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0 pointsJare3y ago0 comments

> It seems to be in the interest of "engine" makers to make people think that a smaller engine without an editor can't succeed

Phaser for a long time was a runtime engine without an editor, and many people missed that type of capability. Same with Cocos2D.

> and that there's no possibility of having a standalone editor.

Tiled (for 2d maps) or Spine (for 2d animations) are 2 examples of well known standalone editors. There's no chance to "make people think" that such things can't exist.

> It seems to be in the interest of "engine" makers to make people think

There's no hidden agenda going on, it's that integrated tools are often much more effective when building things out of multiple different pieces. Wouldn't it be cool to place animated objects in Tiled and see their animation states to properly gauge how they interact with the rest of the scenery in different states? Or use Spine to animate a tilemap going through an earthquake?

Custom file formats exist because features differ, and even for similar features, the semantics differ.

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ratww3y ago· 2 in thread

> Tiled (for 2d maps) or Spine (for 2d animations) are 2 examples of well known standalone editors.

Those are a 2D map editor and a 2D animation editor.

Apples and Oranges compared to what the editors in Unity/Unreal/Godot do.

> There's no chance to "make people think" that such things can't exist.

A lot of people in this very thread seem to be under this impression.

> it's that integrated tools are often much more effective when building things out of multiple different pieces

Integration can happen in different ways. Complete integration (aka being made by the same team and tightly coupled) is not necessary for a great experience.

For programming itself we’re already free to choose our editor of choice, and they often integrate quite well. People used to say the same about Visual Studio and C#.

> Custom file formats exist because features differ, and even for similar features, the semantics differ.

There is a lot of common functionality in modern engines. Not to mention that formats can be extended to contain additional metadata coming from customised parts of the editor. And editors can be extended to allow new formats too.

Starting with the automatic assumption that there cannot be a common format is incorrect.

ajuc3y ago

> Apples and Oranges compared to what the editors in Unity/Unreal/Godot do.

That's because integration allows them to do more :) I'm in the process of writing a game in bevy (rust game engine without editor). And most of the time so far I've spent integrating Tiled with it :)

ratww3y ago

This has nothing to do with integration but rather with the goal. Comparing a 2D-only tile editor and an animation editor with a 2D/3D engine and full-IDE is nonsensical.

Might as well compare Logic Pro X with Visual Studio Code. Which one is better for editing pictures?

Call me when the tile editor starts having aspirations of being an IDE.

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vvanders3y ago

Yep, it's been a while since I've been in the industry but with med-large teams your the composition of staff is such that Art/TechArt/Design are where the majority of the time/effort is going to be spent.

Last team I was on of ~60, we had 9-10 devs, if I could build tools that made our design or art team more effective that was a better use of my time(within reason of course).

Integrated engines just reflect that composition.

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