A game made from scratch, without a game engine

WHY DID YOU MAKE A GAME FROM SCRATCH, WITHOUT A GAME ENGINE?

We chose to not use a 3rd party game engine because one, we wanted the challenge.

And two, we like handmade things. There is a different feel to a table that was mass produced and a table that was made by hand. We wanted to create the same feel in our game.

WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY 'A GAME MADE FROM SCRATCH' 

To understand what it means to make a game from scratch you need a basic understanding of how games are made.

A game’s code creates everything you see, hear and experience when playing a game. The code includes the framework for the game, the rules, physics, graphics, and sound. How to process inputs from the player and calculate the appropriate response. For example, when a player presses left on the Inky moves left.

Code can be written in a range of programming languages.

There are different levels of programming languages. The higher the level the easier it is for humans to work with. Lower languages are closer to machine code. Machines only speak binary, so high level languages are translated into machine language by a compiler.

Back in the day game developers coded in Assembly to make the most of limited resources and to have better control over the hardware. These days the majority of games are made in 3rd game engines like Unity or Unreal. Game engines are game development software that often include asset libraries.

We chose to make Inky and the Alien Aquarium in Assembly, however a game can be make in a higher language and still be considered to be made from scratch.

WHY DID WE WANT TO MAKE GAMES IN ASSEMBLY?

We really like the idea of building something from the ground up. There is an allure to handmade things. We wanted to create the same experience with Inky and the Alien Aquarium.

When you make a game with a game engine, it’s a lot easier to add new features. This is why most people use game engines. But making it easier to add new features also comes with a downside - you may be tempted to add features haphazardly.

When starting from scratch, every feature added is a conscious decision because building in Assembly is a lot of work. You must carefully consider your decisions because mistakes can be costly. This might sound bad, but it forces you to be mindful.

Assembly also forces you to learn the hardware very closely, which is what allowed us to get the highest quality sound possible out of the GBA.

HOW WE MADE A GAME IN ASSEMBLY

The first prototype was built in JavaScript and we focused on making a fun game. Once we had a framework for a fun game a second prototype was built in JavaScript. The focus of the second JavaScript prototype was to make translating the code to Assembly easier.

This was Sean’s first time working in Assembly. He started by translating the code of the prototype from JavaScript to Assembly line by line.  By the end of the project he had developed several efficiencies including his own Assembler.  An Assembler is what translates Assembly to machine code.