[jere]

Yea, just from reading about Dreams it seems basically like a game engine more than a game, albeit a very accessible one that also highlights user generated content prominently a la Mario Maker.

Game creation tools have never been very accessible and surfacing UGC without the player having to dig for it feels like a relatively new phenomenon.

[corysama]

My career has been making game engines. What I've seen created already by the pre-release users of Dreams is incredible. Just scroll through https://twitter.com/hashtag/MadeInDreams and keep in mind that everything you see was made by random users completely on their PlayStations. No Photoshop. No Maya/Blender. No IDE. Just a joystick.

[Animats]

Two joysticks. And that makes a difference.

As soon as I read that article I started watching "How to build in Dreams" videos. The user interface is very unusual yet seems to work. This may be a UI breakthrough. The UI is as complex as the ones in most 3D design programs, but it's much more accessible to the casual user.

[nurbl]

This may actually be the single most innovative thing about it. I think they've managed to boil down games making to a limited set of functional pieces that fit together in a huge number of ways, and then spent years honing an UI that make them usable with a single game controller. Mind you, the controller does have a dozen buttons (some of them analog), two joysticks, a touchpad and a gyro, so it's not that simple :)

[vvillena]

Two joysticks, plus gyroscopic sensors, actually. You use the gyro controls mainly to move a pointer, which is OK, although a mouse would be better on some situations. What's genius is being able to use the pointer along with the joysticks, making movement effortless once you get used to it. Also, rotating objects by rotating the controller feels amazing and extremely natural.

Honestly, after trying Dreams I wouldn't be surprised if DualShock integration became a feature of serious 3D modelers and game engines.

[mrandish]

> This may be a UI breakthrough.

I agree. A good example of this is the fantastic keyframe timeline that moves through 3D space as a series of dimensional slices.

[user982]

That link should be a top-level comment to preempt further dumb takes.

[Thorrez]

Roblox is a game engine too. And a platform for playing games that other users make. You program Roblox games with Lua.