Move Kenshi to a New Game Engine?

[Aahz]

So, a friend of mine started playing and then talked me into buying it and playing Kenshi. Quickly picked up on how much potential it has, and I'm really looking forward to future updates. As a game developer myself, I see a lot of unique things and some interesting design features. After playing the game for a week now, the question HAD to come to mind:

Why not use a real game engine to develop Kenshi?

As I understand it, and looking through the game installation, Chris is the sole developer and has cleverly cobbled together a working game using OGRE (a rendering engine), PhysX (a physics engine), .NET and straight C++ (possibly some other 3rd party plugins). This is all extremely commendable and fairly resourceful, but with no disrespect, it seems awfully limited and extremely time-consuming for one person to continue developing in such an environment.

So why not switch the project to an already existing game engine? Something that is specifically designed to handle game development, a game engine is fully capable and encompasses rendering, physics, audio, GUI, and input. You would have all those things available and ready to go, streamlined and optimized for exactly your purpose, to make an awesome game.

I was looking on Kenshi's kickstarter at indiegogo, and it said he was looking for $5,600 to buy a license for an audio engine. For $1,500, you could buy a Unity Pro license and have an entire AAA game engine ready to go. It would probably take about 1-2 months to port over the art assets and code from C++ to C#, and then you could develop things much more easily.

Even better, you could develop with other people easier. Currently, nobody besides you really knows your code or how you've pulled in OGRE and the other things to get the game working. Trying to get another programmer to work on it while you're working on it would probably be a nightmare. With Unity or another engine, you could have an SVN or other online file repository and work cohesively with other people on the project. It would be much easier to recruit team members to help achieve your design goals and probably go further than that. Unity alone has a huge community of helpful developers, and a wiki-full of info from the developing community in their "Unity Answers" site.

Unity even has a free license that I worked with for a long time, and honestly you could do everything currently in Kenshi using just that, without paying anything. Pro is just for extra features and polish. So... the question remains...

Why not use a real game engine to develop Kenshi?

Links:
http://unity3d.com/unity/
http://answers.unity3d.com/index.html

[nesn]

ugh I hate unity.

[Mattk50]

ugh I hate unity.

I doubt it, most people who say things like this about unity have only played games produced on the free version of unity, which lacks many features. Unity Pro on the other hand is full featured and has produced games such as air buccaneers HD, kerbal space program, endless space, and i think mechwarrior tactics and wasteland 2 is being developed on unity pro. have you ever used it? I've dabbled in unity myself, and from what i've seen the gap between free and pro is extremely wide.

I don't think switching engines this late in the game is a good idea though. May have been a better idea to start with but eh.

[UndefinedM]

while i don't like the idea of stopping development for months just to get at the same point we're at now, if a decision like switching the engine is ever to be made it should be made asap. the more you wait the worse it gets.

[Aahz]

What you can do in Unity is almost limitless; what people choose to do, and what they know how to do is a different story. Unity makes it easy enough for hobbyists to pick up with little training or background in game design/development. Most don't know the finer bits of polish and optimization to show off the Pro features very well, like light probes, deferred rendering, dynamic textures, post-processing, animation IK's, and usually AI.

The one reason I would really suggest the Pro version is AI, since Kenshi is heavy on it. Their NavMesh pathfinding system is fairly well done, much better than my tedious buggy attempt at a pathfinding system when I used the free version. On top of that, they have a new Mecanim animation system that is completely unique so far. You can swap out character models and use the same humanoid animations for any humanoid character model. Since Kenshi is all humanoid models, Chris would only need one set of animations the characters can draw on, which saves massive amounts of processing and memory at runtime.

When used with their navmesh system for pathfinding and obstacle avoidance, Chris could probably have army vs. army fights, with hundreds of characters on the screen at once. I've done simulations with 500+ characters in the scene and still managed to hold decent framerates. Best example on youtube I guess is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiPii6GBS3A

With Chris' skill in AI, he could probably pull off some crazy things. Even starting from scratch, just using his current art assets and his current code as pseudocode, writing the new Kenshi in C# up to its current stage would take probably 2-4 months, especially if he had help. Since he's already spent like 7-8 years on it, a few months seems like a short time in comparison.

I'm just bringing up an option for him to consider. Since it's his brainchild, he's the one best able to make the call. It's just in my experience with game development, you have a scale:


Chris has done everything from scratch so far, and it's taken a long time to get to its current state. I don't see any game he could mod and still have the flexibility he needs for Kenshi, so here like in most cases, using an existing game engine would probably be the best medium. I completely understand wanting to continue on the current path with doing everything from scratch, but the project management side of me would want to count the 7-8 years he's already spent as sunk costs and push the project forward with a new engine and more polish. At the current rate it may take another 2-3 years, so... dunno... just putting the idea out there.

[iSuck345]

I think that the engine Chris is making from scratch will be better, since it will be made to allow the possibilities kenshi offers (sorry about that of the possibilities, couldn't find a better word).

[Koren]

I don't want this to sound like criticism because Chris has done an amazing job. But I think a unity switch would be good. take the time to look at people after you kill them, the models usually end up falling at odd angles, the hands look odd and twisted. Unity would make his job sooo much easier. Better looking models, better physics, built in sound, and in the end faster content updates. I personally wouldn't mind waiting a month to see what Kenshi could do on unity. That being said, I have paid for my code, I am content with what I have paid for. Chris has really made this game worth my money. Mostly I just think the switch would make his life easier, after the initial switch.

[Pain]

I find it funny, how people think they are entitled to telling the developer how to do his job. Unless you happen to be part of the dev team.

I'm pretty sure, he does not live under a rock and has probably heard about Unity before. If he had felt the need to change the engine, he probably would have done so on his own already. Also, don't assume how much work a conversion would be. You don't know how much code it is, and also you don't know the code logic complexity/abstraction which would also have an major impact on conversion time.

Sorry for sounding a bit harsh here... no disrespect to anybody.

[Koren]

I find it funny, how people think they are entitled to telling the developer how to do his job. Unless you happen to be part of the dev team.

I'm pretty sure, he does not live under a rock and has probably heard about Unity before. If he had felt the need to change the engine, he probably would have done so on his own already. Also, don't assume how much work a conversion would be. You don't know how much code it is, and also you don't know the code logic complexity/abstraction which would also have an major impact on conversion time.

Sorry for sounding a bit harsh here... no disrespect to anybody.

Umm, he put up these forums, and he put up suggestion threads. So that does entitle us to make suggestions. Your free to ignore them if they offend you.

[Percavil]

Chris said in the interview that hes got about 1-2 years left of work on this game till its completed. I don't think 2 more years of wait is all that bad, to say that hes made this game from scratch for 6 years, why would he switch engine after all that work? In 2 years he will be able to say that he made his own game and from his own engine that is a big achievement and will probably win him some awards later.

And why would he want less control over what happens to the game over development speed??
and why would he want to take the uniqueness away from the game? buy using a already existing engine.
I would understand switching engines for his second game. But not this one.

Im sure there's a reason why he stuck with the same engine all these years

[Pain]

I find it funny, how people think they are entitled to telling the developer how to do his job. Unless you happen to be part of the dev team.

I'm pretty sure, he does not live under a rock and has probably heard about Unity before. If he had felt the need to change the engine, he probably would have done so on his own already. Also, don't assume how much work a conversion would be. You don't know how much code it is, and also you don't know the code logic complexity/abstraction which would also have an major impact on conversion time.

Sorry for sounding a bit harsh here... no disrespect to anybody.

Umm, he put up these forums, and he put up suggestion threads. So that does entitle us to make suggestions. You're free to ignore them if they offend you.

There is a difference between gameplay suggestions and engine/core works discussions. I don't think this is a necessary discussion (as history showed, engine changes so far into development rarely pay off), as everybody here only assumes. And assuming isn't worth anything.

I'm also not saying, that you are not entitled to your opinion... in fact everybody is. I just think this is not the kind of discussion that helps at all. The OP, and sorry for saying it like that, sounds like some Unity advertiser. Extremly low post count + wall of text might almost suggest a bot (which I don't think is true, I rather think he/she is a long time lurker judging from how the post is written).

Just my two cents. Also, I'm not offended at all, but thanks for caring about my feelings.

[Koren]

Chris said in the interview that hes got about 1-2 years left of work on this game till its completed. I don't think 2 more years of wait is all that bad, to say that hes made this game from scratch for 6 years, why would he switch engine after all that work? In 2 years he will be able to say that he made his own game and from his own engine that is a big achievement and will probably win him some awards later.

And why would he want less control over what happens to the game over development speed??
and why would he want to take the uniqueness away from the game? buy using a already existing engine.
I would understand switching engines for his second game. But not this one.

Im sure there's a reason why he stuck with the same engine all these years

He didn't make it completely from Scratch. Ogre is prebuilt engine, like unity. Just much much older, with a lot less features. This forces Chris to make those missing features, or buy them. As he plans to do according to his kickstarter. This is merely another option. Not trying to take away from what he has done, as it is impressive as hell. I myself looked at using Ogre in my own game development work. From my own research I believe he could get the same results with less work by switching. That being said, Chris is the developer. No one else. We have merely made a suggestion. I am cool with whatever Chris decides to do. And indeed, many game developers these day are using Unity or the Unreal engine, so there is something to be said for taking the road less traveled. But that is damn hard work for a one man team.

[Koren]

There is a difference between gameplay suggestions and engine/core works discussions. I don't think this is a necessary discussion (as history showed, engine changes so far into development rarely pay off), as everybody here only assumes. And assuming isn't worth anything.

I'm also not saying, that you are not entitled to your opinion... in fact everybody is. I just think this is not the kind of discussion that helps at all. The OP, and sorry for saying it like that, sounds like some Unity advertiser. Extremly low post count + wall of text might almost suggest a bot (which I don't think is true, I rather think he/she is a long time lurker judging from how the post is written).

Just my two cents. Also, I'm not offended at all, but thanks for caring about my feelings.

Lol, in one sentence your telling us what we should and should not say, and the next you tell us we are entitled to our own opinions. If you wanted the discussion to die...why are you taking part in it. Chris may well never even read this thread, in which case we have all just had some fun talking about Unity and other game engines. We are not attacking what Chris has done, but your words imply that we have. But it seems to me reading through the posts everyone here has said more than once how much respect they have for what he has done. And then you bring the OP into question. Yes, low post count, and obviously much enamored with Unity. However, you have yet to point out anything false in what he said. And it is quite clear from his comments that he is not a bot. Unity salesman, possibly. However I doubt very much unity salesmen go around to developers forums doing this, as it is one of the major engines getting use quite a lot these days.

[Pain]

Argh, possibly my wording is a bit off or something. Or you don't want to make any effort to consider my points.

I'm voicing my opinon. That is all. Discuss what you will. I never said, you are not allowed to discuss it (who am I to tell you this). I just think it is not a good thing to discuss such a thing, when you have no data whatsoever. That is what I meant by "assume". It is practically non-sensical.

The OP says it takes Chris 1 or 2 month to convert his C++ code to C# in Unity. How can this person know that? He/she has no data, about how much code, and how much complexity is there. Do you possibly know, how much work it is? And even if it only takes this amount of time, does the developer want to learn a new system, when he has worked with an other system for years?

Look, chances are, if you have not released something similar in the past, that you are just talking out of your ass. So this makes the discussion non-sensical.

Edit: Sorry, OP said 2-4 months... still some baseless assumption.

[Blxz]

Lets chill out a little here guys. I don't think we need to become all heated over this discussion. Aahz posted a suggestion with some backing evidence to support his idea. Others have posted against with their own views. Lets keep it to that and not get into the back and forth about what we should or shouldn't be doing with our opinions on these forums.

[iSuck345]

I am enjoying to hear the others' opinions, so I am against this discussion ending.

And also, how does he know whether he has or hasn't got any data and is simply making assumptions and "talking out of his a**" ?

[Old Man Liver]

Dont listen to Blxz! Go crazy in here! Its time to turn up the heat on the stove! Start boiling that damn water! Damnit Koren, Pain is disagreeing with you! Jump out of the bushes and stab him! Pain, don't let Koren talk to you like that! What will people think of you if you back down!

[Koren]

Lets chill out a little here guys. I don't think we need to become all heated over this discussion. Aahz posted a suggestion with some backing evidence to support his idea. Others have posted against with their own views. Lets keep it to that and not get into the back and forth about what we should or shouldn't be doing with our opinions on these forums.

Tbh, I agree. This has gotten a bit out of hand. This why I didn't respond to the last one.

[Koren]

Dont listen to Blxz! Go crazy in here! Its time to turn up the heat on the stove! Start boiling that damn water! Damnit Koren, Pain is disagreeing with you! Jump out of the bushes and stab him! Pain, don't let Koren talk to you like that! What will people think of you if you back down!

Hey, I already tried pulling his hair...all out of fighting techniques now! Wait! I can still try windmilling my arms while walking towards him. If done right, no can defense!

[Pain]

Dont listen to Blxz! Go crazy in here! Its time to turn up the heat on the stove! Start boiling that damn water! Damnit Koren, Pain is disagreeing with you! Jump out of the bushes and stab him! Pain, don't let Koren talk to you like that! What will people think of you if you back down!

LOL, I like you, you're so crazy!

@Koren: Parley? Let's agree to disagree?