2023

Creators of Slay the Spire will migrate their next game to a new engine if Unity doesn't completely revert their changes (nitter.net)

submitted 1 year ago by simple@lemm.ee to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] Serinus@lemmy.world 147 points 1 year 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 52 points 1 year ago

Many many hours is a massive understatement.

Thousands and thousands of hours is more appropriate

[-] terny@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

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

[-] mee@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 -5 points 1 year 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 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 0 points 1 year 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.