Game engines

Most games take place on a scene. You can think of a scene as a stage for a play. This stage however, does not appear magically. The stage/scene of a game and the backstage are part of what is called a game engine. A game engine is a program that handles the back end and decides what the final rendered output should be. It also provides tools and services for developers and players. A game engine consists of smaller engines focusing on specific areas. For example, most game engines have a rendering engine, an audio engine, a physics engine, and most popular game engines will have an engine for artificial intelligence. Built on top of all of that is the game logic.

The game logic is the actual game the game developers program. It is built upon an API (Application Programming Interface) which provides many layers of abstraction and allows the game logic to interface with the engine.

The two most popular game engines are unity and unreal engine. While there are some other engines like Godot, GameMaker Studio 2 (2D only), and CryEngine (A triple-a game engine that is not exactly ideal for beginners), these are the most decked-out game engines and are good engines not only for beginners, but also for professional indie game developers.

Programming Languages

The programming language(s) you use plays a really big role in the performance of your game. The game engine should be built upon a fast language like C or C++. These are confusing languages, so some engines will have the developer build the game logic with a slower but easier and less confusing language like C#, Python, and Lua.

Other roles

There are other parts of games other than programming. There are artists (to make 3d models and art), sound designers (sound effects), composers (music), game designers (to plan the game, its story, gameplay and a few other things). These roles are so complex that you need multiple articles to describe it in detail.

Fun facts:

1. Meshes (The shape of a 3d model or the collection of vertices, edges, and faces in a model) are made with triangles. You can use triangles to make any shape.

Those triangles are made of edges which are made of vertices.

2. 36.9% of games on Steam have never been played.

3. Contrary to popular belief, Unity is not a bad game engine

4. A vertice in a game is a point in space that is not visible and is infinitely small. This may confuse you at first but just think of it as a single point that is just a point with no matter or volume.

How to get into game development

Do I need coding experience?

Short answer: No

Long answer: maybe. You can make a great game without coding experience. Both Unreal engine and Unity support visual scripting. However, if you want to work directly with the back end of the engine, optimize, make custom render settings, interface with external applications, or any of that, it is best you use good old text based code, as it is also faster. (it is also faster)

Do I need art experience?

Short answer: No

Long answer: it depends. There are many great games with simple graphics. However, if you want realistic graphics or detailed graphics, you may need some art experience. You can always buy assets online or on the Unity or Unreal marketplace, however all of your assets must be in the same style or it will look like an asset flip.

How do I start?

First, you should pick a game engine. I recommend you use an Unreal engine or Unity, however there are also other good engines out there that you can use. What exactly are the advantages and disadvantages of these engines and which one you should use are a bit out of my experience as I only use Unity and I have little experience with Unreal engine. There are many resources on the web to help you decide on an engine. If you want to get started with Unity, I recommend you use Unity Learn. If you want to use Unreal engine, there are many great resources on the web (again, I don't use Unreal engine so I cannot cite any specific resources).

Citations:

Most of the facts in this article are based on personal experience.

“Nearly 37% of all registered steam games have never been played” by Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/04/17/nearly-37-of-all-registered-steam-games-have-never-been-played/?sh=4589451d2146