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[Glyph]

Game Maker is serviceable. It's the only engine I use for games nowadays. I like it better for 2d games vs. Unity because there is some setup work involved in getting the camera projection working properly for a 2d game in Unity and most rotations and such need to be converted from more 3d-friendly functions that are cumbersome for 2d like quaternions. On the converse, GM has extremely limited support for something full 3d though, I should note.

Anyway, choice of an engine isn't really going to hold a would-be developer back much anyway. You can establish a decent workflow in probably anything out there (or even make your own engine) and after that it's just a matter of you, the developer, having the time and effort to finish something. And that's, uh, where I'm hung up at the moment  

[michaelplzno]

I have a good deal of beef with Unity at this point. I've designed a bunch of structures to compensate for a bunch of weak features in the engine but even still it crashes even to this day. I guess they have decided they have saturated the game market so they can get complacent. It was nice to do my open source project in just straight c++ for a change, but I'm sort of stuck with Unity now so there isn't much I can do about it.

[litHermit]

Unity seems to be stretching itself really thin. Leaving a lot of things semi-done, while starting numerous new things all the time.
I find the amount of things constantly changing overwhelming so I ceased updating for a while.

[omnilith]

i just use game maker because im an artist and i greatly dislike programming, it works pretty well for that

[Golds]

Unity seems to be stretching itself really thin. Leaving a lot of things semi-done, while starting numerous new things all the time.
I find the amount of things constantly changing overwhelming so I ceased updating for a while.

I'm feeling this right now especially. The HDRP is *almost* there, they broke their particle system for several releases, etc. I think the push for multiple official releases per year has stretched them thin, but then again. 2019.2 is better than it's been for awhile. I'm glad they are finally tweaking the garbage collector with the incremental version. The new nested prefabs system is... livable. Atl least they're trying.

Unreal looks very tempting sometimes.

[litHermit]

Doing mostly 2D, I find game maker tempting sometimes. But overall I like my Unity workflow, its jack-of-all-trades approach to being an engine suits me (mostly) just fine.

Looking forward to garbage collector upgrades when I finally move away from 2018.3, and am hopeful to see some preview packages getting a stable release by then

[Richard Kain]

i just use game maker because im an artist and i greatly dislike programming, it works pretty well for that

I am the opposite. Well, kind-of, anyway. I greatly like programming, and I recently managed to pick up C++. Now I'm trying to cook up a programmable shader pipeline in OpenGL that I can get running on a Raspberry Pi. I've used engines like Unity and Godot before, but I can't resist the siren call of low-level technical problem solving. I finally succumbed to the temptation of rolling a more customized solution.

I don't blame developers who want to stay away from the technical side of things. But for me, I was always frustrated by the limitations this imposed on me. Now my limitations are just a matter of my chosen platform.

[Daid]

I was always frustrated by the limitations this imposed on me. Now my limitations are just a matter of my chosen platform.

You are also limited by your own engine writing capabilities now. So you traded one limitation for another. Which can be fine, but remember that you did.


I have my own engine. I like tinkering with it. That's my reason. For me, it's a hobby. So I can do whatever I want.
But while my engine has 3D rendering, it does not have any real lighting or shadow handling, as I never bothered with it.


But I don't think making your own engine is the most efficient way if you just want to make a game, unless you want something very specific. Factorio is an good example, without a custom game engine they never would have gotten the lock-step multiplayer working, and the performance that they have. Unless they ignored just most of the engine, which is generally worse then not using an engine at all.

[Richard Kain]

You are also limited by your own engine writing capabilities now. So you traded one limitation for another. Which can be fine, but remember that you did.

Sage advice. But fear not for me, I am well aware of the consequences of such a choice. And step 1 was scaling back design considerations and targets. A fully developed and mature engine gives you far more possibilities for scope. A DIY solution that you are starting from basically square one has little to no features, and requires a modest scope to match. The more modest the better.

I'm currently focusing on developing very basic single-screen arcade-inspired titles with tile-based 2D graphics. Think more along the lines of PONG or Robotron. Dialing it back to the basics.

The nice thing about my own limitations is that they are constantly expanding.

[michaelplzno]

I wrote a whole thing about limitations and how I hate them. The conclusion I came to was that great artists choose their limitations well.

[goob256]

Well I've made about a couple dozen games and I've made a new engine for each one. Except the one I'm making now which I reused some of the previous one. If you don't care about the technical stuff (players don't, at all) then I'd say pick an existing engine. If you're some kind of perfectionist sure, make your own but you'll be doing it for yourself because nobody cares about this.

[Mark Mayers]

[Golds]

Time to update the thread title: How do you make games in 2020? A lot has changed.

[WilliamRobhe]

Unity for sure, the amount of assets it provide is just insane.

[Sayuris1]

I use defold engine. My programming capabilities are not as good as you guys and I didn't wanted to spend time to learn how to write a game engine, just wanted to go straight to making art.

Defold is really good to prototype games. It's really easy and fast to add and try new things. So you don't get sad when a mechanic is not fun and you trash it. But I'm not sure if it's any good on medium and large projects. There are some short comings you can only see after you finish prototyping and starting to actually make the game.

But Lua, Omg Lua, it's soo good and easy. I tried C# and Java for game programming and couldn't even get past copy-paste lvl but after I started to Lua everything started to become soo easy. Like I become a programmer god or something. But I need to say I'm still not a good programmer and want to hear others opinions on Lua.

Some of my friends use MonoGame. They say it's like coding your own engine. I guess I'll try that after I get better at programming.

[Duccoz]

I'm getting back into using unity for 3d games after releasing some 2d games a few years ago. I find unity is great for 3d not so much for 2d.

[Ordnas]

I always used Unity for my prototypes, but for the new one I am using Unreal Engine 4, I am already noticed a speed up in development time spent, maybe because am more confident with UE4, being the engine I am using at work everyday.

[ThePlaytestingCop]

For pure speed, check out https://www.construct.net. I've been using Unity for many years, but if I need a quick prototype I still pop open Construct from time to time. One note is it's 2d only.

[friendlinzh]

i would recommend Unity to make games.it is the best

[droqen]

I like Godot!

I mostly do 2D, but I have dabbled in 3D, and Godot was good for me.