to go wrong. But if you’re successful and it works, you get to brag that you built your own power tools from scratch.
Disclaimer: please do not build your own power tools from scratch.
Latest Answers