Comment by behrlich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by behrlich | Hacker News Reader

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I've been following this project since 2012. For some reason the kickstarter caught my eye and I've been periodically checking the development forums at least monthly.

This was an absolute journey. He was attempting to make a game engine completely from scratch, including procedurally generated everything, NPC AI's somehow running in this infinite universe all in real time. The demos/screenshots were really beautiful throughout development.

A couple of years ago he had some kind of mental breakdown and stopped updating the forums. When he came back he joined some kind of accelerator and hired a couple of developers.

The project never seemed to evolve beyond engine work. The only "gameplay" was some kind of mini game written for E3 multiple years ago. The most recent updates are months and months of rewriting things back and fourth from lua to C++, infinitely tweaking to make the framerate perfect (at least this is my impression).

For having no stake in this at all - I'm really unreasonably sad about this announcement.

> He was attempting to make a game engine completely from scratch ... The project never seemed to evolve beyond engine work. The most recent updates are months and months of rewriting things back and fourth from lua to C++, infinitely tweaking to make the framerate perfect.

Re-inventing the wheel and premature optimization are red flags in software development. I can't say I'm surprised they never got around to building a game. Based on their approach, it looks like they suffered from an XY problem. Was inventing a new game engine really the right approach from the start? In hindsight, looks like it wasn't, and I'm surprised they continued that approach for so long.

It's mildly infuriating when the wrong team gets backed to build something. This is why the founders matter so much. Anyone can have a great idea, but it takes the right people to execute on something. Looks like this team was unprepared to build what they imagined, taking funding for X and then spending all of their time on Y, where they thought Y was a precursor to X, when it actually wasn't. If I was a backer, I'd be incredibly disappointed.

I’ll play devil’s advocate here. The guy (yes, just one guy, not a team) who was building this game dropped out of college to make it after the initial Kickstarter. It’s likely that he was a fairly smart and driven guy, but simply inexperienced both in terms of software engineering and game development. He didn’t know it beforehand, but he likely bit off more than he could chew. He devoted time and resources to things that were not critical for the success of the project. He likely lacked good mentors (and a team) who could guide him along the way.

I understand that it must be disappointing for the backers, but it is infinitely more disappointing for the developer who obviously feels like he let those backers down. Hopefully he picks himself up and learns from his mistakes and does a better job next time, whatever that job may be.

>I’ll play devil’s advocate here. The guy (yes, just one guy, not a team) who was building this game dropped out of college to make it after the initial Kickstarter. It’s likely that he was a fairly smart and driven guy, but simply inexperienced both in terms of software engineering and game development.

The "dropped out of college to make it after the initial Kickstarter" part doesn't support the "smart" part that well. At best he's smart despite doing so.

I mean, it’s not like he can’t go back to finish his degree. It’s better to try and fail than not try at all.

Especially while still at an age where you can drop out of college. It’s a bit hard for me to drop out of a marriage, child and job to take on spending years on a passion project.

He'd probably have to restart his degree completely - many universities will not recognize credits for incomplete degrees past 5 years of their accrual (institution-dependent, of course).

Considering he stopped ~6 years ago, he'd probably have to start his degree again from scratch.

Plenty of smart people drop out of school. Even more smart people never get a chance to attend a school out of which to drop.

You're right, but he addressed this near the bottom of the KS page:

What Engine Does the Game Use?

I have written the engine from scratch using C++ and OpenGL... Most importantly, the engine is designed completely around procedural paradigms, and this influences the architecture of the engine in many ways. Every file is written with "everything procedural" in mind.

So, not so much re-inventing the wheel, but creating his own paradigm in a new engine. Brave to attempt something so novel, but this is how progress is made. If nothing else, he has a (hopefully) solid game engine that could form the basis for any number of future games.

Gavan Woolery's Voxel Quest is another example of someone striking out on their own to invent a new engine. Look how awesome that turned out!

I would argue that the kind of game that he was working on could not be made in a regular game engine.

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