Talk Title: Case to make your own engine.
- Joaquin De Losada
- Mar 10
- 2 min read
Effective talk: Why make a game engine
Year of Talk: 2024
What is a game engine?
A combination of tools and code that help simplify a lot of tasks related to game dev.
Usually helps solve a lot of starting problems that appear when trying to make games. Like graphics, ways to set up the input system, etc.
Cost of a game engine:
Determine how much it might cost you to make your engine (And how long it would take).
As well as how much licencings the team would need and the total time they are needed.
If it costs more to license the engine than to make your own engine with all the specific things the team needs, then it might be worth doing so.
Some game engines might work best with certain types of games. Hard to make a 2d game in Unreal.
There is also a constraint to the platforms that the team wants to use. Hard to ship an unreal game for a phone.
You also run the risk of having the company change its direction or how it monetizes the game. Like Unity did last year.
When making the engine, you can add things to the engine as you need them. No need to add a bunch of features from other engines.
What goes into a game engine?
Rendering
Sound output
Input
Scenes/levels
Game Objects
UI
Resources
Editor
And anything else you might want
How can you make a game engine?
Using a library like SFML (For C++) or SDL
Using libraries gives access to documentation as well as helps set up the basics for talking with the operating system.
For physic,s there is libraries like Box2D
Tiled for creating 2D level editor
Advantages for your engines:
Making games over a long time, which means making your own engine over that time, can pay out.
Only make the things you want exactly. Nothing more, which helps reduce software bloat.
Disadvantage for your engine:
Needs to create a lot of documentation to explain everything.
Also requires a lot of programming knowledge. Usually C++
It will take up a lot of effort upfront to make.
It is not as robust, and it will need to make everything from near scratch.
Examples of games with their engines:
Stardew valley
Don't Starve
Into the Breach
This War of Mine
And many more
Making your engine is similar to what many AAA and AA would do. They start making their first game engine with all the basic stuff they want/need. In the next game, they update some of the things and include more features the studio needs. Making a perpetual cycle for all their games by using a custom engine and slowly adding extra features to them. Why shouldn't more indie studios try it out more?
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