Whats been going on my mind this week: game engines
Apologies if this blog post is somewhat long winded and doesn't have a point, I just mainly want to post something and just share how things are going with my life currently. In the words of Blaise Pascal, "if i had more time, i would have written a shorter letter." but we're not since this is a blog so lets go.
Where im at with game dev
To start, ive been dealing with trying to get this new game project out for a little bit. I started making this bug climbing game to see how unreal fairs when it comes to making games in it, and to put it short, I really like it. Unreal's blueprints system oddly brings me back to when I was starting in game development using gamemaker with its drag and drop coding. I felt like I could've made anything at that time. One project im still somewhat proud of still since after this I never got that far with any project was this little alien abducting game in gamemaker made for this 1-bit game jam I saw. Unfortunately I can't show any of the game since my brother accidentally wiped my hard drive clean when he was trying to build his own PC and using my hard drive had a substitute usb stick (I should let go of this but I just can't for some reason).
After this, I oddly couldn't finish anything afterwards, like my motivation for finishing games just sort of died out. I believed the reason for why this is was because of gamemaker's licenses changes around that time making buying gamemaker permanently just not possible. With this and the gamemaker community generally not supplying tutorials with dnd, I ended up abandoning gamemaker. And sadly, switching to other engines didn't fill the void that gamemaker dnd left in me. I tried godot, unity, construct, gdevelop, rpg maker 2k3, love2d, haxeflixel, pixel game maker (which is different from gamemaker), clickteam fusion and many more that I can't remember now, and nothing seem to fit what I wanted from game development. When I came back to gamemaker since I somewhat gave up and decided wait until I could get the money to buy a month long creator license, it just didn't feel the same since I was still insisting on learning proper coding rather than making games itself.
Cut today after a lot of depressive bouts, and I now have a more powerful computer. While I picked it up once and dropped it, recently unreal engine, specifically UE4, is entreating me. Not only that some of my favorite 3D platformers, Pseudoregalia, was made in it, but it also has a super appealing visual coding system that makes game making much more simpler. I was a little hesitant to use it cause of how overpowered it is for the types of games I want to make, but after much consideration I decided to use it for the weekends and...
WOW
Im having much more fun with this that any other time ive been making games since. Along side that, gamemaker recently switched backed to a one time purchase and mostly out of FOMO but also cause i saw a lot of value having both a dedicated 2D engine and a 3D engine is a good idea, I bought it (kind of regret it now but hey I don't need to worry about it anymore).
Reasons for using unreal and gamemaker
A little thing you've probably assumed when Im talking about my experience with game development is that Im ADHD as fuck. I just can't stand looking at code and complicated math for way too long, especially in 3D engines. While I get the appeal of unity or godot, I feel like those two engines are more built for 2D games rather than 3D ones (especially unity, its just not fun for me). While gamemaker isn't the most powerful engine and it does have its problems, I much more rather gamemaker's simplifications of its processes than godot for 2D games. With godot, I needed to learn state machines and stuff like that when I was starting and like, couldn't we just enjoy making a game and worry about optimizations later when we're trying to make a game made for big market places? (also I get that you can also make state machines in gamemaker too, its just thats not the first thing I needed to learn when I was starting in gamemaker). and this isn't a diss on godot and unity by the way, I like godot most things considered, and I tolerate unity for the most part, I just think that its not fair that both unreal and gamemaker are ususally left out of most converations when it comes to beginners learning game development for the first time, especially for gamemaker.
Ive seen countless videos of godot fan boys (by that I mean toxic members of the godot community) bashing on gamemaker cause its, to their eyes, worse than gamemaker when they are just as valid of a chose as any other engine out there. Fucking hell, ive even seen comments on specific gamemaker related videos saying to switch to godot like, could you mind your business? I saw one comment saying that yoyo games (the people that works on gamemaker) are straight up lying about what games are being made in their engine, and their evidence for this was that one game developer change engines after realizing that gamemaker might not be the best chose for their game, thats it. That shit is so fucking bonkers to me that people are willing to spread misinformation just cause their engine that they main doesn't get all that much recognition online as it should be. And once again, I don't hate godot, its made for a crowd that Im not a part of, I get it. Its just people that talk about it like its the second coming of Christ and crams it down everyone's throat that really pisses me off.
I don't know how to end this other than just stop fan boying about a specific tool that you use I guess. Hope that that you've enjoyed my small rant/mental breakdown and I hope you'll have a nice day