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Comment by mbrodersen | Hacker News Reader

100% agree. I don’t know why you were downvoted. I assume that some people hate it when you dare to talk reality. I have run my own successful game biz for 5+ years and have written more than one commercial game engine that was used to release commercial games on consoles and PC. And I 100% agree with you. Unity (for example) will make you at least 10 times more productive than writing a 3D engine from scratch.

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It depends on many factors. You are describing your experience and then extrapolate for everyone. My game will be pretty small, not fully 3D. I don't need 90% of Unity features and Unity bugs :)

Before making my decision to go with Zig I've built small game in UE5 (https://michalziulek.itch.io/upacman). I've also used UE5 and Unity at AMD. I simply don't like those engines.

Different people have different approaches and mindsets. I'm much faster building my small, minimal codebase that does only what I need. Also, I'm improving my low-level programming skills and experimenting, doing things differently than most people (not using Unity) might lead to very original game.

It’s great that you have some experience with commercial game engines. Let me caution you though that successful games are 99% choosing the right gameplay and 1% choosing the tech. In other words, I recommend getting a gameplay prototype working first without thinking tech at all and then picking the right tech for your chosen gameplay. The big mistake that developers always make is to think that the 3D engine is your game. That is false. Take a look at the top selling indie steam games. None of them use unusual/advanced tech.

I'm perfectly aware. I don't want to build advanced tech, it's not my goal. I want to build simple tech that lets me build my gameplay easier than it is in UE5. In my opinion gameplay programming in UE5/Unity isn't nice at all. Way too abstracted and too generic for my usecase.

In my case, simplicity is the key for productivity.

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