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Comment by BSousa | Hacker News Reader

I'll say it, THANK YOU!

I've used UE at previous jobs, and while I'm not gonna say it is the best ever engine, allowing this piece of software in the hands of indies for 19 bucks a month is a bargain. I will probably not use it as I left the games industry, but compared to other commercial offerings out there, the 19 bucks a month plus the 5% is a bargain if any team is doing high end graphics games. You can bitch about Linux or try to do all the math you want to say Epic are being money grabbers, but seriously, unless you had access to full source code before and see what the engine can offer you, please take a moment to step back and appreciate what they are doing here.

ps: not affiliated with Epic at all. Just from many years in the games industry, Unreal has been the best engine I worked with and this is a FANTASTIC offer

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How does one even get into game design? I have an idea in my head that I want to get out but it gets more & more complex as I think about it.

By making games. There are lots of engines and frameworks these days to cater to people who want to create a game, but don't want to or can't do it from the ground up. Game Maker Studio and of course Unity come to mind.

I recommend a thorough read through the resources on http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev as a starting point.

Same as with any position in the tech industry. It's not about job applications and education anymore. It's about networking. It's about demonstrating skills through projects. It's about online presence. It's about conferences and events. It's about reaching out to people who have done it before, and learning from them.

Depends, if you want to make your own idea in to a game start simple. Implement 1 core mechanic, you can't care about UI, Multiplayer, performance, or anything like that. Make a proof of concept, make it as simple as you can. Iterate.

What's the best engine you've worked with? (just curious)

Unreal is _very_ good despite its flaws. I have used a bunch of them and Unreal was the clear winner among them. I too have left the games industry but may come back in some years and this is a good sign for me. I may start with Unreal. If I were better off financially, I'd try right away with the 19$ a month thingy.

Architecture wise, an in-house engine we built for the PS2/Xbox (this was over 10 years ago). But as an overall package (editor, visuals, code, etc) I do think Unreal is one of the best out there. It isn't as simple to start working with as for example Unity3D, and the content processing for consoles used to be very slow, (and personally) not a fan of UnrealScript. But still, I've worked on an FPS, hack and slash and a strategy game with it. It is quite versatile and if you have access to source code (which you do now, but before with UDK only you didn't) you can do some amazing things with it.

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