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Comment by codelord | Hacker News Reader

This is cool, but I find it hard to find any use case for it. I did plenty of work as an indie game dev in the past, shipped and made money out of games based on my own C++/OpenGL game engine and also shipped a few indie games with some external indie game engines. Then I moved away from gamedev, but recently started playing around with Unreal engine again and was blown away by how much Unreal does for you. It felt like with Unreal engine, game dev is mostly about art and game design and not so much about programming anymore. Given game dev has become so much more competitive and harder to do than in the old days, and the fact that you can get a AAA game engine like Unreal for free (and only 5% royalty after 1-5M in sales), it doesn't make any sense to use anything else other than Unreal/Unity IMO.

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I've watched non-programmer teams start fast with Blueprints in Unreal, but then hit a wall that they can't climb. Especially for mobile. So then the real programmers get handed this hacked-together prototype and have to figure out how to actually make it performant, close to the deadline. Is this still a thing?

* I haven't used Unreal Engine in 6 years.

I've seen the same thing happen in other engines as well (Unity and Frostbite). Not with entire projects, but sizeable deliverables. Luckily most times it's explicitly been treated as a prototype made by designers before the feature is implemented by the programmers. Sometimes, however, you'll have a manager in the middle of the process object that we obviously already have a working implementation.

> game dev is mostly about art and game design

with a lot of low-effort unreal trash games that all look the same and doesn't have good artistic direction nor game mechanics.

I think this is because unreal gives you so much by default that the developer doesn't really push any boundaries and innovate. Case in point : movement from different games made in unreal all feels "the same".

How much experience do you have with Unreal engine and game dev? If you think art-style is dependent on game engine you probably don't know what you are talking about. Modern game engines are pretty much like an operating system, there's little constraint in terms of what you can achieve artistically.

There's definitely little constraint in what you can achieve. But a lot of low effort games are made by only setting up simple game logic and creating a few models and textures. This means they all use the same default lighting calculations, post processing steps, etc. That gives them a similar look.

Contrast this with more ambitious games and you'll usually end up with an array of custom shaders, a stack of custom post effects, etc. That really lets you define a look that's all your own.

> can achieve artistically

of course you can achieve any art style. I'm saying that low effort games you can find on steam, for example, don't do this.

This kind of feels like complaining that you can buy canvas frames and acrylic pour paints, so many people are nowadays making basic pour art / fluid art that looks almost identical.

Is this really a problem? Would we be better of if the process was a lot more difficult?

As a game developer who learned things the hard way I'm happy there are so many great tools now which let people express themselves and share in the joy of making your own digital experiences.

The lower the barrier of entry, the more people have the opportunity to try their hand at game development. That means more developers providing more exciting ideas! It might mean there's more low-effort stuff out there, but there's always been tons of low-effort stuff out there, anyway.

People are often complaining about a lot of poor quality stuff on the market. I don't actively seek it out and I rarely come across it. So, why would it bother me?

I don't think problem is with what is easier or harder. It's problem with tools that give you ready solutions, that make it possible to just use cookie-cutter approach without adding anything from yourself. Actually it's not even a problem it's just a consequence. Of course not everyone has time to write everything themselves, but doing that practically ensures that what you make will have unique feeling.

On the other hand, even if you use cookie cutter approach to game mechanics you could make other stuff more unique (like story or universe).

I suggest trying to make and release one of these "low-effort" games to see how much effort is actually required

that was the same for all those quake III engine games and I remember thoroughly enjoying every single one of them tho... soldier of fortune... jedi knight: jedi outcast and jedi academy... those star trek games...

Some of those games were certainly not low effort, though. The Jedi Knight games for example. I spent a few months of my spare time modding Jedi Knight Academy and from familiarizing myself with the code base I can tell you they put a lot of effort into it. And while it's based on id Tech 3 it very much has its own feel.

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