question about the game engine

[Dr]

Is this game using unreal engine or unity? I'm just curious

[Atlessa]

I just took a peek at the game's folder structure and it doesn't seem like either of those two engines.

... unless it's UE5 and they DRASTICALLY changed folder structure since UE4, but I somehow doubt this tiny little indie game got access to UE5 before anyone else :D

[umop-apisdn]

Glancing through the open source software listed in the credits makes me think it might be an in-house, home-grown solution.

[Booster]

I believe it's built in C# or C++. The engine is not open sourced.

[GreatPalm]

i think unity will lag a lot with that much of small colliders

[hellatze]

why in house engine though

[Dr]

thanks for the response.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by hellatze:

why in house engine though

There's no reason to use a third-party engine if a developer can code one of their own. Why opt-in to playing a third-party company royalties for using its engine if one doesn't actually need to use their engine?

[Walt Destler]

It's a custom game engine written in C#. It's called "Halfling".

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Walt Destler:

It's a custom game engine written in C#. It's called "Halfling".

It seems to perform pretty darn well, IMO, for what it's doing. Congrats on that! (I guess you've kind of had a while to optimize it. :))

[Walt Destler]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

It seems to perform pretty darn well, IMO, for what it's doing. Congrats on that! (I guess you've kind of had a while to optimize it. :))

Thanks! Fun fact: Cosmoteer's engine predates Cosmoteer. I originally started working on it in 2005 (IIRC) as the engine for a PvP tetris-like I tried (and failed) to design.

[saideron]

Originally posted by Walt Destler:

Originally posted by Morkonan:

It seems to perform pretty darn well, IMO, for what it's doing. Congrats on that! (I guess you've kind of had a while to optimize it. :))

Thanks! Fun fact: Cosmoteer's engine predates Cosmoteer. I originally started working on it in 2005 (IIRC) as the engine for a PvP tetris-like I tried (and failed) to design.

That explains so much, lol. Amazing work on the game. o7

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Walt Destler:

Originally posted by Morkonan:

It seems to perform pretty darn well, IMO, for what it's doing. Congrats on that! (I guess you've kind of had a while to optimize it. :))

Thanks! Fun fact: Cosmoteer's engine predates Cosmoteer. I originally started working on it in 2005 (IIRC) as the engine for a PvP tetris-like I tried (and failed) to design.

Thanks for the history!

I remember reading a post/blog/something of your's years ago. (2017, probably) where you talked about this. IIRC, that first early incarnation wasn't ever released, just sort of doodled with by you, but Cosmoteer eventually evolved from it.

PVP Tetris... :) It sounds like a PVP-"Pong" or "Block Destroyer" game that comes to mind, but I don't recall the name. (From the Long Ago Times, before Teh Interwebz, but around the time of online dial-up BBSs.)

[Walt Destler]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Originally posted by Walt Destler:

Thanks! Fun fact: Cosmoteer's engine predates Cosmoteer. I originally started working on it in 2005 (IIRC) as the engine for a PvP tetris-like I tried (and failed) to design.

Thanks for the history!

I remember reading a post/blog/something of your's years ago. (2017, probably) where you talked about this. IIRC, that first early incarnation wasn't ever released, just sort of doodled with by you, but Cosmoteer eventually evolved from it.

PVP Tetris... :) It sounds like a PVP-"Pong" or "Block Destroyer" game that comes to mind, but I don't recall the name. (From the Long Ago Times, before Teh Interwebz, but around the time of online dial-up BBSs.)

It looked like this: https://waltdestler.com/images/tetrik.jpg

[Vaso]

I have been testing your game and I think it's really cool, especially considering it's currently using .NET 7 (latest game patch?). I'm a big fan of .NET and I've also noticed that upgrading to the newest version of .NET can often give a performance boost for free which is super cool.

I had a couple of ideas for you, or any .NET game engine developer, that I think could be implemented fairly easily and I believe you can have a working experiment, maybe just in a few hours.

I wonder why games don't have multi screen support in a way, that on each screen is something else.

You can create an optional extra game screen(s), without affecting the game engine. Well, I will leave the true performance and security impact with you as I am not a game developer.

I think it would be really cool if players could have a secondary web-based screen(s) showing game stats, crew stats, or anything else they might find useful and you can easily push anything to these screens through SignalR. You can decide how LIVE it will be, how often it should be updated/refreshed. In the current .NET, it is easy to host a local website which can then receive any communication through SignalR Hub from the game engine.

- the secondary screen(s) will be web based (much easier to implement, and isolated from the game engine)
- can be maximised/full screen with F11 (Chrome)
- it can show some basic game stats, like what is in the storage, some crew stats, literally anything you want keep your eye on and is important but we don't want to have it on the primary screen
- it can be read only, or even interactive as you can push through SignalR back to the game engine 🤣
- maybe, you could allow to host this web client, so people could use own public domain (own hosting) or hosted by you, and they could get people interact with your game while you are playing, this could be very cool for any game streamers who would like their visitors interact with the game, e.g. adding their names, or even interact in the fight, or organising some ships, the sky's the limit

Well, maybe you can be inspired by this and will be the first one to implement it as it is just a freebie from .NET 😉.

Ohh, and if you or your team are interested in sharing your .NET experience and knowledge in game development, I'd recommend checking out the .NET Stride game engine community on the website or Discord.

Thanks for making such a great game!

[madMike]

Originally posted by Walt Destler:

Originally posted by Morkonan:

It seems to perform pretty darn well, IMO, for what it's doing. Congrats on that! (I guess you've kind of had a while to optimize it. :))

Thanks! Fun fact: Cosmoteer's engine predates Cosmoteer. I originally started working on it in 2005 (IIRC) as the engine for a PvP tetris-like I tried (and failed) to design.

I love your determination. It is inspiring.