The Use of Engines, To release, to use, to flame??

This is an open sticky topic, so we can get some opinions from you guys, but allow me to make, what I think, is the best formulated opinion I've made on the use of engines. It addresses both the good and bad side of using engines, and whether you should contemplate using an engine or not. This might help some of you beginners, and some of you lazy folk out there who have a great idea, but don't feel like making your own engine.








Using an engine isn't a bad thing. Using a common engine isn't a bad thing. This is a mis-conception all members of the community seem to have. An engine is for the general use of any individual to develop a game. That's what the intention is. That's what an engine is for. The problem is that most beginners tend to use the engine and barely change any aspects of it. This is completely wrong, and is degrading to the creator of the engine.

So how do you use an engine and make your game good? Be original. Use the engine only for the common movement use. Be completely creative with it's use, remember, it's just a template in programming terms. Have a great, original idea, use a different concept in your game that no one's seen before, or has barely been done before, and people will hardly recognize or realize you've used someone's engine.



I, for one, dislike people constantly flaming others for using an engine. If the game is original enough that it won't even really matter, then go for it. If you feel your game might be another platformer clone, you might want to re-consider programming your own.

Discuss what you feel about the use of engines.

it's really annoying when:

1. someone uses an engine verbatim
2. they make no effort to fix problems
3. they make no effort to add something new
4. they make no effort to change things that need to be changed
5. they make no effort to be creative

EDIT: the main problem is these "all in one" engines. engines should stick to one subject, and have separate engines for each subject; people need to learn how to make these completely different engines cooperate, without the work being done for them

This post has been edited by Xgoff on Aug 13 2007, 09:42 PM

This

The game-making community encourages you to create a custom engine, or they'll usually complain about a lack of originality and/or modifications. The best way to solve this is read tutorials reguarding engine creation, or simply modify the open-source engine.

Let me just say that I never did think using a pre-made engine was a bad thing, even if the engine is a common one, as long as they didn't only edit it minimally / not at all, make levels with it, and that's it. In a nutshell, I agree with Yoshiman, though he put it in a lot better words than I did in the past when trying to point these things out to people.

I think engines should have these:
+ No sprites included, simply crappy placeholders which no one will want to use
+ No tilesets
+ Good documentation (what's the point of having an engine with so many features when I cannot figure out how to use anything?)
+ Not too many features. Just base movement, enemies, etc that can be edited by users to create other common Mario enemies.

Definite yes to this.

I'll probably make at least one open-source engine eventually, and I plan on having a lot of information put into it about how the engine works and how to use it (probably in the Game Info), as well as plenty of comments in the code itself to tell which parts of the code do what.

But if the game creator wants to use the sprites/tilesets included the engine?

I agree pretty much with Treeki here.

Engine's shouldn't be loaded too much, like UM's.
Sure, it's a great engine, it has more stuff than most other engines combined, but who on earth would make something new, if everything is already there?
I'd not. And if even I (#1 critic of open-sourceing) wouldn't do it, I guess there are not many people who'd do it.
In my opinion, UM's engine is a great engine, but it's a bad open-source engine.
And this is also what I hate about Stencyl, since this seems to give you even more than UM's.

The thing is, you need to give people what they need to start, like Treeki and also Xgoff said.
Show them the direction.
But don't let them sit in your car and take them there.

Treeki has a good point. Documentation should be very detailed and the absence of sprites could prevent what happened with the UME engine

No. The abscense of sprites wouldn't do anything about it, IMO. People will get some cool SMW sprites and put them in.
Only the abscense of contents can. (You could say though, that for UM's engine it could work, as you need 1000 sprites to really use everything he included )

True. People use official tile and sprite sets, because they got most content.

I personally don't give too much damn about what people do with pre-made engines, as long as their creations are somewhat decent (proper design and good controls).

Using an engine isn't bad if it is done perhaps once, where the level design is good, however, many people don't use the engine as a learning tool, like they should. I would look at how the engine works, and then try to emulate the effects in my own game, perhaps borrowing code where it is needed. If you use an engine more than once, it shows that you have no real wish to learn how to design your own.

While using engines isn't really too much of a bad thing, it can get annoying if too much people use the same engine to create a game. Its basically "[Insert Engine's Name Here], now with levels!"

IMO, its better if people use the engines to learn from them, that way, we won't have to see "cookie cutter games", and the person using the engine becomes smarter, thus benefiting him/her more.

If you use someones engine...

At least add some new features and mess with the phisics or at least graphics and sound.

People should learn to use the engine as a learning tool. After they learn some basic stuff (or advanced), they should try to mess around with the coding and graphics, and sound, too. Once they see the engine is different enough, try making a game from it. Maybe you could even skip to the next step: use your knowledge to make your own engine from scratch. People need to learn that they're not just confined to using the same engine again and again, they should learn to look at the code, modify a bit, and then create their own from scratch. Of course, they could take some code from others if they need help, which I do, too, but for the most part, create it by themselves.
Phew, long post.

Allow me to interject with another opinion. A lot of you are saying that engines should just be strictly learning tools. In my opinion, this is not so. The Source engine? It's not a learning tool at all, it's a basic engine that a lot of people use to make great games, and they're all good.


When I use an engine of someone else's, I don't learn anything from it at all. I already have the programming knowledge of the engine's workings and then some. I mainly use engines because I have a great idea for a game, but really don't want to make my own from scratch because I have no idea where I'm going for that type of thing. Bada-boom, I use an engine. I can make a creative game that changes a bunch of things of the engine, or at least adds to it.


So the function of an engine isn't just to learn from it, it's a great utility just to use for your game if you have enough content to make the people not even realize that it's the same engine, or at least enough to make the people not care if it's the same engine.

You're right. Yes, engines can be considered a training tool. But they can also be a great pick-up if you don't want to make an engine, then you cover it up so it doesn't look like it was a premade engine. So, they can be used in a variaty of things, but it all depends on how you want to use them.

In My opinion Using Engines isn't a bad thing...but they are made for people to LEARN and they never do that, they just use them and over use them.
Now DJ-Y, you say you never learn from it because you already know how to make games,That's an exception and I also do the same sometimes
As for the Rest...what most of you call "n00bs", They just change the sprites,sounds and add new levels.
Which after a while gets annoying.
Now, once the Engine is released you can do whatever you want with it, but keep in mind that you should LEARN from it.
Anyway, at the end what really matters is how fun the game is...not how much effort you put into it, because if it was about effort we'll be screwed >.<

This post has been edited by EDGE on Aug 15 2007, 09:46 PM

Also true. Like I posted above, it all depends on how you USE the engine. While newbies can use them so they CAN learn from it, there are some who repeatedly use it, and that's where the 're-users' should consontrate on making the game good enoegh for anyone's interest. Though engines let you make a game QUICKLY, no one said it'd be any good.