Engines

OR, more simply, the Quality Controllers on the main site can just play the game, determine whether it's made with an engine, determine whether it's had effort put into it or not, and then submit or omit the entry.

believe me, i love people making engines (as long as they're good engines), there are many pros to people using them


i just extremely dislike how people abuse their ability to use the engine by doing little or nothing to it


in the professional world, companies could almost sue if another didn't modify it enough and use it for one of their own full-blown games

wat

Agreed. But, there are more benefits to having open source engines that simply using them. My point is that they can be a fantastic tool by which to learn. I don't even mind some of the poorly written engines (because at the very least it gives you some insight into how someone else thought an action or movement should be programmed).

No argument there. However, some people just want a sandbox in which to play (which is one of the reasons a lot of people visit MFGG). I would suggest these people be discouraged from having their "creations" posted to the site - but don't discourage the developers from posting their "open source" engines.

True. But these engines were published as open source with the explicit intention that they be used to create more fan games. It is the reason they were made widely available in the first place.

Why even Retreiver II created an open source Mario engine and wrote this little note in it:
"Engine written by Retriever II.
Credit is requied for use of this engine.
This engine may be redistributed in an unmodified state."

the root of this topic is that we can't really tell the averager what to do. Chances are the person don't really care for stickies or just haven't hung around enough to catch the drift.
Since Hello and UltraMario's engines are already available, I don't see a reason for any more sandboxes.

Are you kidding me? Two open source engines is enough? Have we reached the zenith of our potential with these two open source engines?

Heck, why don't we just stop building new games? Don't we have enough available already. I'm sure you haven't played them all.
Why don't we stop creating new programming languages? Aren't the ones we have good enough?
Why don't we stop creating new TV programs? I certainly haven't watched them all.
Why create new music? Nobody can say that they've listened to all of it.
Do we really need to make anything NEW?

Listen guys, besides the fact that more open source engines would only help your plight (not hinder it), there are a multitude of reasons to encourage people to create, develop, think, integrate, dream and otherwise just explore their potential. And, once someone's potential has been realized, they can share their creations and ideas with others - so that we all might be inspired by them.

I can't say this enough: open source engines aren't all about making mundane copy-cat levels. They can be an excellent tool for budding independent game developers to better understand how game mechanics and actions are integrated into a single system. Having more open source engines (not just two) can show this developer a variety of methods - and perhaps inspire them to create their own. Or, at the very least, they may extend that engine to accomplish something new with it.

Closing an avenue of learning is never a good idea.

If people get engines and do absolutely nothing to them to make a better, different game, than I agree with this topic. It'd be nice to see the engine modified so that it doesn't feel like that engine they downloaded. MKF is a really good example of this.

Here lies the trouble

someone just grabs hello's engine, and add levels
Noone is creating anything by using the 2 engines

Therefor, more engines = less creating, developing, thinking, integrating, dreaming and exploring their potential

warning big post coming

tldr warning

i don't have a problem with open-source engines; i have a problem with open-source engines that have everything in them, because that makes all but a few people who use them lazy because they'll feel they don't need to learn at least a little programming (enough to work with the engine)

so then they start submitting games that are buggy (because they don't know how to fix the bugs) and bloated and slow (because they don't know how/what to optimize or remove). people complain about these issues all the time, and they're legitimate complaints. you can only ask for help so many times before people get tired of it and want you to deal with your own crap, because you don't have the knowledge to give back to the community by helping others

what i would call the "perfect" open-source engine would be one that's: bare-bones (this is what an engine SHOULD be), efficient (so it's easy to work with), modular (so it can have things added/removed easily), and include a few items and good documentation to get new users started. hell you could have an entire community based on writing modules for it. there'd still be people who'd download everything and cram it into their game, but they'd still have to expend a little effort to add stuff into the engine; in any case, the engine would be clean and organized, so if they ran into problems, they might be encouraged to actually TRY solving it before asking for help

i really can't even THINK of many modular engines being worked on here: pretty sure gnome (guinea's engine) is, and iirc the CFP uses a derivative or at least a similar design. whenever i get to cosine, that's also a modular engine, which will probably itself be a much more simplified and less "jesus christ" version of mpuz's engine (which NEEDS to be modular). this lack of modular engines is a problem since it means existing engines are either too messy to modify, or encourage laziness

i got a little excited, actually, when i saw "hello engine lite", because i seriously thought it was a gimped version of the engine that encouraged end-user development; then i clicked the topic and found that the already-overused and undermodified engine is now available to more people who will likely do nothing more than touch the room editor and MAYBE change some graphics if they can be arsed

why even release something as open-source if there's little that can be improved or fixed; if it offers something, the vast majority of users aren't going to do **** to modify it. seriously, you might as well release a closed-source engine that's limited to loading external levels. because that's all that's ever changed about them. some of the engines on the site can barely be called engines: they're games without levels

at least mkf is a different story

I've played Hellos Engine in all the ways I can think possible: the one only way. That is Hello's engine with little or no changes at all.

You are talking about people using these engines and change them for new gameplay, but the fact is this doesn't happen. At all. What we do see, however, is loads of Hello's engines but with different levels. Fun. But I've already played Hello's engine and there is nothing new to it after the infinite times I've played it.

There isn't really much of a discussion here, only the people that haven't suffered the years of clones Hello's engine has brought upon mfgg seem to defend it
and you don't have to stay very long to get tired of those

The reason I discourage engines is because without everything premade, people will actually consider learning how to develop a game.

This post has been edited by MechaBowser on May 13 2009, 10:27 AM

I can only agree with xgoff.
Engines like HE3 or similar things can be helpful, but too bad that the majority of people use them the wrong way since there's nothing to do with them unless you'd be able to write your own engine anyway.

So, if you want to write an engine that is actually useful, go ahead and do it.
If it's just another unorganized bulk of "everything-you-ever-need" that allows people to make so-called "games" overnight, then do it somewhere else, because people here won't appreciate it much.

This

This

This

Respect man.

This is what I've thought all along

I think we may be recyling our arguments and hitting repetition.

Again, I understand your frustration with full-featured engines. However, I wouldn't punish the eager-to-learn few because the majority of people are "lazy". Direct your frustration where it belongs - at the people creating those knock-off games. Require them to identify the engine they used when they post the game to the main site. Then, you can happily ignore them all.

I think you'd still be unhappy with a modular engine. Folks could include the same modules and wind up with functionally identical games. Besides, a development community based around a single base engine would probably only exasperate the issues you're raising. As the base engine would most likely include platform movemement mechanics - you'd wind up with nearly all of the games feeling far too similar - even more than they do today. More (and different) engines should be the goal.

That overused and undermodified engine is now available to more people who may get interested in game development. For me, that's a score.

So WHAT if the vast majority of users don't change it?! Just filter out their noise and focus on the stuff you do like. Do you realize that by the comments you (and certainly Guinea) have made that you actually worsen the problem? Guinea said, "DO NOT MAKE ENGINES ANYMORE! SERIOUSLY. Create your engines, but make a GAME with them and do NOT make them open-source." How will that worsen the issue? Consider this: that "lazy" majority you referred to will probably NEVER create their own engines - EVER! If only a single open source engine exists then THEY WILL USE THAT engine. As you're not going to make the Hello or UltraMario engines just dissapear, it would be better if MORE open source engines existed so that at the VERY LEAST they would have some choice. By dissuading people to NOT post their engines then you certainly don't cultivate engine variety. You're just shooting yourself in the foot.

Mecha, you're focus has been soley on the games produced with the popular open source engines. I'd like you to consider the larger benefit these engines offer. Or, if you see zero benefit, at least don't deny someone else the potential benefit of learning from that engine.

That's being a bit judgmental, Guinea. How do you know they are being used the "wrong way"? Perhaps they are being used exactly as Hello intended. I think his engine serves multiple purposes. You are focused on one.

Who won't appreciate it much? You? A number of vocal members on this forum? As I check right now the Hello Engine 3 has been downloaded 5237 times. I'd say that's a WHOLE LOT of appreciation.

good

Theres at least 5 engines on the main site
idk how many laying around on the boards

So your agument hold little water as the main one being used is he3

Which argument would that be? The one where I said you can learn from looking at multiple engines (even the poorly written ones)? Someone who downloaded those five engines might have gleaned some insight from one of them - and used that to build something else.

That's MY argument.

You may not even realize the final product was in some way influenced by the game author viewing that *unused* engine.

that if there was more then 2 they wouldn't be abused

but there are more then 2, and the 2 still are the most abused

problem is, you can't really judge a game by anything but the outcome. If a guy makes a game that has literally nothing changed to the engine he used, his game has just about as much right as the amazing, redefined game made with the engine. You can't really filter out a game just because of its engine. You have to grab it by the roots.

That's a fairly Orwellian concept. Perhaps it should be a thoughtcrime to consider using an open source engine.

"Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death."