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Carter Anderson 2020-01-21 20:12:20 -08:00
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#### Why build Bevy instead of using INSERT_GAME_ENGINE_HERE?
@cart (original creator of Bevy) speaking: I decided to build Bevy after years of contributing code to other engines (ex: Godot). I spent over four years building a game in Godot and I have experience with Unity, Unreal, Three.js, Armory, and Game Maker. I have built multiple custom engines in the past using Rust, Go, HTML5, and Java. I have also closely followed the other major players in the Rust gamedev ecosystem, namely [Amethyst](https://github.com/amethyst/amethyst), [coffee](https://github.com/hecrj/coffee), and [Piston](https://github.com/PistonDevelopers/piston). I am currently a senior software engineer at Microsoft and that has colored my view of the space as well.
@cart (original creator of Bevy) speaking: I decided to build Bevy after years of contributing code to other engines (ex: Godot). I spent over four years building a game in Godot and I have experience with Unity, Unreal, Three.js, Armory, and Game Maker. I built multiple custom engines using Rust, Go, HTML5, and Java. I have also closely followed the other major players in the Rust gamedev ecosystem, namely [Amethyst](https://github.com/amethyst/amethyst), [coffee](https://github.com/hecrj/coffee), and [Piston](https://github.com/PistonDevelopers/piston). I am currently a senior software engineer at Microsoft which has also affected my opinions of software and what it should be.
Throughout these experiences, I developed strong opinions about what I wanted a game engine to be:
These experiences led me to want the following from a game engine:
* It needs to be open-source. Games are a huge part of our culture and humanity is investing _millions_ of hours into the development of games. Why are we (as game developers / engine developers) continuing to build up the ecosystems of closed-source monopolies that take cuts of our sales and deny us visibilty into the tech we use daily? We can do so much better.
* It needs to have fast build/run/test loops, which translates to either scripting languages or fast compile times in native languages. But scripting languages introduce runtime overhead and cognitive load. Additionally, I found myself loving engines where game code is written in the same language as engine code. Being able to run an IDE "go to definition" command on a symbol in your game and hop directly into the engine source is an extremely powerful concept. And you don't need to worry about translation layers or lossy abstractions.
* It needs to be free and open source with no strings attached. Games are a huge part of our culture and humanity is investing _millions_ of hours into the development of games. Why are we (as game developers / engine developers) continuing to build up the ecosystems of closed-source monopolies that take cuts of our sales and deny us visibilty into the tech we use daily? As a community I believe we can do so much better.
* It needs to have fast build/run/test loops, which translates to either scripting languages or fast compile times in native languages. But scripting languages introduce runtime overhead and cognitive load.
* Ideally the engine is written in the same lanugage as games are. I found myself loving engines where game code is written in the same language as engine code. Being able to run an IDE "go to definition" command on a symbol in your game and hop directly into the engine source is an extremely powerful concept. And you don't need to worry about translation layers or lossy abstractions. Also, if an engine's community builds games in the same language as the engine, they are more likely (and able) to contribute back to the engine.
* It needs to be easy to use for common tasks, but it also can't hide the details from you. Many engines are either "easy to use but too high level" or "very low level but difficult to do common tasks in".
* It needs to have an editor. Scene creation is large part of game development and in many cases visual editors beat code. As a bonus, the editor should be built _in the engine_. Godot uses this approach and it is _so smart_. Doing so [dogfoods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food) the engine's UI system. Improvements to the editor are also often improvements to the engine. And it makes sure your engine is flexible enough to build tooling (and not just games).
* It needs to have an editor. Scene creation is a large part of game development and in many cases visual editors beat code. As a bonus, the editor should be built _in the engine_. Godot uses this approach and it is _so smart_. Doing so [dogfoods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food) the engine's UI system. Improvements to the editor are also often improvements to the engine. And it makes sure your engine is flexible enough to build tooling (and not just games).
* It needs to be data-driven/data-oriented/data-first. ECS is a common way of doing this, but it definitely isn't the only way. These paradigms can make your game faster (cache friendly, easier to parallelize), but they also make common tasks like game state serialization and synchronization delightfully straightforward.
None of the engines on the market _quite_ meet my requirements. And the changes required to make them meet my requirements are either massive in scope, impossible (closed source), or unwelcome (the things I want aren't what the developers or customers want). On top of that, making new game engines is fun!