Custom Engine

[Jimmy Rustler]

I really want to see something else in this engine, anything really. Would prefer a dungeon crawler but anything would sate my thirst.

If the devs aren't planning to do anything I wish they'd at least let someone else use the engine.

[Genebris]

You have no idea what you are talking about.

[Jimmy Rustler]

Originally posted by Genebris:

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Okay.

[selewi]

Yeah. I love the game engine also and I'd love to see something else done with this! Looks like truly old school but in the new gaming era!

[%Floister's Fish Flesh%]

Originally posted by Genebris:

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Why is that?

[Jimmy Rustler]

Originally posted by ◥◣ ◢◤ CatEyes:

Originally posted by Genebris:

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Why is that?

I would assume he thinks Sorath is working on something else. Which may be the case, but he hasn't told anyone about it in quite a long time if it is.

[%Floister's Fish Flesh%]

I disagree, it is advised to document your code. So if you don't do it, it's bad practice. Software development is all about reuseability of code, and not re-inventing the wheel. I'm sure Sorath have a documentation about how their engine works.

[Jimmy Rustler]

Originally posted by xvlv:

It's because this engine was specifically created for Devil Daggers, and most likely changed during development to meet the game's requirements. Letting anyone else use it would be practically pointless as they would have no idea how it works. You can't compare it to something like Unreal or Unity (which have full IDEs and documentation which I'm almost 100% sure Devil Daggers's "engine" doesn't).

Honestly I don't think even Sorath itself would use the engine for another game, they'd most likely create a new one that meets the requirements they have for their new game. At most I think they could modify and re-use the engine if the game is very similar.

I'm not related to Sorath in any way, but I think I have enough knowledge about game development to say that this "engine" is pretty much bound to Devil Daggers. You could say it's part of the game.

That doesn't make any sense to me. An engine is separate from graphical and audio assets. So long as Sorath provides source, a potential licensee should have everything they need to modify it as necessary for whatever they want to do.

I'd love to see a remake of Descent to Undermountain in this engine. I think of all the 'retro' garbage from recent years, this is the only thing that's really excited me visually. It's got that PS1 texture wobble with the capacity to do astronomically more than the PS1 could ever have generated.

[%Floister's Fish Flesh%]

Nicely said, except one part: I aggree on not wanting to write long pages of documentation, but after you finish your project, you should no matter what do it. Because even you will forget what the code does in max 10 months. So for your good in the future, you document every piece of code.(if you are 100% positively sure that you won't be using the code again, ofc go ahead and don't comment it)

[Jimmy Rustler]

Originally posted by xvlv:

Originally posted by Uranai Zenny:

That doesn't make any sense to me. An engine is separate from graphical and audio assets. So long as Sorath provides source, a potential licensee should have everything they need to modify it as necessary for whatever they want to do.

I'd love to see a remake of Descent to Undermountain in this engine. I think of all the 'retro' garbage from recent years, this is the only thing that's really excited me visually. It's got that PS1 texture wobble with the capacity to do astronomically more than the PS1 could ever have generated.

First off, I think there is a huge difference between an engine (e.g. Unity and Unreal) and a custom engine (what we're talking about here). Just because it is an engine doesn't mean you're supposed to make multiple games with it, let alone letting others use it.

I also think what I said wasn't completely clear. I never said it had anything to do with assets, it doesn't. An engine is supposed to be a layer under the actual game programming, an engine should provide things such as handling update loops, rendering, shading, physics, GUI, loading assets, game element hierarchies (such as having base classes for certain abstract entities), collision handling, network, audio, etc.

If you don't need any of these things for your game, you don't want them in your custom engine. Each custom engine implements these things differently as well, according to their needs. The best example I can think of is that Devil Daggers's engine doesn't support any vertex collision checking, instead it uses simplified formulas to calculate distances between instances and basing collision detections off that, simply because it doesn't need to do any vertex checking, and because it makes everything run faster. Of course, they could have implemented it, but why would they if they were never going to use it?

That is why custom engines work so well, you can create everything you want yourself, and you know exactly how it works. I hope this clears things up.

I am also convinced Sorath never intended to release their engine to the public to be used by anyone else (or for anything else for that matter).

I can accept that it wasn't ever intended to be used for anything else, but as long as source is available that doesn't really matter. It can be modified. I think you're nitpicking the word 'custom' a little too much. But I could be wrong.

At any rate, I doubt it's going to happen either. I just want it to.

[Deacero]

That's a really good idea !