Engine Development

[mattheweston]

First, let me say I'm not looking for specifics of Falco's engine or anyone else's unless they really want to share, nor am I requesting source code.

I would like to work on building a game engine geared toward 2D games and was going to start compiling a list of things that I should probably implement within said engine. So, what I'm looking for is a list of ideas of things that you guys thought would be important to be included. Pardon me if this has been mentioned in any youtube videos and if it has them please point me that direction.

[K-Bal]

Well your engine has to do the stuff your game needs.
http://scientificninja.com/blog/write-games-not-engines

[Falco Girgis]

The guy had several good points in his blog, but he also had a bunch of (in my opinion) shitty, biased points.

"No matter what your reason is, don't make an engine."

That's negating the entire science/math/engineering aspect of game development--which a large majority of the time is my favorite part of being in this business. He's clearly the most interested in the gameplay aspects of game development, which is good for him. But he gets way too preachy and forces his philosophy on you towards the end.

One piece of advice that i COMPLETELY agree with: develop the engine WITH the game in mind. Elysian Shadows started as a game then evolved into an engine to power the game, then will hopefully turn back into the game running with the engine.

But as the dude said, an engine is completely abstract. There are no rules, no guidelines, nothing to tell you what to implement. With a game in mind, not only will you be able to decide what is and isn't necessary from your engine, but you will also have something tangible that can be developed in parallel with your engine.

[TheBuzzSaw]

The key point (which I agree with) is that the focus should be on development for a custom engine designed to work with this specific game. I agree that it is suicidal to attempt developing some kind of generic engine that others will be able to use in any realistic fashion.