[csdtx]

Do we not have enough of these fully featured game engines? Game development has become so bloated these days. You need teams of hundreds or even thousands of people to create a full game. In the PS1 era some of the best games were built by a team of a dozen or so people working for 1-2 years. Instead of focusing on graphical fidelity I think we should be focusing on lower development time, gameplay features/diversity, stability/portability and implementation. I have yet to see a proper open world game (Think GTA but you can enter every room in every building) with good draw distances that don't suffer from horrible pop in.

Also how about a game engine where it's easy to build games? The WC3/SC2 world editors are great examples, you can get started and start building stuff from the start. Even though it's an engine made for making RTS maps it's modifiable enough you can create FPS games in WC3 if your willing to put in the effort. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwtteOIksbo

[spywaregorilla]

> Game development has become so bloated these days. You need teams of hundreds or even thousands of people to create a full game

Hard disagree. The accessibility and availability of free resources is higher than ever before for solo devs. AAA games take large teams because they have more content, and a larger diversity of content than older games.

> Instead of focusing on graphical fidelity I think we should be focusing on lower development time, gameplay features/diversity, stability/portability and implementation. I have yet to see a proper open world game (Think GTA but you can enter every room in every building) with good draw distances that don't suffer from horrible pop in.

That's because it's a difficult problem and machines don't have unlimited resources. Draw distances are a graphical fidelity problem, so I also find it ironic that this is your first idea.

[jayd16]

Agreed. Its never been easier to make such detailed games but he bar for a game anyone cares about is much much higher.

[art0rz]

> Instead of focusing on graphical fidelity I think we should be focusing on lower development time, gameplay features/diversity, stability/portability and implementation.

> I have yet to see a proper open world game (Think GTA but you can enter every room in every building) with good draw distances that don't suffer from horrible pop in.

I don't think these are compatible. The majority of man-hours are spent creating graphics, not programming features.

[maccard]

> The majority of man-hours are spent creating graphics, not programming features.

Technically, yes but it's not as heavily swayed as you might think. On the four AAA projects I've worked on, it's been roughly 60-40 art to programming/technical design (think level scripters). There is definitely a sizeable amount of the man hours spent by engineers writing C++

[username90]

Programmers writing C++ to support graphics also goes in the art bucket though. If there is a performance bottleneck on art, or if you need to load/unload art resources since they take tons of memory, or if they are tweaking shaders, then that is still work done to make the art.

[maccard]

> Programmers writing C++ to support graphics also goes in the art bucket though.

Hard disagree here.

[username90]

You have to do it to support modern game graphics. It is something they could skip if they didn't do modern game graphics. It is a cost of modern game graphics. Doesn't matter if you disagree, this is a fact.

So if you divide it up, how much work is done to support the art and graphics of the game, and how much is done to support the gameplay, you get a much greater ratio art to game than 60/40.

[maccard]

By that reductionist logic anyone who writes features for UI, or cosmetic only physics (ragdolls) is supporting modern game graphics?

[Tossrock]

Sounds like you might be interested in Roblox - fully solved out of the box multiplayer, Lua based development, no shader access or particular graphical fidelity concerns. Some of the most successful games of the current era were developed by single teenagers.

[sinuhe69]

One of the hottest game on Steam 2021 Dyson Sphere Program was developed by a team of just 5!

[username90]

Games requiring a lot of custom code are really under rated among indie devs. Most tries to do stuff that are really easy to do, like 2d platformers or shooters or puzzle games, but hard to code games that gives experiences you can't get in other games seems like the easiest way to make a successful game with few people nowadays.

[Trasmatta]

There are still tons of games made by tiny teams, even moreso than at any point in the past probably. The indie dev scene is huge, and some of the best games of the last 5 years have been built by teams is 10 or less.

[JabavuAdams]

Actually fully featured game engines like Unity have made it possible for smaller and smaller teams to build bigger and bigger games. Not sure where you're getting your numbers from.

[MeinBlutIstBlau]

Crash Bandicoot was made by 2 people, a dev and an artist.

[midnightclubbed]

Do you have a source for that? Wikipedia (and the game's credits) have a core development team of 8 (plus audio, production, testing etc).