discussion Which game engine do you hate?

[Mr.Nobody]

I'm still seeing shockwave games come out of Japan, it's insane.

I'll take just about anything over shockwave.

Controversial take, there were a decent number of flash games that were actually really good

 

[saltydogmk]

My apolog

Not sure what you mean by an anime-style game engine. You might be thinking of a particular rendering program, e.g. Koikatsu or Honey Select.


And even if you do need strict RPG mechanics you need to think carefully about how to make that game fun for your players. Played too many RPGM games where a lot of things were well done but the game was a chore because the dev didn't think through things like "if the player picks up this quest six screens away from his in-game house and the quest has six stages and he has to do something at his house to trigger each next stage, how much total time is he going to spend holding the 'run' button while watching the map roll by?"

My apologies, that is correct. I was referring to the rendering program. I didn't know what they were called though.

 

[TittyCommittee]

Controversial take, there were a decent number of flash games that were actually really good

That's not controversial at all. They were pretty good for their time.

 

[MattShizzle]

RPGM and HTML - and HTML ones are usually garbage real porn ones. I rarely get anything that isn't Ren'py.

 

[Teal80]

That's not controversial at all. They were pretty good for their time.

I liked some of the early Flash games, janky renders and all.
I think the presentation of the story is key to a good VN and that could, theoretically be done in most engines, however...

I've mostly focused on Renpy as I can fix issues (except for sandboxes... curse them), mod them to restore missing content and add music (usually from the pre-steam rlease...).
Almost all engines suffer from "lack of developer competance" syndrome which leads to buggy experiences or just plain stupid navigation/UI. In Renpy the UI framework is basic but harder to break (except sandbox games....).
RPGM seems worst for me as the story is almost always too gameified for my tastes.
Unity requires skill in programming and UI design which almost no devs have so the story is hard/tedious to navigate. I now avoid these like the plague.

I think if you have a story to tell KISS principles apply and a simple engine will suffice.
(and stop adding meaningless mini-games that break immersion and story pacing.... sigh.)

 

[appreciate143]

none i think ?

 

[Lumi-dev]

I have no particular game engine I hate. It's all about the execution and there are good games on all engines. That said, ren'py games do tend to be all samey-samey and this is coming from a dev who uses ren'py. The same goes with RPGM. Both these engines gives a novice dev a more or less working game out of the box, leading to many games on those engines being near-clones of one another with little artistic originality. That they are such a low entry also means many devs bite off more than they can chew or overestimate their ability to make a game.

Disclaimer: I belong(ed) in that last category as well. My dev journey taught me a lot, but in the beginning I also thought it would be easier than it really was because ren'py allowed me to whip up something that looked decent quite quickly. But decent isn't enough if that's what everyone gets by default.

 

[PCMR69420]

I could never get into HTML games. Just way too much text for my liking.

 

[roux69]

I avoid RPGM mostly. Most VNs are on Ren'py so there is no avoiding it.

 

[sullys]

Whatever the fuck kronos uses.

 

[SquirrelMonkey]

Do always prefer Renpy but I am ok with Unity games. RPGM is always a turn off but there have been a few I could make it through but not many.

 

[Staranko]

I'd say it's about the effort from the developer, a quick "cashgrab" game or an inexperienced developer is in my opinion much worse than the engine choice. And something like unreal/unity is going to require much more effort and experience to make something decent than for example Renpy.
I've seen terrible renpy games and some of them are my favorites, would love to see more unreal/unity games but those require so much effort and experience it's probably not doable for a one man team.

 

[badplottwist]

Dunno about hate, but Unreal Engine has yet to have a game come out that wasn't abandoned or fell well short of expectations. Usually updates are few and far between, and content in those updates feels sparse.

 

[sandroares05]

I am curious to see what people think about the choice of a game developer for an engine. Is there an engine, that when you see it's used, no matter how good the art looks, you are reluctant or outright ignore the game because of it?
For me, its RPGM. I have played some good games made in this engine, but most of the times, it's a buggy mess, clunky or just feels that the "rpg mechanics" offer nothing but an annoyance. So, most of the time, I just ignore games made in RPGM

Yes, RGPM is unbearable and boring (my opinion).

 

[Amalus]

RPGM is annoying, just a lot of back and forth most of the time. Even the best of them get repetitive

 

[user2386]

definately RPGM - while there have been some standout games on it, most seem to be fairly low-effort or low-content - its always a bit of a red flag to me

 

[DeusX]

RPGM and HTML

 

[lilmeho]

Controversial take, there were a decent number of flash games that were actually really good

I'm not saying they weren't really good. I'm simply saying they're STILL releasing them, which is strange since shockwave and flash aren't supported anymore, so getting those games to work can be a pain, especially if you're using WINE.

 

[Mr.Nobody]

I'm not saying they weren't really good. I'm simply saying they're STILL releasing them, which is strange since shockwave and flash aren't supported anymore, so getting those games to work can be a pain, especially if you're using WINE.

Ah, okay. Personally I run them using SWF Enabler, it's pretty simple to use if you wanna give it a shot

 

[Python3]

I use Linux for everything, and Ren'Py is the only one consistently offering a Linux version.
On the rare occasion when it didn't, the Windows client worked surprisingly well in Wine, but I would not take that as a given.