What engines do you prefer to work in when creating worlds?

[bugholder's epiphany]

See title! To clarify on this, though: Do you prefer to program something yourself, or use a pre-existing engine? Do you use modern game engines such as Unity or Unreal, or something archaic such as Source or even id tech 1? Do you use X3D or something else entirely?

For me, I tend to enjoy using the Doom engine to create worlds, though I have been considering picking Source up to make a 3D environment one can explore, maybe even give it multiplayer somehow for multiple people to hang out and chat in!

[Memory]

Do you count level editors? I used to play around a lot in the original Star Craft level editor trying to make my own campaigns, and then the same in Sacrifice. I made a few multiplayer maps in FarCry Instincts on Xbox that I tried to give a story to as well. It was kinda cool working on purely environmental storytelling.

For actual standalone game development, I worked a little bit with RPG Maker, Ren'Py and GameMaker but never accomplished anything worth noting. Twine was really easy to pick up and I got the workings of a Choose Your Own Adventure story going but haven't worked on it in years.

I got furthest working on my own Javascript engine from scratch. I still never got beyond a working proof of concept, but it made for a good portfolio piece when I was looking for work.

Have you released any Doom WADs or just personal projects?

[bugholder's epiphany]

Do you count level editors? I used to play around a lot in the original Star Craft level editor trying to make my own campaigns, and then the same in Sacrifice. I made a few multiplayer maps in FarCry Instincts on Xbox that I tried to give a story to as well. It was kinda cool working on purely environmental storytelling.

For actual standalone game development, I worked a little bit with RPG Maker, Ren'Py and GameMaker but never accomplished anything worth noting. Twine was really easy to pick up and I got the workings of a Choose Your Own Adventure story going but haven't worked on it in years.

I got furthest working on my own Javascript engine from scratch. I still never got beyond a working proof of concept, but it made for a good portfolio piece when I was looking for work.

Have you released any Doom WADs or just personal projects?

Yeah level editors count! All of that's neat. I've screwed around with RPG Maker as a kid, tried to make a terrible Earthbound fangame lmao. Thing's probably lost to time though.


Haven't really released any Doom WADs, sadly, mostly some personal projects-- though one of them I atleast hope to get out someday, when I have more free time and energy to work on it. A multi-level map-pack with a hub world, lots of combat and a weird amount of ambition to it in all honestly lmfao



Another thing I was working on was a map of my own interpretation of the backrooms fad that had blown up sometime ago, but I lost interest in it at a point. One of these days I should pick it back up though and do something with it, make it a big exploration thing maybe, dunno.



Main thing that's stopping me is my retail job, though I'm not gonna be sticking with that for much longer so, maybe i'll be able to work on these and other things soon.

[worldwidewar]

I've stuck with id Tech 1 for almost the entirety of my level design experience, but something I loved the hell out of when I was younger was the Cube 2 engine. It's a voxel based engine that let's you slope the voxels and do a bunch of other things, and editing / creating maps in it was doable in-game. I'm pretty sure the most popular games to ever use it were Sauerbraten and Red Eclipse, with AssaultCube being sort of popular.
As for id Tech 1, I've only really done Doom mapping in it. I have yet to release any of the maps I've made, but it's still fun making them.

[Memory]

This is the OHRRPGCE. Clunky name, clunky engine. Old, but also new. Still getting improvements, but looks like the MS-DOS stoneage. The OHRRPGCE helps you dramatically at creating RPGs. No programming skills required, but special scripting is possible for the advanced programmers. The point is, that all you need for making your first game is onboard in the engine. It even has a paint program.

This game engine has a much smaller community and is considered underpowered in comparison to the RPG Maker. There are graphical limitations of having only 256 colours in total and each sprites having only 16 colours out of those. Walking animations are easy, just two frames for each direction. Technically, the OHRRPGCE games aren't known to look super nice or to play super impressive.

However I think that these limitations make the level of creativity much higher in this community, as people are encouraged to build their own stuff instead of using pre-defined assets. Stories go far more out of control. Massive nonsense can be found, if you dig deep in this OHRRPGCE world, existing since more than 20 years...

The RPG Maker was a big mess, when I tried it as a kid. Fonts missing. Games didn't work, having to crack the program first (because it's commercial). Also it's inefficent for what it achieves, 8-Bit RPGs shouldn't have 200 MB. Might have been to early for me, but these problems didn't happen on the OHRRGPCE, so I still stick to it since 10 years to make games. Highly recommend this engine, even today. At least to start your first game project, if it be some kind of a non-commercial 2D run-around-game (RPG for example) and you can't pull off any magic tricks with well-known programming languages yet.

[TheFrugalGamer]

This is the OHRRPGCE. Clunky name, clunky engine. Old, but also new. Still getting improvements, but looks like the MS-DOS stoneage. The OHRRPGCE helps you dramatically at creating RPGs. No programming skills required, but special scripting is possible for the advanced programmers. The point is, that all you need for making your first game is onboard in the engine. It even has a paint program.

*snip*

Oh I am fascinated by this! I have two different games I've been working on in Decker and GB Studio, but I'm always drawn to weird niche engines, and now I want to take a look at this one. I have to remind myself that it's not good to stretch myself thin, but it's so fun looking at all these smaller projects and seeing what people have done using the constraints that they have. Thanks for linking to it!

[bugholder's epiphany]

I've stuck with id Tech 1 for almost the entirety of my level design experience, but something I loved the hell out of when I was younger was the Cube 2 engine. It's a voxel based engine that let's you slope the voxels and do a bunch of other things, and editing / creating maps in it was doable in-game. I'm pretty sure the most popular games to ever use it were Sauerbraten and Red Eclipse, with AssaultCube being sort of popular.
As for id Tech 1, I've only really done Doom mapping in it. I have yet to release any of the maps I've made, but it's still fun making them.

Hell yeah fellow doom map maker Those screenshots look pretty darn neat, yo. 
Also, the Cube 2 engine seems interesting. Apparently it was updated as recently as 2020, very end of it? Long running engines made from years ago are always rather amazing to me ngl, just the fact that they can still run and still be perfectly usable.

This is the OHRRPGCE. Clunky name, clunky engine. Old, but also new. Still getting improvements, but looks like the MS-DOS stoneage. The OHRRPGCE helps you dramatically at creating RPGs. No programming skills required, but special scripting is possible for the advanced programmers. The point is, that all you need for making your first game is onboard in the engine. It even has a paint program.

This game engine has a much smaller community and is considered underpowered in comparison to the RPG Maker. There are graphical limitations of having only 256 colours in total and each sprites having only 16 colours out of those. Walking animations are easy, just two frames for each direction. Technically, the OHRRPGCE games aren't known to look super nice or to play super impressive.

However I think that these limitations make the level of creativity much higher in this community, as people are encouraged to build their own stuff instead of using pre-defined assets. Stories go far more out of control. Massive nonsense can be found, if you dig deep in this OHRRPGCE world, existing since more than 20 years...

Case and point on old engines that still get updated and work today, this looks very neat in that old fashioned sort of way, holy damn. Partly tempted to mess around with it, in all honesty, just seems like fun, especially if it encourages working around the limitations and being creative with that in mind And as FrugalGamer said, weird niche engines are always fun. Speaking of which...

I have two different games I've been working on in Decker and GB Studio

GB Studio interests me, mainly because of the fact that the games you make in it actually work on Gameboy Emulators (and i imagine potentially have it work on actual hardware).
Decker seems interesting, reminds me of old Mac software!

[TheFrugalGamer]

GB Studio interests me, mainly because of the fact that the games you make in it actually work on Gameboy Emulators (and i imagine potentially have it work on actual hardware).

Decker seems interesting, reminds me of old Mac software!

Yeah, once I finish with my little game, I plan on getting a flash cartridge so that I can test it out. It works in an emulator so far, but I don't trust that completely since there are sometimes differences that you can't anticipate.

Decker is so much fun! You probably already read through the description, but its based on Hypercard, which came out on the early Apple IIs. I like the restrictions and drawing capabilities it has.