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itch.io Community » Game Development » General Development

Any other developers here using own custom engines?

A topic by danielbrendel created Jan 03, 2023 Views: 1,172 Replies: 19
Viewing posts 1 to 11
danielbrendel1 year ago(+1)

I wonder if there are other devs here that use their own custom game engine for their games. All my games are written in C++ and I have also created an own game engine where you can write your game code using AngelScript. I wonder if there are others out there working that way. :D

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No Time To PlayModerator1 year ago

Sure, I made my own graphics engines. Not in C++, but still.

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danielbrendel1 year ago

That's nice! In what language did you make it? What platforms does it support?

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No Time To PlayModerator1 year ago(+1)

The InRelief engine has Python and Lua implementations; I used it with Pygame and Love2D, respectively, but the resulting games flopped on both platforms, and I gave up.

The EightWay engine mainly has a Javascript implementation. You can see it at work in Electric Rogue and Glittering Light 2. I also ported it to Python for an experiment (involving Tkinter), but meh.

Keep in mind, these are strictly graphics engines. The games are hand-rolled otherwise. Thanks for the nice words!

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mid1 year ago(+2)

I often start from zero for each game, though with middleware. How much time I’m willing to spend is a good indicator of the game’s potential quality.

I’m never satisfied fully with my engines as a developer, but as a user neither Unity, Unreal nor Godot will ever reach their levels. The more human labor put in, the more I know the developer cares.

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FearCode1 year ago(+2)

I'm  actually an engine developer for a carrer, so in my spare time I like investing in my own indie game engine in C++.

I like doing everything from scratch, from physics to graphics. The only external libraries I use are for resource loading like: images, fonts, 3d models...

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danielbrendel1 year ago

Really cool! Must be kinda dreamy to also work on C++ game engines as a profession.

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FearCode1 year ago (2 edits)

Thanks! And yes C++ and games are a quite good match (it's even unreal's dev. language). Efficiency, flexibility, low overhead, portability. You know C is the mother of all other languages, while C++ is the most scalable version of C.

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GameLoom Studio1 year ago(+1)

I’ve never been happy with any engine I’ve come across so I too make almost everything from scratch. External libraries I use is for the asset compiler for loading images and fonts.

I program in C++ with some custom language extensions.

By making the tech yourself you can custom tailor it to your needs and add features like:

  • asset hot-reloading,
  • code hot-reloading,
  • reflection (mostly useful for debugging purposes),
  • config system,
  • type safe shader invocations (no more accidentally writing wrong vertex type),
  • etc.

I never liked any scripting languages so I stick with C++ for game logic as well.

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danielbrendel1 year ago

That sounds really nice! Finally some other C++ game developers.

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kbrecordzz1 year ago (1 edit) (+1)

I make a game engine in Javascript for web browser games (mainly my own game). I use the library three.js for 3D rendering, but the rest I've written myself with some borrowed code from https://grelf.itch.io. I've written about it here https://kbrecordzz.itch.io/this-is-not-a-car-club-chapter-one/devlog/497670/buil... (now this may look like self-promotion, maybe it is, but the text describes my engine very clearly)

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Identical Games1 year ago

I have created my own engines and used Godot. I've modified games using there own engine and ones using Godot or Love2D. If your goal is to make a game. I recommend using an existing engine.

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MGDS Studio1 year ago

I have used processing programming language as the core java library for graphic output and user interaction in my videogame "Blue beret" (desktop + android - here on itch) including creation of the levels editor. It is not a game development framework but language for creative codding.

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Thunder Perfect Witchcraft1 year ago(+1)

Always going Cpp/SDL2. Less overhead than using a stock engine.

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danielbrendel1 year ago(+1)

Sounds really great! I am using DX for rendering/sound which I now kinda regret, because I am kinda stuck to Windows. Currently considering changing that to something platform indiependent.

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mid1 year ago (1 edit)

Sound is kind of a pain to do cross-platform. Every library I’ve found is either hard to build or lacking in features.

FTR I’ve used SoLoud, PortAudio and MiniAudio, each in at least one project, but I can’t say I like any of them.

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Thunder Perfect Witchcraft1 year ago

Don't know what features you need, but for my needs SDL2_mixer is doing good.

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Thunder Perfect Witchcraft1 year ago(+1)

Can really recommend SDL2. If you encounter trouble, feel free to contact me.

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danielbrendel1 year ago

Thank you all for your answers so far! Nice to see there are also other C++ devs out there making their own things. I hit the follow button a few times.

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KuroGamedev1 year ago (1 edit)

Typically, I use vanilla JS for my projects, but I have my own resource editor for my game projects.  I can import the custom binary file and use JS itself to generate the resources I need for the game, then I just need to add the game code and it's all good to go.  

The editor can handle a number of game details and if I don't want to include a section for a project, I can mute out it's inclusion on the editor-side.

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