Engine preferences over time

[slayer991]

I've been playing adult games since the days of AIF (Adult Interactive Fiction). TADS, Adrift, Glulxe, and RPGVXAce.

For those of you younger peeps out there, it's typing a command like the old Kings Quest. It works like this:
N (for north) <enter>
Look room <enter>
You are in the kitchen, there's a refrigerator, a stove, and a cupboard.
open cupboard <enter>
Look cupboard <enter>
In the cupboard is a bottle of wine and 2 glasses.
Get wine <enter>
Get glasses <enter>
Pour wine into glass <enter>
Give glass to girl <enter>

Pretty tedious stuff. The devs of that era wrote really good stories, they had to...because it was often only text-based (SIDE RANT: Story still matters!). If the games including graphics, even better. GoblinBoy's work (TADS) stood for great stories, characters, and graphics). BBBen's work (Adrift) also told interesting stories with graphics. So with those two devs, I leaned on TADS and Adrift.

Later there were RAGS, Flash, and HTML. Flash games were lead by Shark's Lagoon, LOP, and Pusooy....some of which seems rather quaint now.

I'd think with all that typing over the years and hyper-accurate clicking to find things in Flash, that I wouldn't have become such a snob over engines..and it's not something that happened overnight but I recently noticed that I have a preference.

Not that long ago I'd play the RPGM games...but I found I'd just lose patience walking around the environment...kinda takes me out of the story. Unity games always seem to be buggy... even on my new build (AMD TR) so I end up skipping those as well. These days it seems the only games I play are on Ren'Py and HTML.

Ren'Py doesn't require any additional software or drivers, and if the dev codes well...I seldom get bugs (with most of the releases in the last year or so I've seen very few). I like the save game mechanisms to Ren'Py....which are nearly unlimited. I also like to use the Back function (when the Dev doesn't nerf it...easier than saving). I don't have to install anything...just play the game.

HTML games have come a long way since the early days of HTML games. Some devs are doing some really interesting stuff with their HTML games...others, not so much. But that's like everything else out there.

Does anyone else out there have an engine preference or have I totally lost my mind?

 

[Avaron1974]

Most of my fave games seem to be on RPGM so I guess that would be my preference.

I do play games on other engines but my preference will always be RPG's even in adult games.

Until devs start making awesome RPG's in Unreal that is.

 

[polywog]

Does anyone else out there have an engine preference or have I totally lost my mind?

It's more about the type of game you prefer, rather than the engine.
I made card games, board games, mechanical arcade games, before video games, and now VR, but I grew up in the days of radio.
Radio programs (like text based games) leave more to the imagination. The listener / player, is given queues and hints...
"the beautiful princess" leaves it wide open for the imagination to fill in the blanks with their own personal preferences of what she looks like. Where with graphical games, it's hit or miss. When the ugly blonde princess walks into the scene, it's game over, if your fans don't like blondes. Not everyone has the same tastes, and preferences. I make what I like, and my fans like it, because "my" fans have good taste. If you make blonde games, "your" fans will find you. Whatever you do, don't listen to demographics, and try to make games for the masses, or they will be crap.

Engines are not all the same, they serve different purposes. A game could be made in any engine, but it wouldn't be the same, because of the different engine capabilities and limitations.

If you go into it with an engine preference prejudice, you might miss out on a lot of good stories, that you might have liked.
Back in the day when PCs were fucked by microsoft limitations.... a lot of devs moved to making games for superior hardware and consoles. Having worked with 64bit graphics in the 60s it was impossible to make quality PC games (late 90s before windows had 64bit capability.)

You haven't lost your mind. Everybody has their own unique preferences... art styles, game mechanics, etc. In a way, that relates to game engine, but not entirely.

 

[F1forhalp]

lessee.. quite a number of RPGM games here, several versions of; the ones i play have comparably good/much story to it.
also, round based fighting is kinda 'my thang' in those. preferred games are with Dash enabled or toggleable.

mostly followed, by Ren'Py games; like the rollback and the faster progression through scenes compared to RPGM, especially for VN.

nowadays lesser in numbers are Flash games here. i still have some old and very few newer ones, but they are dying out.

mostly a No Go, are Unity games, idk if it's the Devs in that case.. if i want to 'just run' a game and it tells me "oh hey there ima go install Visual this and .NET that and check for updates and whitelist some stuff in your system so i can easier do stuff without bothering you in the future" it's insta red flag. some few Unity games which i tried, did what i told them and 'just started' so it can be done.

lastly, tried very few Unreal engine games, which did just what i mentioned above for Unity, wanted to install stuff before even starting. no thanks, i don't need some really really outdated beta version of DirectX 9.0a, if your game wants this version and none other, it's a flag. BEGONE FALSE WIZURD i have other games to play.

in the end, i have quite a large library to use, as in, Books, so computer games are no need-to. if i have time to waste on something, that is.

 

[Volta]

I don't have a favourite engine, i love a good RPG in general but i'm the first to shout when a game is in RPGM when it would be better elsewhere.

Whatever game your making put it into the right engine, if it's an RPG, try RPGM, if it's a VN use Ren'Py, if it's text only then HTML, Adrift or Tads would actually be better than a more complex engine, play to your damn strengths devs, don't try to hammer a nail in with the arse end of a screwdriver.