Elysian Shadows

Hello everyone,

My friend and I have decided to stop playing around and actually produce something that we ( and others ) can play around with and enjoy. I just wrapped up basic SDL and think I have it down enough to start building a very basic engine I can re-use and extend upon over time. So here is how my design plan goes ( * since this is my first please provide input)

1: C++ & SDL ( maybe a scripting language later on... but I dont see the use for the small games I plan on producing )
2: I plan on putting all of the usual functions I need in a Game.h within a Game class. And having all of my graphics, audio functions in there.. I will then 3: I plan on making it as clean and light weight as possible. Basic graphics handling and game methods..
4:I will also have a player.h and an enemy.h ( because I feel those are things that are a common occurrence in game.. )

What's with all these people and engines now??? Can't we just make a plain 'ol game, do we need all need our own engines?

Anyways cool, and the best of luck!

^ Not the CC I was expecting... And like I said... very light weight engine. I am not making an attempt at Crysis here :P just something I can re-use and extend upon over the coming years.

Thanks!

jacob.krustchinsky wrote:^ Not the CC I was expecting... And like I said... very light weight engine. I am not making an attempt at Crysis here :P just something I can re-use and extend upon over the coming years.

Thanks!

I know (and all the power to ya), just wondering, why not just a game?

eatcomics wrote:

jacob.krustchinsky wrote:^ Not the CC I was expecting... And like I said... very light weight engine. I am not making an attempt at Crysis here :P just something I can re-use and extend upon over the coming years.

Thanks!

I know (and all the power to ya), just wondering, why not just a game?

I think it's great to make a light weight engine... but you have to remember what it is... light weight... It's just something to get some base code to perform basic things.

Well, after much discussion between me and hunter ( my friend ). We came to the conclusion, that since we plan on building a few different games over the next few years...why don't we just construct a very simplistic minimal 2D engine? We have built a few pong and tetris clones in XNA, and we both hate the repetition in writing them. Although copy paste works at times...we felt we should have something that can be re-used in a very easy way that will allow us to build games with much greater ease than before.

jacob.krustchinsky wrote:Well, after much discussion between me and hunter ( my friend ). We came to the conclusion, that since we plan on building a few different games over the next few years...why don't we just construct a very simplistic minimal 2D engine? We have built a few pong and tetris clones in XNA, and we both hate the repetition in writing them. Although copy paste works at times...we felt we should have something that can be re-used in a very easy way that will allow us to build games with much greater ease than before.

sounds good... Really my earlier post wasn't directed at you, it was just I've been seeing a lot of stuff on how people are making engines for like one game, that could easily be done as just a game... Didn't mean to bash you or say that your doing it wrong, on the contrary I think its a great idea, but like I said I've just seen a lot of dumb stuff, and lately whenever I see the word engine I get reminded of these things. I still wish you guys luck and would liek to hear what you guys are up to and how the engine is going

basically, just know I'm not being mean, and I really wasn't trying to say anything about you or your project, it was more or less me thinking outloud...

Whenever I hear "we're going to make an engine" I instinctively get very skeptical so I think some of the replies were mostly just that. Definitely a good idea here. If not really a full-blown engine this setup will at least give you more experience with wrapping the libraries and object oriented design. Post screens if you guys make any progress on games.

I am instantly reminded of Scientific Ninja's article "Make games, not engines". He has a bunch of other articles related to game development, you should check out his blog. If you are going to code a bunch of components that tie in with each other, make them focused for the next game you're building on. As you make more games, you'll see what code you can re-use from your old game and plug it into new code. And you'll refine your code to make it more efficient for that purpose. Repeat as necessary for each game.

Over time you will have effectively made your own engine that works, because the code has been tried and tested with actual games. It's much better than writing an engine from scratch and hoping that your next bunch of games will fit into it nicely.

I think plenty of people say that ^^. Most will give you the advice 'make a game, not an engine'...

But I have also frequently heard the advice "Don't start making a game from scratch", meaning that you need some base code for basic things such as rendering

I think generally whenever the word engine is seen, everyone looks down on it. That's why I tend to use the word 'framework' instead of engine haha.

But he seems to have made a few games, and understands the basics. At some point, I think one can, and should, make some time of framework, where they have some code for audio, video, and input - just a base to make these crucial things easier.

eatcomics wrote:What's with all these people and engines now??? Can't we just make a plain 'ol game, do we need all need our own engines?

Anyways cool, and the best of luck!

... I'm going to pretend like you never said that.

GyroVorbis wrote:

eatcomics wrote:What's with all these people and engines now??? Can't we just make a plain 'ol game, do we need all need our own engines?

Anyways cool, and the best of luck!

... I'm going to pretend like you never said that.

I concur.

GroundUpEngine wrote:

GyroVorbis wrote:

eatcomics wrote:What's with all these people and engines now??? Can't we just make a plain 'ol game, do we need all need our own engines?

Anyways cool, and the best of luck!

... I'm going to pretend like you never said that.

I concur.

You can't just make a game from scratch... well... yes you can... but here's the thing.
When you finish making the Engine, you then can start working on your game.
Every game has an Engine, if you just try to make a game while you program the game it makes no sense... you have to make an Engine.

So now we're calling sound and input functions, and maybe a map editor a game engine?

Sorry but that's the way I read some of these posts... (actually take that back, that's how I read LeonBlade's post :P )

Everytime I hear people say something about an engine, I'm thinking "Great they wanna make some epic game maker thing"

but really I get proven wrong every time... That's where my earlier post comes from, I have nothing against engines or people who design them, just people who don't know what they're getting into... When I said just make games, I meant start with the basics, learn how to draw stuff and how games work, not ENJINS ARE B4D CAUSE EVERYONE IS DOING THEM AN D TEH ARE ALL HARD AND STUF>>>

like I said the comment wasn't directed at the topic poster, that was just me thinking outloud after seeing the title (I did read the post, but I still felt like asking)...

I thought you were making a engine like the jello engine, but applesauce... if you understand what I mean