Others What Language and Engine should you use? Why?

fireox

New Member
Mar 17, 2018
11
5
Why This Thread Exists?

I've been browsing the Programming and Development thread for two days now and I've seen the question: "I'm a new developer and want to make a game like game X. What engine should I use?" countless times. And I confess this is a question I myself would have asked not too long ago, I've also discovered that it is a very hard question to answer in a definitive way BUT we can at least try to guide those souls that share a passion for porn and game development, like us.


So This is a Callout
I'd like to ask the game developers here in F95 to share with the community their knowledge. Tell us what game you're working on if any, the game style (rpg, sandbox-rpg, life sim, VN, etc), your programming language, engine, IDE or code editor of choice and why you favor these over others. Don't get too technical though since this is a resource, first and foremost, for those planning to start their life as a hobbist game developer.


Let This be A Database
Don't let this thread become a discussion. This is about creating a repository where aspiring developers can come looking for this crucial, and sometimes hard to get, information and then leaving ready to start their journey with what they decided to be the right tools for the job. Young developers I beseech you don't use the thread to ask specific questions about a specific programming language or engine. Veteran developers I ask that you don't enteratain discussions about if A is better than B, just state your informed opinion and let the future generations make their decisions.


Who the Hell is This Guy?
I'm first and foremost a writer. I'm also a web developer and I place myself firmly on the "aspiring game developer" camp. Thus I don't have any well informed recommendations to kickstart this thread, unfortunately. Alas, as of the writing of this post I have less than 10 posts in this forum making me an outsider, still I think this thread is a good idea and I really hope it will succeed in its mission.
 
  • Like
Reactions: uradamus

Rich

Old Fart
Modder
Respected User
Donor
Game Developer
Jun 25, 2017
2,439
6,847
To some extent, the engine of choice depends on your own particular skills and also what the "X" in "I want to make a game like X" is.

I have experience with two game engines - Unity and Ren'py.

Let's start with Ren'py:

This is a pretty easy engine to learn, and is used for a TON of Visual Novel type games. However, to use it, you need to have (or learn) some (very) basic understanding of programming concepts, since you will be writing your game using (mostly) a scripting language. Don't be frightened off by this - the core scripting language is extremely intuitive, IMHO, but it is a language, and you'll have to learn it.

Ren'py is written in Python. You don't really have to know any Python to use Ren'py, as the scripting language is really its own language. But you won't be using point-and-click or visual flows or anything like that - you write commands to have the game display text, show images, etc., and then Ren'py pulls that all together for you into a game. So if you aren't comfortable using an editor to prepare scripts, Ren'py might not be for you. (There are more point-and-click game builders - I've heard a lot about Tyrannobuilder - but I have zero experience with them.)

Ren'py is extremely mature - it's been around for over 10 years, and is being regularly maintained and enhanced by its author. It has a well-supported forum, and there are quite a few beginner tutorials on Youtube, etc. The fact that you don't have to know programming to use Ren'py shouldn't fool you into thinking that it isn't powerful, however - people out there have done amazing things with it. Look at Summertime Saga, for example - it's a very sophisticated visual implementation, and is built using Ren'py.

Ren'py supports Windows, Mac, Linux and Android as platforms the games can run on. (iOS too, but you're not going to get a sex game thru Apple. LOL) You can develop using Ren'py on Windows, Mac or Linux. One environment it does NOT support is web - if you need/want your game to be able to be played in a browser over the 'net, then Ren'py isn't the correct choice. Ren'py is free, and open-source.

The other thing I have to say is that while the Ren'py official documentation is a good reference, it's not a spectacular tutorial. Thus, once you begin moving out of the basics, there's a small amount of head-scratching involved in figuring out some of its more advanced features. Again, there's a lot of info on the forums, and cooperative people, so it's not a killer. But if you're just starting out, you're not going to break into this area for quite a while, since you can put together a very credible game without leaving the basics of the scripting language.

(Side note - it's reasonably straightforward to "decompile" a Ren'py game and get back the original source code. Thus, if you find a Ren'py game that does something cool that you'd like to imitate, you can usually reverse engineer to figure out how it does it.)

Unity:

Unity originated as an engine for 3D games. If you're trying to build a game that uses actual 3D models, it's a good choice. You can do 2D games in it - most definitely. Big Brother was coded in Unity, as is Game Legends, one of the games I work on. It just originated from the 3D side of the world and migrated toward 2D. "The Twist" is a popular game that uses Unity's 3D capabilities.

Unlike Ren'py, you do need to know how to program to use Unity. A reasonable amount of the Unity editor is point/click/drag, but you have to write portions of the game in C#. Unity has a pretty big company behind it, so it's well maintained. There are also a lot of tutorials on Unity out on Youtube. One of my personal favorites is the "quill18creates" channel - he covers a variety of different topics very clearly. Unity itself publishes a lot of tutorials, and has regular webcasts on various topics. In my opinion, they do an extremely good job of supporting their developer community.

Unity can be a bit daunting to step into. Part of it is that it's a completely general-purpose game engine, unlike Ren'py, which specializes in Visual Novel type games, and thus provides a lot of specific support for that genre. Unity doesn't specialize near as much, so there's more "scaffolding" to build for almost any game. At the same time, Unity being so powerful and general-purpose means that you can do just about anything with it. But you will need someone on your team with a background in programming. While someone who's, say, a writer by background can pick up enough Ren'py to put out a credible story, I wouldn't consider that to be true of Unity.

Unity supports Windows, Mac and Linux, but can also generate WebGL versions of a game. You can develop on Windows or Mac - there isn't (to my knowledge) a Linux port of the Unity Editor. Unity's "personal edition" is free - you don't have to pay a license fee until you're bringing in something like $100k a year.

Unity also has an asset store, through which you can obtain an awful lot of resources. Many of them are free, others are (usually) reasonably priced.

So that's my $0.02. Bottom line, if you're just starting out, I would strongly recommend Ren'py over Unity unless you're specifically going to tackle a 3D model-based game, or unless you're already versed in C#. Ren'py is just much more likely to have pre-existing support for most of what you will want to do early on, and will let you get something up and running more quickly.
 

anne O'nymous

I'm not grumpy, I'm just coded that way.
Modder
Respected User
Donor
Jun 10, 2017
9,943
14,545
[...]I've also discovered that it is a very hard question to answer in a definitive way [...]
I disagree on this. It's really easy to answer this question. You should use the engine you understand the most, dot. In fact, all the questions you ask on your post have the same answer.
Like @Rich implied, some engines are better for this or for that, but in the end if you don't understand how to use them correctly, what's the interest ? Some games using Unity could have been done with Ren'py, same for some games using RPG Maker, but it doesn't mean that the author made a wrong choice. If he already know C# or JavaScript and if the engine permit the kind of game he want, why trying to learn both Python and Ren'py's language ?
It's the same for the editor/IDE by example. Some say that Atom is the must have, personally I prefer my good old EditPlus. Even the rare times I works on compiled big projects, I've a full IDE on background for the compilation, but still most of the code is wrote in EditPlus.

The key isn't to use the better tools, but the ones which have your own preference. Else you'll struggle constantly against the engine/language/editor, and you'll go nowhere, while loosing the interest you have for your own game.
 
  • Like
Reactions: fireox

fireox

New Member
Mar 17, 2018
11
5
To some extent, the engine of choice depends on your own particular skills and also what the "X" in "I want to make a game like X" is.

I have experience with two game engines - Unity and Ren'py.

Let's start with Ren'py:

This is a pretty easy engine to learn, and is used for a TON of Visual Novel type games. However, to use it, you need to have (or learn) some (very) basic understanding of programming concepts, since you will be writing your game using (mostly) a scripting language. Don't be frightened off by this - the core scripting language is extremely intuitive, IMHO, but it is a language, and you'll have to learn it.

Ren'py is written in Python. You don't really have to know any Python to use Ren'py, as the scripting language is really its own language. But you won't be using point-and-click or visual flows or anything like that - you write commands to have the game display text, show images, etc., and then Ren'py pulls that all together for you into a game. So if you aren't comfortable using an editor to prepare scripts, Ren'py might not be for you. (There are more point-and-click game builders - I've heard a lot about Tyrannobuilder - but I have zero experience with them.)

Ren'py is extremely mature - it's been around for over 10 years, and is being regularly maintained and enhanced by its author. It has a well-supported forum, and there are quite a few beginner tutorials on Youtube, etc. The fact that you don't have to know programming to use Ren'py shouldn't fool you into thinking that it isn't powerful, however - people out there have done amazing things with it. Look at Summertime Saga, for example - it's a very sophisticated visual implementation, and is built using Ren'py.

Ren'py supports Windows, Mac, Linux and Android as platforms the games can run on. (iOS too, but you're not going to get a sex game thru Apple. LOL) You can develop using Ren'py on Windows, Mac or Linux. One environment it does NOT support is web - if you need/want your game to be able to be played in a browser over the 'net, then Ren'py isn't the correct choice. Ren'py is free, and open-source.

The other thing I have to say is that while the Ren'py official documentation is a good reference, it's not a spectacular tutorial. Thus, once you begin moving out of the basics, there's a small amount of head-scratching involved in figuring out some of its more advanced features. Again, there's a lot of info on the forums, and cooperative people, so it's not a killer. But if you're just starting out, you're not going to break into this area for quite a while, since you can put together a very credible game without leaving the basics of the scripting language.

(Side note - it's reasonably straightforward to "decompile" a Ren'py game and get back the original source code. Thus, if you find a Ren'py game that does something cool that you'd like to imitate, you can usually reverse engineer to figure out how it does it.)

Unity:

Unity originated as an engine for 3D games. If you're trying to build a game that uses actual 3D models, it's a good choice. You can do 2D games in it - most definitely. Big Brother was coded in Unity, as is Game Legends, one of the games I work on. It just originated from the 3D side of the world and migrated toward 2D. "The Twist" is a popular game that uses Unity's 3D capabilities.

Unlike Ren'py, you do need to know how to program to use Unity. A reasonable amount of the Unity editor is point/click/drag, but you have to write portions of the game in C#. Unity has a pretty big company behind it, so it's well maintained. There are also a lot of tutorials on Unity out on Youtube. One of my personal favorites is the "quill18creates" channel - he covers a variety of different topics very clearly. Unity itself publishes a lot of tutorials, and has regular webcasts on various topics. In my opinion, they do an extremely good job of supporting their developer community.

Unity can be a bit daunting to step into. Part of it is that it's a completely general-purpose game engine, unlike Ren'py, which specializes in Visual Novel type games, and thus provides a lot of specific support for that genre. Unity doesn't specialize near as much, so there's more "scaffolding" to build for almost any game. At the same time, Unity being so powerful and general-purpose means that you can do just about anything with it. But you will need someone on your team with a background in programming. While someone who's, say, a writer by background can pick up enough Ren'py to put out a credible story, I wouldn't consider that to be true of Unity.

Unity supports Windows, Mac and Linux, but can also generate WebGL versions of a game. You can develop on Windows or Mac - there isn't (to my knowledge) a Linux port of the Unity Editor. Unity's "personal edition" is free - you don't have to pay a license fee until you're bringing in something like $100k a year.

Unity also has an asset store, through which you can obtain an awful lot of resources. Many of them are free, others are (usually) reasonably priced.

So that's my $0.02. Bottom line, if you're just starting out, I would strongly recommend Ren'py over Unity unless you're specifically going to tackle a 3D model-based game, or unless you're already versed in C#. Ren'py is just much more likely to have pre-existing support for most of what you will want to do early on, and will let you get something up and running more quickly.
Thank you very much for the detailed answer. I appreciate it that you took the time.

I disagree on this. It's really easy to answer this question. You should use the engine you understand the most, dot. In fact, all the questions you ask on your post have the same answer.
Like @Rich implied, some engines are better for this or for that, but in the end if you don't understand how to use them correctly, what's the interest ? Some games using Unity could have been done with Ren'py, same for some games using RPG Maker, but it doesn't mean that the author made a wrong choice. If he already know C# or JavaScript and if the engine permit the kind of game he want, why trying to learn both Python and Ren'py's language ?
It's the same for the editor/IDE by example. Some say that Atom is the must have, personally I prefer my good old EditPlus. Even the rare times I works on compiled big projects, I've a full IDE on background for the compilation, but still most of the code is wrote in EditPlus.

The key isn't to use the better tools, but the ones which have your own preference. Else you'll struggle constantly against the engine/language/editor, and you'll go nowhere, while loosing the interest you have for your own game.
I can see your point, and you're probably right. However, the reality is that not everyone who starts developing a game has had prior experience programming anything. I was not trying to make an argument that you should change your engine to suit the game, even if you can make it work. If that's the idea you gattered from the op please let me know through a pm (so we don't deviate the thread from its main point), and I will change the text because that was not at all the point I was trying to make.

The objective of this thread is simply to compile the opinions of people with experience developing games, as a reference.
If you:
A: Are having a hard time making the game work in the engine/language that you know and would like to make a change.
B: You never made a game or programmed anything before and would like to know which engine and/or tools would be the better suited for your type of project and why.
Then this thread will be there to help you. That's the whole point of it existing.
 
  • Like
Reactions: uradamus

anne O'nymous

I'm not grumpy, I'm just coded that way.
Modder
Respected User
Donor
Jun 10, 2017
9,943
14,545
Note: I clearly understood the concept behind your post, and was just remembering an important point which must be take in count by the persons who want to become a game author/coder.


I can see your point, and you're probably right. However, the reality is that not everyone who starts developing a game has had prior experience programming anything.
Isn't it even more a reason to not try, at least at first, something which don't "suit you" ?
C# (Unity), JavaScript (RPG Maker), LUA (GameMaker) and Python (Ren'py) aren't just four languages, they are four completely different languages. Someone with an experience in programming will recognize what they have in common, but for someone who never wrote a single line of code, they are absolutely not related.
Some will say that, in this case, they must chose Ren'py, since Python is, with reason, nowadays massively used to teach programming. But others will goes for LUA which is simpler, and finally some will remember that JavaScript is probably the easiest of all four. In the same times, everybody will agree that starting with C# isn't the best idea ; even if it's the simpler inside the C family.
The fact is that they all have their own logic and if you don't already have the "programming logic" that they also share, you can easily be lost when trying to understand one. This while another will seem as clear as water for you. And obviously, if you struggle to understand the language you'll have to use, your game will never look like you dreamed it, because you'll never been able to make it that way. Or, worse, never be finished because you'll be stuck at an important point.
 

HiEv

Member
Sep 1, 2017
384
778
I disagree on this. It's really easy to answer this question. You should use the engine you understand the most, dot.
I disagree with you on your disagreement. First of all, some people don't know any of the engines, so your advice is worthless for them. Second of all, some engines either simply don't let you do some things you might want to do, or they make them more difficult than necessary.

Furthermore, learning new things is a good thing. Having a variety of skills is generally a big plus. Now, I don't believe that you should change engines gratuitously, but why use a hammer for a job that needs a wrench, just because you're more familiar with hammers? Unless you're OK with making something janky just for yourself, that's generally a bad idea.

Anyways, on to the original question:

Tell us what game you're working on if any, the game style (rpg, sandbox-rpg, life sim, VN, etc), your programming language, engine, IDE or code editor of choice and why you favor these over others.
Well, I'm working on an as-yet unreleased game. I'd prefer to not give out too much information about it until it's released, but since I can't afford custom art, it's largely a text game. Sort of a visual novel/life sim 70/30 hybrid. I'm sure it'll be a divisive game, where you either love it or hate it. In my opinion though, if you try to make a game that everybody likes, you'll likely either end up with something boring and vanilla or something nobody likes. Better to pick your niche and do your best to fill it.

The engine is / , with a ton of JavaScript code. (If you've played Westane's " " or a lot of other HTML games, it's the same engine.) I'm actually writing a modular inventory system for Twine currently that other people can use as well, since (until yesterday) I was a bit stuck on how to do one the features for the game I was working on. I started out writing the the code in , but I recently changed to for the JavaScript with the (and a few others, such as ) and I'm really liking it now that I'm getting used to it. The text of the story I'm writing in , primarily for the spellchecking.

All of these tools are free, by the way.

Twine is pretty much the ideal engine for what I want to do, since it's good for text games, very flexible, and it's giving me a chance to learn a bunch of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which I've only had a bit of experience with before. Also, since it's browser-based, you can play the games on just about anything. On top of that, I plan to use the results of the tools I'm writing for my game as part of my portfolio when applying for programming jobs. Furthermore, Twine has great support, like the , not to mention the author of SugarCube hangs out in the technical support forum, making it easy to ask him questions.

Most of the other text based game systems ( , , , and ) haven't had much development in the last three years (don't ask me why 2015 seemed to kill or stall most of them), but Twine and SugarCube are still being developed (heck, SugarCube got an update with new features just yesterday).

Oh, and did I mention that it's really easy to open up other Twine games if you need to see how they did something if you want to do something similar?

So, that's why Twine is my pick for games that are more text based.
 

TearStar

Developer of Lesbian/Futa Games
Game Developer
Mar 12, 2018
511
1,064
If you don't know programming langauges and don't want to learn: RPG Maker, Ren'Py
If you know programming (object-oriented) and want to create a big game: Unity
If you know programming (object-oriented) and want to create a small game: RPG Maker, Ren'Py
For hobbists that either knows programming or don't: Ren'py
For first timers: Ren'Py


Little explanations: While you can create really 'cute' games in Ren'Py/RPGM when you want to create a complex structured game Unity and it's C# offers you a higher toolbox. Being object-oriented it's easier to define new thing or just use inheritance in code. E.g. Like a class for weapons: There are many types but they are all the same to an extent.

I took me like 15 minutes to realize how easy Ren'Py is on the basic level. You can create content fairly easy like writing a book (more like Screenplay). I would only use Unity for bigger projects and then still would find an easier solution. Being a powerful engine doesn't make it better than a simpler solution (like Ren'Py).
 
  • Like
Reactions: fireox

uradamus

Active Member
Jan 4, 2018
680
746
Ren'Py is an obvious choice if you are planning to make a VN style game that uses 2D art or pre-rendered 3D. Most of its strong points have already been covered by others here, so I won't repeat them.

I'm personally using Godot for the game I recently started to develop, see my signature if your interested. I've been following its development ever since it was announced that they were going to open source it a few years back. It's actually a fairly old and mature engine that started out as an in-house tool that was later open sourced and now stands on its own, backed by a community sponsored foundation formed by the devs who created it. You'll be hard pressed to find a better 2D engine and as of the 3.0 release it is a strong contender on the 3D side with support for PBR (physics-based rendering) materials and lighting, putting it on fairly even footing with the best Unity and Unreal have to offer. Though there are a number of features that won't make it in until the 3.1 update coming later this year. These include the visual shader editor being added back in, a terrain editor that is in the works, among many other handy features that will be taking advantage of the updated 3D backend.

On the coding side of things, it has a built in Python-like language known as GDScript that is really easy to learn within a week or two. I like it a lot and it has full integration with the engine itself. There is a code editor with high quality auto-complete features and real-time error checking. There is also a full language reference built right in to make it really easy to look up modules/functions and find out what they do and how to use them. There is also a great debugger built in. It is a real joy to code in Godot, compared to most everything else I've tried. There's also a built in visual scripting editor, but it is mostly just for making quick little prototypes, it would get very cumbersome to make a full game in just that editor. You can also import one of several external language support modules, most notably for C#. I have no interest in using it, so I can't say how well it works, but it's there for those who want it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: fireox

Droid Productions

[Love of Magic]
Donor
Game Developer
Dec 30, 2017
6,508
16,423
If you're a non-programmer, and want to make 2D VN games, go RenPy. The programming is relatively self-contained (meaning you need to copy-paste and modify a few chunks of data), the framework is solid, and the framework (savegame, etc) is extremely well developed.

Unity / Unreal is for teams that have at least one good programmer on it. You trade additional opportunities for more complexity. For a non-programmer, likely too much complexity. But you can do some pretty awesome things with it if you DO know how to work it; plenty of professional games use Unity or Unreal.
 

uradamus

Active Member
Jan 4, 2018
680
746
I've seen Unity brought up a number of times here. I can understand why people would see an appeal in it; it has a big community, moderately easy to get started with, big ecosystem of paid assets and code modules for those who're lacking in the creation of such things and are willing to pay for them, and it has a sorta free version available. But I'd like to offer some counterpoints on why it isn't such a good choice.

* The free version forces on analytics for your game, this will try to establish a network connection to Unity's servers and share information on your users' setup and likely usage patterns. It isn't a big deal for the most part, but there are a lot of vocal people out there strongly against it, you'll see a few pop up in the threads for pretty much any recent Unity game made with the free version that shows up on here.

* It's kinda expensive if you don't want all the restrictions and baggage that come with the free version. Unless they've changed things in the past year or so, once you agree to enter into one of their subscription plans, you are on the hook for a full year before you could downgrade or drop your subscription. So even with just the Plus plan, at $35 a month, they have you locked in for at least $420, regardless of whether you manage to make a financially viable game during that year or not. Even worse if you want to go with the Pro version, which will set you back a whopping $1500 minimum for that first year of payments. Also, multiply these costs by each member of your team who would need to touch Unity, as subscriptions only cover one user and all members of a team need to have the same subscription level. So if you aren't making your game solo, Unity gets even more pricey.

* You don't get access to the engines source code, even with a Plus or Pro subscription. This may not seem like a big thing and if you are really lucky, it won't be. But Unity is a real crap engine behind the scenes. It has a lot of bugs, performance issues, and it may be lacking core functionality that might some day become a deal breaker for you. Without source access you are at their mercy to fix the problems or add the features you need, and unless your personal issue(s) affects a huge portion of their sales base, don't hold your breath on a speedy resolution, or even any resolution in many cases. (It took them like 5+ years to finally get a Linux version out, despite it being a top request for nearly that entire time, and when they did get a port out it was pretty half-assed and left to rot in a perpetual beta release state with no promises of actual support in the foreseeable future.)
 

Droid Productions

[Love of Magic]
Donor
Game Developer
Dec 30, 2017
6,508
16,423
I've seen Unity brought up a number of times here. I can understand why people would see an appeal in it; it has a big community, moderately easy to get started with, big ecosystem of paid assets and code modules for those who're lacking in the creation of such things and are willing to pay for them, and it has a sorta free version available. But I'd like to offer some counterpoints on why it isn't such a good choice.
Honestly, 99% of devs have no business digging into the core engine. It's an issue if you're a full studio and have a team of coders, but even then it makes upgrades a genuine pain in the ass. The free version is... free. You get what you paid for :) But it's a commercial engine, the devs need to make money some how, and these days that's a thousand+ people that expect to be paid each month.

Apart from that it's commercial grade; you're getting an engine that can and has been used to develop full-scale games, including ones that have made 100M+ USD. It's a lot harder to use than RenPy, especially if you're new, but it's got decent tools, excellent cross platform support and an active community
 

uradamus

Active Member
Jan 4, 2018
680
746
@droid1984 I don't feel like fighting over this, but Unity is a trash engine with a lot of problems and I don't care enough to get into it. You might be surprised at how often devs have switched from Unity to other engines because of bugs or missing features that they couldn't do anything about without source access.

If you want to keep rolling the dice, that's fine, just know there are plenty out there like me who tend to write off games when we see the Unity flag. If Making Movies is your game, that's a perfect example, as I passed it up when I saw Unity in the thread title. Which is a shame as I did enjoy the screenshots well enough and the story premise seemed alright, but I've run into problems with so many Unity games on Linux at this point that I don't even bother with them anymore, other than to maybe gut the assets out of them to enjoy separately.
 

Droid Productions

[Love of Magic]
Donor
Game Developer
Dec 30, 2017
6,508
16,423
Making Movies is indeed mine. Too bad you missed out on it, though if you want a quick peek it's playable in a browser here (one of the nice functions of Unity being the ability to export to HTML5)


As for Unity being a 'trash' engine, I'd rather strongly disagree (as do Blizzard, Ubisoft, Squad, and others who use it for one or more of their games). It has a reputation (probably correct) of scaling badly to really large teams (100+), and at the top end I'd go Unreal over Unity (or a custom in-house engine, as both Ubisoft and Blizzard do for their AAA games), but it's certainly production ready.

Having said that, RenPy provides a lot of functionality built in; if you're making a Visual Novel and want to focus on story and design rather technology, it's a much easier step. Otherwise you'll need to build your own systems for things like savegames, logs, UI, etc. Which you can do (and frequently is done) badly.

I started Making Movies as a Unity learning project (my day-job is C++ programming in the 'normal' games industry), so I'm sure I'm doing dumb things with it. But it's been an interesting learning experience, and I'm in generally very happy with the tech compared to both our own internal tech, and other engines I've used over the years.
 

uradamus

Active Member
Jan 4, 2018
680
746
Most of those companies you listed off almost certainly have source access to Unity. They offer it, but mostly only to studios backed by the big publishers and at a premium cost. I wouldn't even be surprised if those companies brokered special deals to forgo all the single seat subscription nonsense. I can't say I know much about what games most of those companies have made with it, but if I'm not mistaken, Bliz only used it for their crap card game, no?

BTW, if you go back up, you might notice that I use Godot, not Ren'Py, even though you keep bringing up Ren'Py in response to me. I still stand by what I said about Ren'Py being the obvious choice for VNs though, if only because I almost never run into issues when playing Ren'Py based VNs, yet I can't recall the last time I've played a Unity game without performance issues, annoying bugs or straight up crashes. Godot, despite being a free open-source engine, is rather mature. In fact it is about as old as Unity, since its original in-house version came about in 2001, while the first Unity beta was in 2002.

You have my condolences though, for working with C++ all day that is, heh. I hate that language, even though I know how powerful it can be, it's just such a clusterfuck. One of the great things about Godot is that it has a really clean and easy to follow code base. Even though I generally can't stand sifting through the source of most C++ projects, I didn't mind it at all with Godot on the few occasions I've gone sniffing around to see how it worked behind the scenes.