I mourn the loss of all the stupid in house engines. They helped games feel different. - ThreadSky

jesawyer.bsky.social • 108 days ago

I mourn the loss of all the stupid in house engines. They helped games feel different.

Reposted from 🏳️‍⚧️ Dr. Nic, Namer of the Universe 🏳️‍⚧️

Both honestly, game engines are the big headlining thing (even if they are poorly defined) and can influence things as low level as how movement and mouse pointing feels (see the way people describe Source games, idTech games, or the commonalities in feel between Halo and Destiny)

Comments

kludge.bsky.social•108 days ago

nothing will ever look and feel as distinct, for better and worse, as thr dark engine.

fabraz.bsky.social•108 days ago

There's something to that I suppose!

plainoldchair.bsky.social•108 days ago

Compare any old game to a modern remake or sequel. It's amazing how much can be lost in translation. Part of me longs for the DOS days

stevietech.bsky.social•107 days ago

The DOS days? himem.sys is NOT your friend!

plainoldchair.bsky.social•107 days ago

That is absolutely not what I miss about it

videoupdates.net•108 days ago

Even ports to some degree. All the old shooters getting the Kex Engine treatment kind of irons out the subtle differences that kept them from feeling like Doom total conversions.

admiralfrosty.bsky.social•107 days ago

Does it? I thought Kex acted like a wrapper for the original game engine. Legit question because I really don’t know.

videoupdates.net•107 days ago

I think it's more complicated than a wrapper, because you could make a new game from scratch with the engine. Of course the issue might just be that upgrading everything to 4k 120fps with feature parity is smoothing over the differences.

sharkcheese.bsky.social•107 days ago

From what I understand it's mostly the original code bases with KEX layered on top, which fasciliate clean integration with modern APIs and and the addition of extra features.

The original game engines are still running underneath it all.

pschnorbus.bsky.social•108 days ago

Atlas, carrying the elemental tetrad

mercuriallymad.bsky.social•107 days ago

Yeah. Latest example for me is The Talos Principle 2. I truly enjoyed it, but part of me was bummed throughout because Croteam ditched their Serious Engine in favor of Unreal. They explained their reasons and I get them, still feels bad to see studios abandon their own tech.

aisug3.bsky.social•108 days ago

Ya I am afraid of everything feeling 'samey', especially in regards to UE5 games.

maddiequestions.bsky.social•108 days ago

I still think it was weird that Jason Schreier said engines don't matter and actually blocked people who disagreed

slamallama.bsky.social•108 days ago

iirc, that was in response to people saying "you can't make x type of game on y engine!" which is different than this, and generally not true

Engines do matter, but not in the ways lots of gamers seem to think they do

sockynoob.bsky.social•108 days ago

I'm pretty sure Assetto Corsa EVO is going back to using an in-house game engine. Assetto Corsa had an extremely well optimized engine that could provide excellent graphics with very minimal hit to performance.

misslethal.bsky.social•107 days ago

Shout out to Remedy's Northlight engine & Control's delightfully destructible environments

taconic.bsky.social•108 days ago

cdprojeckt abandoning red for unreal unironically depresses me and I feel it was a decision probably made by executives looking to save costs by standardizing pipelines rather than anyone responsible for creating anything.

katsuragisystem.bsky.social•108 days ago

Im not tech savvy but ive been going through old Pokemon game stuff and discovering the amount of work required to make a single game’s engine has blown my mind and made me wonder how anybody ever got anything done ever.

aetheon.uk•108 days ago

One of the main reasons I think Apex succeeded and has lasted as long as it has, their Source engine just feels so satisfying to play on despite it's quirkyness and it's very different to almost every mainline shooter on the market

svelle.bsky.social•108 days ago

Someone recently said how the new Silent Hill looks like every game made in UE5 and I can't stop thinking about that.

baronbucket.bsky.social•108 days ago

Shoutout to HROT and it’s weird janky custom-built engine. It wouldn’t feel nearly the same if it was just built on Unity like a lot of similar games

solient.bsky.social•108 days ago

HROT reminds me of the old days when you could run Quake and Quake 2 in software rendering. It has a really unique look and feel!

ejgarand93.bsky.social•108 days ago

I believe it is a good thing that ̶3̶4̶3̶ ̶I̶n̶d̶u̶s̶t̶r̶i̶e̶s̶ Halo Studios has ditched their in-house game engine in favor of Unreal Engine 5, given that the programmer behind the initial framework, Jason Jones, has not been involved with the development of a Halo game since 2010.

bimbo.phd•108 days ago

Getting a job and immediately having to learn a scripting microlanguage called DMPL or PILE or something equally made-up sounding

extremely.online•108 days ago

I wonder if Naughty Dog is still using LISP in their game engines lol

bimbo.phd•108 days ago

Barnacles could learn a thing or two from legacy software

greatpiratesolomon.bsky.social•107 days ago

One of the things I respect about Bethesda ( yes I know Creation Engine is based on Gamebryo but still)

silkytao.bsky.social•108 days ago

I dunno, even if some Games use the same engine they feel REALLY different

Same with Unity, Godot or Gamemaker

silkytao.bsky.social•108 days ago

The one engine where everything kinda feels the same gameplay wise is RPG Maker, but even then plot and athmosphere are really different that gives such a different flavour

lutinlyes.bsky.social•108 days ago

Until this year if anyone dared criticize Unity, every game dev, game commenter and analyst, and all their associated hangers-on would descend upon the critic in an orgy of hate as if the very gates of hell had opened above them.

carmyn.zone•108 days ago

love how the industry is trending towards everyone using unreal engine which while capable and versatile has awful stuttering problems that no one seems to care to solve lol

sansnompersonne.bsky.social•107 days ago

Did you work with Onyx a lot ?

wincenworks.bsky.social•108 days ago

Also we got to avoid "reviews" that consisted of 50% uniformed rambles about the engine.

landon.wtf•108 days ago

One of my favorite parts of prototyping on the web is how clunky and scrappy it feels. There's no façade, its just the raw idea as possible

vyriadurav.bsky.social•108 days ago

I remember a friend griping that BG3 wasn't just made in Unreal or something and just wasn't interested when I tried to explain that the in house engine they'd developed for years did specific things well that nobody else does (like barrelmancy) It's good to have bespoke tools sometimes

tormutrose.bsky.social•107 days ago

Feel the same about the loss of the days of unique sound chips that gave different consoles and arcade boards unique character.

rileypresley.bsky.social•107 days ago

Oh, the joys of every 90’s/00’s game unique jank!

empyrealism.bsky.social•107 days ago

I guess we're rapidly reaching a point where it doesn't fit into budgets anymore, huh? What with all the layoffs and whatnot.

pennyforthii.bsky.social•108 days ago

Helped establish a house style too

cosettetape.bsky.social•107 days ago

I'm glad that Godot's base state is so stripped down & code-focused because it means that "ob God this is Godot isn't it" is kinda hard to quantify like it is with Unity or U real.

letskillsynapse.bsky.social•108 days ago

Northlight is super rad. Also RIP Geo-Mod, you barely got a chance to shine on semi modern hardware

keano.bsky.social•108 days ago

The industry needs mofe bespoke janky game engines that are really good at cranking out content for one specific genre.

alexbrangwin.bsky.social•108 days ago

Gamebryo had it's quirks

hyggeinajar.bsky.social•108 days ago

While i agree i feel some houses like nintendo abandon things too quickly it seems. I have advocated for legend of zelda OoT > MM like scenarios more often. Reuse assets and "remix" it to help decrease development time.

ango.bsky.social•108 days ago

fwiw they still do that often. see: pokemon, botw and totk, links awakening remake and echoes of wisdom, etc.

bendyjenga.bsky.social•107 days ago

I think this is something that both obvious and surprisingly eaay to gloss over at the same time.

But yeah i can see it now that I thought about it

redcyberpandaz.bsky.social•108 days ago

I remember being amazed by the original Psychonauts and the unique things you could do. As much as I liked number 2, it felt a lot more similar as other games with a main hub for upgrades and story and a few branching paths to levels to do stuff that couldn't be accessed unless you got an ability.

nikkistylix.bsky.social•108 days ago

Kingdom Hearts II is hands down infinitely better than III and I legitimately blame the switch to Unreal

kressnik.bsky.social•107 days ago

Right? I knew it was over when Japan stopped making every game on a new engine, and adopted unreal.

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