Why I am a hypocrite

I talked a bit before about how I have built my own custom game engine. I started that somewhere around 2011 or so. I spent a few years worth of Saturdays building the engine, editor, and pipeline, and I have been happy with the results.

About 2 months ago or so I started to consider dropping my custom engine and moving over to Unity.

I weighed the pros and cons for a long time. I tried hard to ignore the personal attachment I had to my own custom engine. In the end I think there are a handful of things that I think my engine does better, but there are hundreds of things Unity does better. I evaluated Unity a little bit back around 2010 or so. It obviously didn't grab my attention then, but the powerhouse that it has become is truly amazing. I am confident that the few things I don't like about Unity now will not be issues in the coming years. Ultimately, I realized that there was no way I could advance my own engine nearly as fast as Unity is advancing.

So, yeah, I am eating my words now. I have dropped my custom engine and moved over to Unity. To be fair, I am pretty sure I never said "never". Oops .....

My New Project

I have talked a bit about my Strategy game. I have been working my Saturdays on this game for something like 7 years. It has come along nicely, and a lot of other projects were completed along the way. For example, my custom 2D game engine, and my editor pipeline. I have come to a point, though, were I really want to ship a game.

I spent a few months going over various ideas. Could I speed up the process? Could I shrink the scope? Could I do both? Then, I started thinking about making a smaller game instead. I contemplated on the idea for a while. I didn't want to make a drastic decision just because I was getting antsy. After creating some timeline projections for a few different game ideas; I settled on my current project.

I am making a Vertical Shooter; think the 1980s airplane shooting games you would find in an arcade. Of course, I have a few tricks up my sleeve to make it interesting.

I have already spent a few Saturdays working on this game, and it's been a lot of fun. I have been spending most of the last 3 years working on my engine and editor. It's nice to actually get into some gameplay development again. Also, it's felt good to be able to validate my editor work. I spent a lot of energy to make my editor as easy and quick-to-use as possible. Until now, it had never been tested, and I am quite happy with the results.

Why I Roll My Own

I use my own custom game engine for my projects.That's right. I am not using Unity, Unreal, or any other packaged game engine.

There are a number of reasons why I chose to do this. My most common answer is "Because it's fun!". I only work on my projects on Saturdays. That means my development is really slow, and it's going to take a long time for me to finish anything. I expected to spend years of my Saturdays working on a project before it's finished. I realized pretty early on that if I wasn't having fun on those Saturdays, then I would probably end up quitting before anything was ever completed. Also, I really like programming. It's much more enjoyable for me to make my own code then to use somebody else'.

To date, I have spent about 255 Saturdays working on the Strategy Game in one form or another. One more Saturday, and some might just roll over and quit. Luckily I have more capacity then that. I can happily say that I am still having fun and I look forward to next weekend.