Why you need game engine

What actually is game engine,

and why Unity is so successful ;-)

Disclaimer

• The views expressed here are my personal views and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts, opinions, intentions, plans or strategies of Unity

What is game engine

• Your call

What is game engine

• Let me guess:– Rendering– Physics– even more stuff

• Technology in short

What is game engine

• Welcome to the real world• YOU ARE WRONG

What is game engine

• When talking about technology you forget:– Not so cool-looking technology

• most of people thinks engine=rendering

– How to get meshes/textures/... in there– How much time to wait if texture was changed– How do you create levels– lots more

What is game engine

• Technology• Tools• Infrastructure

– well, nothing lives in isolation– how well pieces fit

What is Technology

• Multiplatform – unless platform holder pays you– unless you don't need money– unless you are doing smth impossible else

• or you are wrong• or platform holder will pay you

What is Technology

• Example:– Rendering

• if you didn't try consoles - you will fail• if you didn't try gl/dx/gles you will fail• if you don't know your hardware you will fail• if you don't read RTR you will fail• if you don't know/have constraints you will fail• you need more? ;-)

What is Technology

• Hidden Technology– What about:

• leaderboards• achievements• saving/loading, checkpoints etc• multiplayer• quick loading• updating and DLC• you name it

What is Technology

• You don't need it – if you create old-school lines/tetris

• you need reality check

• You don't need all of this if you are careful about constraints

• You will need this as you try to scale down from mac to ipad

What is Technology

• We'll be back when talking about infrastructure

• There is more hidden in there– Far more important then you think

What are Tools

• You will need to create your levels– even for something like

• zuma • time-management• non-standard match3• you name it

What are Tools

• You will need to tweak lots of stuff– Asset Pipeline

• conditioning• params

– Materials– Object Properties

• And do it fast and see the results

What are Tools

• You will need a lot of stuff– Managing your content

• where was that texture/shader for this tree

– Creating additional data• achievements• localization

– Reusing stuff• i want this tree in another level

– You name it

What are Tools

• You don't need it – if you use xml/json/inis - just type here

• you need sanity check

– if you hate artists/designers– if you have all the time on earth

• You don't need all this– Until you need it yesterday

What is Infrastructure

• How does it all fit together– iteration time– interoperability– workflow fit– unification– everything else

• the "feel"

What is Infrastructure

• Iteration time– You change something

• texture• mesh location• script• object params (e.g. movement speed)

– How much time is needed to see it in game– This might be the difference between shipping

in one month and in 3 months less-polished

What is Infrastructure

• Interoperability– How well parts works with each other

• DCC tool plugins • Asset importing and Level editing• Conflicts• Coupling

– changing drawed mesh params shouldn't result in physics fidling

– changing texture on tree shouldn't result in whole world re-import/rebuild

What is Infrastructure

• workflow fit– artists vs programmers– sound engineer might look differently

• unification– how much tools/steps is needed for object

• draw params• physics params• scripting

Still want to create in-house?

• Create engine in-house is awesome!– if you have cool experienced programmers– if you have up-front time– if you need specific technology

• you can argue about "specific" part

– if you can do it better• if it is your first game ever - you can't

– if you want to know how engines works• For hobbyist learning project - awesome exp

Still want to create in-house?

• For AAA game - unsolved problem– diff credits for UE3 game and in-house tech– big games have source licence ;-)

Still want to create in-house?

• For smaller games - even more interesting– ios: $0.99

• meaning: you need to be *very* fast

– ios vs android• fragmentation even on ios • on android - almost desktop-like• driver-bugs and harware "features"

Still want to create in-house?

• generally mobile– they *are* underpowered

• unless you know how to use hw

– welcome back FFP tricks• or earlier-days shader oprimizations

– welcome back assembly

Still want to create in-house?

• generally mobile– a lot of stuff to integrate

• different platform api• different features• achievements• leaderboards• in-game purchases• accelerometer/gyroscope• etc

Still want to create in-house?

• More power to you (really)

Unity

• Well, as i am working in Unity... ;-)• Was created to help inexperienced teams

– The very first customer was team of 2 artists• yes, they succeeded ;-)

• The idea is to open gamedev to masses– Lots of platforms

• mac/win/web/ios/android/x360/ps3/others (NDA)

– Lots of guidance

Unity

• Programming: – JavaScript, Boo, C#– Thinking about others

• Art– FBX

• meaning almost everything– Autodesk, Modo, Blender, Sketchup, Cheetah

• and some more [too much to remember]– PSD, JPG, PNG, TGA, TIFF, and more

Unity

• Operates on high level– Components

• MeshRenderer, MeshCollider, etc

– Assets• Mesh, Texture, Sound

– you will get this automagically

Unity

• Prefabs– You can save object at full and reuse

• with components– meaning everything

• Scenes– Level editing

• Meaning one place to place objects and edit props

Unity

• Multiplatform:– Select platform and build

• That's all– almost ;-)

Unity

• Materials/Shaders– All power to you– preset shaders– you can write your own

Unity

• Unity Editor is written on C# mostly– meaning we expose almost everything– meaning - write your own tools if needed– meaning - lots of plugins are already there

Unity

• in-Editor Play button– play your game ;-)– while having all Editor power right here

• change texture and see this• change script, wait for compile, and see that

Unity

• Runtime– we did lots of hard-lifting

• skinning on NEON? Been there done that ;-)• driver bugs on XXX? Ah yes, we have workaround

– once again - lots exposed to c# – plugins: lots

Unity

• Bells & whistles– Beast lightmapping? check– Beast point clouds? working in it– Umbra occlusion? check– cool LOD system? almost there– profiling? check

• run on target hw, collect data in Editor

– random stuff? you will be surprised ;-)

Questions?