Comment by cazum
9 years ago
I don't want to start a philosophical argument here about what a "real dev" is, but I do want to provide a counterpoint to any potential gamedevs who may be reading this:
While writing your own engine from scratch can sound tempting, and absolutely is a rewarding excercise, if your goal is to publish a game, it's probably wise to not do this. Pick up gamemaker or godot or unity and start prototyping right away.
I might have a bit of a bias here, but I spend a not-insignificant amount of time on an online gamedev community, and the only people who ever finish anything are the guys using gamemaker and unity. Everyone else gets stuck at the "should I use regular inheritance or components/what's the best way to z-order sprites/Delta time coefficients cause random bugs in physics" stage and cannot proceed because their engine becomes unstable.
If you have the skills and time, and feel like it is necessary to write your own engine for your game, then by all means, but I think that for most people, these prerequisites don't exist.
"Real dev" or not, once you shipped your game, you've done more than most devs.
I 1000% agree with this. At the same time, I think developing your own engine is immensely empowering and helps you "level up" in some fashion. I'd recommend doing both. But, of course, just use an existing engine and make a game first. The engine is a long haul endeavor. It starts very slowly, but eventually, you'll be able to roll your own games with it. And there's something about that that's very cool. But don't write an entire engine for your first or even second game.