15 Years with a Self-made Game Engine

[@MadrigalGames]

Let me know in the comments if you manage to escape the prison in Jailbreak! Bonus points if you bring a guard with you in the elevator!

[@malvaorlova7521]

Loved watching! Love from Sweden

[@MadrigalGames]

Hälsningar från andra sidan viken!

[@diiegoss]

Very nice! You're an inspiration, that's for sure! What an amazing journey!

[@arireitman2080]

How do you stay motivated over the years to continue working on your engine?

[@MadrigalGames]

I guess the answer is that I don't always stay motivated. But there are things that may help, such as trying to always work with a purpose. Don't add an engine feature just to add a bullet point to a feature list. Add a feature if a game/app needs it. Also, if you get burned out working on something, switch to something else. A great thing about a game engine is that there are so many different things to work on. Eg. switch from physics to scripting. From audio to input.

[@MattPryze]

I thoroughly enjoyed watching this video! (At 1.5x speed lol). Amazing dedication to work on something for this long. I can’t imagine all the knowledge you’ve acquired over that time. That last version of slider looks fun!

[@MadrigalGames]

Ah yes, the speed setting is sometimes what you need to translate from Rambling Finnish Dude Normal Person. By thank you! And yes, Slide is pretty fun. I hope to return to it some day...

[@SomeRandomPiggo]

I've learned a lot already writing a much less advanced engine and there is much more to implement. Your games seem to have a very distinct feel to them, something I unfortunately don't see much anymore. Excellent work!

[@GiMiat]

Besides the unbelievable work with the engine, I also liked that each game had each own unique visual feeling, many developers dont have good artistic taste =P

[@MadrigalGames]

Thanks, that's very kind (and encouraging)!

[@fr0zi]

Amazing journey in time! 🙂

[@foxidgamedev]

the graphics are looking very clean. I like that :)

[@MadrigalGames]

Cheers, glad to hear it!

[@ret-si]

So basically even the most basic version of the engine is way more complex than anything I could even begin to fathom. That's neat.

[@StevenHokins]

Very cool video, thank you for engine retrospective, are you still enjoying zig?

[@MadrigalGames]

Absolutely, still feel like Zig is a good gamedev language. The language is still not stable, of course, so we'll see where it goes from here. So far it has worked out well for Traction Point.

[@rebellion112]

Great journary. What physics engine you were using for Jailbreak and Slide? Bullet?

[@MadrigalGames]

Earlier versions of the engine had Bullet integrated pretty tightly, and this was the case for Jailbreak. During Slide I added a physics abstraction layer which allows me to target different physics engines. At this point Slide switched to using PhysX, mostly for its excellent vehicle SDK, and the same is true for Traction Point. I can still use Bullet though, simply by loading the Bullet plugin instead of the PhysX one.

[@aswinaswin5672]

Hey, iam Aswin, i want to make a engine like u. I have a intermediate knowledge of opengl and c++. Iam already making a 2D game engine. Suggest me where should i start if i want to make engine like u!. Say like resources from which u learn.

[@MadrigalGames]

I am afraid I don't have any such resources to point to. Like I say in the video, don't make an engine. Make a game, and let the engine get developed as a byproduct of that. The game project will have requirements of the engine and that will determine what you need to implement on the tech side.

[@aswinaswin5672]

@@MadrigalGames Thanks for your reply. It would be even good if u share some techniques such as rendering methords. Iam asking because u have many years of experience and iam a newbie, u would have already experience by trying many ways to learn all these things. I would be very helpfull for newbie like me to know how you learn all these things. U can share any resource which u might know like tutorials or etc.

[@hiimpaco9743]

Love this video . Im in the process of building my own engine . did you write your own physics library or did you use something like bullet ?

[@osakitsukiko]

Hello! Amazing work! I was wondering if the engine is open to the public? Thanks.

[@MadrigalGames]

Thanks! No the engine isn't really set up for public consumption right now. Eg. there are zero docs for anything. I have been toying with the idea of releasing the Zig portion of the code for TP at some point though, and some version of the engine along with it so that it can be built, but we will see...

[@osakitsukiko]

@@MadrigalGames Oh, so cool seeing other ppl use zig for gamedev!

[@Harald723]

Did you start with C and moved onto zig?

[@MadrigalGames]

Nah, the Zig code is mostly new stuff, except for a few things that I ported from C++ to Zig.

[@Harald723]

22:30 I see

[@Harald723]

@@MadrigalGames cool!

[@williamn.4570]

Are you xpetu?

[@MadrigalGames]

No....? Is that a person or...?

[@williamn.4570]

​​@@MadrigalGamesyes, your voices sounds so similar, it's a different channel

[@sunofabeach9424]

I still don't get it. if this traction point game is that very game you've been woriking on for 15 years along with your engine then I'm sorry but you could've already be done with this game if you used like any somewhat mature game engine out there

[@MadrigalGames]

No, no, I started Traction Point last year. Or if you count Slide (as a "first attempt") then a few years before that. But yes indeed, using a premade engine would have made the whole thing much quicker. Keep in mind though that when I started, around 2009-2010, the premade engine options were much different than what we have today.

[@MadrigalGames]

...not to mention, of course, that over half of the time making Traction Point has gone to making levels, models, effects etc, since I don't want to use that many premade assets, favoring to make stuff from the ground up. And all of that work remains even when using a premade engine.