Picture taken from their Twitter

  • Serinus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    150
    ·
    10 months ago

    Because changing the engine in an existing project is a huge pita that requires many, many hours and possibly in some cases a full rewrite.

    This also applies to games that would be released in 2023 or 2024.

    Nobody should be considering Unity for a new project, but it’s understandable to make either decision for many existing projects.

    Ripping out the engine of your game isn’t a trivial thing.

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
      cake
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      55
      ·
      10 months ago

      Many many hours is a massive understatement.

      Thousands and thousands of hours is more appropriate

      • terny@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        10 months ago

        I don’t know how you could change the engine without rewriting the entire thing basically from scratch.

        • mee@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          It really depends on how modular their codebase is. The Doom 1/2 modern ports they did in 2019 use Unity. But it’s actually still the original Doom underneath and just using Unity for input and output to make porting easier

    • cozycosmic@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      8
      ·
      10 months ago

      I agree, although a lot of the work going into a game is the game design, art, and iteration, and not just the programming and rigging. And it may actually be a catalyst to rewrite parts better

      • my_hat_stinks@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Strongly disagree. While a lot of work does go on to art assets which should be simpler to migrate, the code is absolutely what makes the game. There are tons of very successful games with low quality or stock assets, there are very few popular games with broken code.

        Even then, it’s still a lot of effort to check every asset you’re using to ensure they work as expected in your new engine.

      • TechieDamien@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        I agree for a specific scenario: if you don’t use many unity specific packages or assets. Then, perhaps you are correct, still I don’t blame anyone staying even in that case, as it is still daunting to take on such a task.

    • MossBear@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      14
      ·
      10 months ago

      In this case it sounds like they were talking about their next game rather than a current project.

      • null@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        10 months ago

        “has been hard at work these past 2+ years”

        That doesn’t sound like a current project to you?

        • MossBear@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          10 months ago

          I didn’t click through and was going based on the headline. My mistake.

        • MossBear@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          10 months ago

          Yeah, you’re right. I was thinking of it in terms of current project -> next project, but I see that’s not what was meant.