Thumper co-creator Marc Flury shares his experience creating a game engine and talks about why he believes programming curriculum is partly responsible for scaring devs away from doing the same.
"I studied computer science for four years and certainly learned stuff in that time, but I don't think I really learned that much about how to make a big game like Thumper."
- Marc Flury shares how current programming education is, in a way, holding game developers back.
Thumper co-creator Marc Flury joined us on Twitch last week to talk about bringing Drool's rhythm violence game to VR and, now, the Nintendo Switch.
The full, hour-long conversation is filled with interesting game development tidbits, but one notable segment in particular settled in on how current programming curriculum might be partly responsible for scaring game developers away from creating their own engines.
“I think in general, making your own engine is something that shouldn’t be seen as something so scary and crazy," said Flury. "A lot of it has to do with what people are taught about what programming is and what’s hard about it. I think if education were a little bit better, in the way people learn programming, it wouldn't seem quite as silly."
While he notes that there’s nothing wrong with creating games within Unity, he says in some situations developers can paint themselves into a corner when trying to do something like bringing a late-stage game project to VR. In Thumper’s case, that process was simplified thanks in no small part to the custom engine the team had built for the game.
The clip above offers some quick-fire advice for developers on what they might not have learned in programming classes and what they might need to know before creating their own game engines.
And for more conversations like this be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel for live streamed developer interviews, editor roundtables, and gameplay commentary.
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