Do you make games from scratch?

[128p]

This is a little derivative and perhaps not the most relevant topic but it's rather just me being curious.

Do any of you actually write your commercial titles from ground up¹?

I enjoy developing my own architectures and tackling some of the little mundane tasks that writing a game without libraries has, but also acknowledge that yes, these libraries potentially solve issues I would never imagine and in a way more skilled developers know it's best. But I'm learning, and learning is a process.

Whoever enjoys making games from scratch knows the joy of it, but has any of you been brave enough to actually ship those games? 

I'd love to know more about your projects even if they're small!

Thanks.

(1):  Without game and/or rendering frameworks like Phaser and Pixi. Note that I do not mention physics engines.

Edited October 20, 2019 by 128p

[Jammy]

10 hours ago, 128p said:

(1):  Without game and/or rendering frameworks like Phaser and Pixi. Note that I do not mention physics engines.

I don't think many people seriously build commercial games projects from the ground up with their own rendering engine. It would take just as long making the rendering engine as it would to make the game?

Since your question is around commercial titles, I've never worked for anybody who said "let's do everything the hard way from scratch." it's more like "let's leverage what we can and not re-invent the wheel".

Personally I've never made much money from a HTML5 game, but have made money from other games written from scratch (e.g. www.world-mafia.com

), but we're not talking huge successes.

[128p]

3 hours ago, Jammy said:

I don't think many people seriously build commercial games projects from the ground up with their own rendering engine. It would take just as long making the rendering engine as it would to make the game?

Since your question is around commercial titles, I've never worked for anybody who said "let's do everything the hard way from scratch." it's more like "let's leverage what we can and not re-invent the wheel".

Personally I've never made much money from a HTML5 game, but have made money from other games written from scratch (e.g. www.world-mafia.com

), but we're not talking huge successes.

Despite the fact that I like doing it for fun, I couldn't agree more with you @Jammy, If you intend to deliver good quality products and have less headaches along the way, Phaser/Pixi+howler in my opinion are way to go.

Maybe it's just me being finicky, but I'm still interested in learning from whoever went against the stream and know their reasons to do it.

(I'm using Pixi for my current game btw)

[Jammy]

5 minutes ago, 128p said:

(I'm using Pixi for my current game btw)

Understood mate, I also use *just* pixi for my project (I didn't see the point in going any further than having a rendering engine). I do hope others can provide you with experienced answers but I figure I would also provide more from my perspective.

Making a game or any project from scratch without frameworks can come with loads of benefits (since we already know the downsides i'll describe just a few of the upsides)

1. Performance.. You pick exactly how your engine processes its logic. (This is why I only use a rendering engine and not a game framework)

2. Learning... You get to learn loads about making a framework or engine yourself (Before Pixi 1.0 and even the early days of popularised HTML5 games, I did a bunch of learning and made this video at end of the post)

 

3. Cost... Maybe the framework that does suit you costs too much, e.g. dev tooling, licenses etc.

4. Fit for purpose... Sometimes you have an idea for a project, which no framework lends itself to well. For example, you may need to run inside Linux, Unix, iOS, Android, PS4 web browser, XBOX web browser. You may want Newtonian physics, you may want it to import SVG's, you may want it to use CSS etc.

5. Complete control... This one is normally the reason used by the best developers, AAA's/AA's, financial institutes, military, etc. You have created and built every single aspect and component of your project, because it's extremely important you know exactly what every single component does.

The video I put together years ago about trying out gaming aspects in HTML5

Hope this helps give you some perspective you may have not considered.

Jam.

[128p]

On 10/20/2019 at 2:54 PM, Jammy said:

Understood mate, I also use *just* pixi for my project (I didn't see the point in going any further than having a rendering engine). I do hope others can provide you with experienced answers but I figure I would also provide more from my perspective.

Making a game or any project from scratch without frameworks can come with loads of benefits (since we already know the downsides i'll describe just a few of the upsides)

1. Performance.. You pick exactly how your engine processes its logic. (This is why I only use a rendering engine and not a game framework)

2. Learning... You get to learn loads about making a framework or engine yourself (Before Pixi 1.0 and even the early days of popularised HTML5 games, I did a bunch of learning and made this video at end of the post)

 

3. Cost... Maybe the framework that does suit you costs too much, e.g. dev tooling, licenses etc.

4. Fit for purpose... Sometimes you have an idea for a project, which no framework lends itself to well. For example, you may need to run inside Linux, Unix, iOS, Android, PS4 web browser, XBOX web browser. You may want Newtonian physics, you may want it to import SVG's, you may want it to use CSS etc.

5. Complete control... This one is normally the reason used by the best developers, AAA's/AA's, financial institutes, military, etc. You have created and built every single aspect and component of your project, because it's extremely important you know exactly what every single component does.

The video I put together years ago about trying out gaming aspects in HTML5

Hope this helps give you some perspective you may have not considered.

Jam.

Thanks @Jammy it does make a lot of sense to me (sorry for taking so long to respond, I'm working on my latest game and hopefully will be posting on the showcase post soon).

A few weeks ago I made a CSS 3D game (I would not recommend doing that), and I had to do it all from scratch because the way I was going about it was too specific. 

As you said, you can learn a lot from doing that, like understanding why a framework does something the way it does and maybe even improving it! 

Thanks for engaging @Jammy, it's nice to see things from many points.

[ganduking]

I have developed some from ground up.  Which was a good software engineering challenge which I grew.

However did better when I used a framework, not re-inventing the wheel in some areas.