Luke Thompson
@lyje.bsky.social
Half of SIGTRAP Games. Coder, musician, ex-physicist.
You *can* build an entire game in BP, but *should* you? Or rather, what's the upper limit on scope/scale/complexity you can feasibly build with BPs without it becoming a tech debt spaghetti nightmare?
November 6, 2025 at 6:59 PM
You *can* build an entire game in BP, but *should* you? Or rather, what's the upper limit on scope/scale/complexity you can feasibly build with BPs without it becoming a tech debt spaghetti nightmare?
You can do anything with a Roslyn analyzer and codegen, hammer to crack an egg though!
November 6, 2025 at 6:14 PM
You can do anything with a Roslyn analyzer and codegen, hammer to crack an egg though!
I'm not really talking about it in a vacuum - unity does a good job of making c# approachable, and that's helped a lot by the language's modern features. By comparison, even as someone who was already experienced with c++, unreal c++ was a pain to get to grips with.
November 6, 2025 at 6:05 PM
I'm not really talking about it in a vacuum - unity does a good job of making c# approachable, and that's helped a lot by the language's modern features. By comparison, even as someone who was already experienced with c++, unreal c++ was a pain to get to grips with.
Absolutely, but it's a start, and I'm not claiming it makes you good!
November 6, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Absolutely, but it's a start, and I'm not claiming it makes you good!
Yes and no - I wouldn't underestimate the relative up-front simplicity of c# vs c++, plus unity's use of c# is waaaay easier to understand than unreal's use of c++, and imo unity is much better suited to gradually learning to code from scratch.
November 6, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Yes and no - I wouldn't underestimate the relative up-front simplicity of c# vs c++, plus unity's use of c# is waaaay easier to understand than unreal's use of c++, and imo unity is much better suited to gradually learning to code from scratch.
I'm mostly being facetious! But I do think it's infeasible to pick up c++ via unreal, whereas it's much easier to pick up c# via unity.
November 6, 2025 at 5:43 PM
I'm mostly being facetious! But I do think it's infeasible to pick up c++ via unreal, whereas it's much easier to pick up c# via unity.
To go from median -> advanced you just need a college course in a particularly opaque dialect of a 40 year old programming language 😛
November 6, 2025 at 5:31 PM
To go from median -> advanced you just need a college course in a particularly opaque dialect of a 40 year old programming language 😛
Yep, unity's engineering approach since 5.x has been pretty lacklustre. And because I love unity I spend plenty of time complaining about it!
November 6, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Yep, unity's engineering approach since 5.x has been pretty lacklustre. And because I love unity I spend plenty of time complaining about it!
Getting back to the idea of median vs expert users I think. I'm less interested in what experts can do with something, than what the median experience is. Very fuzzy concept obviously, and arguable both ways with unity and ue, not gonna settle it 180 chars at a time!
November 6, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Getting back to the idea of median vs expert users I think. I'm less interested in what experts can do with something, than what the median experience is. Very fuzzy concept obviously, and arguable both ways with unity and ue, not gonna settle it 180 chars at a time!
Sorry, didn't mean building is hard - meant the ideal of learning by browsing source is a nice idea but far too hard for most people.
November 6, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Sorry, didn't mean building is hard - meant the ideal of learning by browsing source is a nice idea but far too hard for most people.
Yes, on one client project, but there wasn't actually a good reason to be building from source. Access to source is great, but honestly I think overrated - technically it means you can learn everything, practically it means it's hard, no one does, and epic feel like docs are just a nice-to-have.
November 6, 2025 at 5:13 PM
Yes, on one client project, but there wasn't actually a good reason to be building from source. Access to source is great, but honestly I think overrated - technically it means you can learn everything, practically it means it's hard, no one does, and epic feel like docs are just a nice-to-have.
Not meaning a huge gap for someone who knows c++, a huge gap for someone who doesn't 😛
November 6, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Not meaning a huge gap for someone who knows c++, a huge gap for someone who doesn't 😛
100%. I always said going public would make them much worse.
November 6, 2025 at 5:04 PM
100%. I always said going public would make them much worse.
Not saying I've had any issues with them - just don't like them as a company, but I can't think of any large companies I do. I don't think they're taking on apple and co out of the goodness of their hearts, and I don't like their stance on crypto, ai and others.
November 6, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Not saying I've had any issues with them - just don't like them as a company, but I can't think of any large companies I do. I don't think they're taking on apple and co out of the goodness of their hearts, and I don't like their stance on crypto, ai and others.
Perhaps there's something to that - ue feels far more black boxy to me. IMO it has more obscure settings and check boxes spread more widely, but maybe it's just experience.
November 6, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Perhaps there's something to that - ue feels far more black boxy to me. IMO it has more obscure settings and check boxes spread more widely, but maybe it's just experience.
Also to be clear BP is great! I just think there's a vast gap between it and c++.
November 6, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Also to be clear BP is great! I just think there's a vast gap between it and c++.
Fair - I've always thought unity and unreal have very different focus on how you get started. Unreal is geared towards novices and experts but IMO it's really hard to jump that gap. Unity requires - or rewards - moderate coding understanding and from there the curve is smooth.
November 6, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Fair - I've always thought unity and unreal have very different focus on how you get started. Unreal is geared towards novices and experts but IMO it's really hard to jump that gap. Unity requires - or rewards - moderate coding understanding and from there the curve is smooth.
Yeah that's definitely a big concern. I don't really like epic either, but unity absolutely have some trust to earn back.
November 6, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Yeah that's definitely a big concern. I don't really like epic either, but unity absolutely have some trust to earn back.
One of my favorite bits! I hate going through an unreal project turning things off, love knowing exactly how my unity project works. And unity's non-insane inheritance hierarchy usually makes it easy to write your own stuff, where I find doing the same in unreal painful.
November 6, 2025 at 4:35 PM
One of my favorite bits! I hate going through an unreal project turning things off, love knowing exactly how my unity project works. And unity's non-insane inheritance hierarchy usually makes it easy to write your own stuff, where I find doing the same in unreal painful.
Sure, and like I say, I'm happy with the trade off. In my experience performance is almost always limited by design pattern rather than c#. Arguably unreal gives you more "design pattern" guardrails than unity, but on the other hand in reality everyone just just everything in BP anyway...
November 6, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Sure, and like I say, I'm happy with the trade off. In my experience performance is almost always limited by design pattern rather than c#. Arguably unreal gives you more "design pattern" guardrails than unity, but on the other hand in reality everyone just just everything in BP anyway...
Assignment like
myVar = myEnum switch {
MyEnum.Val1=>var1,
MyEnum.Val2=>var2
};
Pattern matching... is a whole thing I can't demo here!
myVar = myEnum switch {
MyEnum.Val1=>var1,
MyEnum.Val2=>var2
};
Pattern matching... is a whole thing I can't demo here!
November 6, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Assignment like
myVar = myEnum switch {
MyEnum.Val1=>var1,
MyEnum.Val2=>var2
};
Pattern matching... is a whole thing I can't demo here!
myVar = myEnum switch {
MyEnum.Val1=>var1,
MyEnum.Val2=>var2
};
Pattern matching... is a whole thing I can't demo here!
Oh, I've always found that reasonably easy, although you definitely do a lot more of that than I do so fair enough!
November 6, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Oh, I've always found that reasonably easy, although you definitely do a lot more of that than I do so fair enough!
Monolithic as in an insane inheritance hierarchy. Plugins have to plug into that, rather than using hooks or consuming things. It's exactly what people bemoan about the worst excesses of OOP. But yeah, loads of unity stuff is absolutely half baked!
November 6, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Monolithic as in an insane inheritance hierarchy. Plugins have to plug into that, rather than using hooks or consuming things. It's exactly what people bemoan about the worst excesses of OOP. But yeah, loads of unity stuff is absolutely half baked!
But a) it's proven possible to make c# more low level, but higher level c++ is a mess. B) we're talking about workarounds for the 1% of cases you need them, and making 99% of code faster to write and harder to do wrong.
November 6, 2025 at 4:22 PM
But a) it's proven possible to make c# more low level, but higher level c++ is a mess. B) we're talking about workarounds for the 1% of cases you need them, and making 99% of code faster to write and harder to do wrong.
Switch in c# is amazing, and way more versatile than c++! Have you used it for pattern matching or assignment?
November 6, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Switch in c# is amazing, and way more versatile than c++! Have you used it for pattern matching or assignment?