An upcoming update for RimWorld changes its engine from Unity to the devs' in-house Waylith Engine, speeding the game up without breaking community mods.
There are rumors it’s based on the engine that Kitten Space Agency’s (spiritual successor to Kerbal Space Program) devs develop. So it would be that other game.
From what I understand, BRUTAL (the thing that KSA devs made) is not a typical game engine. It’s very low level and more of a set of tools and libraries to make a game and its engine with, without completely reinventing the wheel. It doesn’t restrict game devs in any way and aims to give them maximum freedom (e.g. it doesn’t even have a concept of a “scene” that all engines like Unity or Unreal have). Obviously this also makes it very complicated to use compared to Unity, but makes it possible to custom-tailor it to any game and use case.
This is especially important for a game like KSA that doesn’t fit into Unity’s model at all, but I guess it also provides some benefits for RimWorld.
Yeah, imo the term “game engine” itself has kinda evolved over the years from “framework that contains common game/renderer code” to “platform to handle the entire process of implementing a game”.
It’s just code in the end, so even the “full platform” option can be used as if it’s just a framework, which it sounds like RimWorld was doing if it could switch engines without breaking mod support (another comment guessed LLMs were involved but IMO this goes way beyond what an LLM would handle well, as it would involve pretty much reimplementing unity’s framework). Though I don’t have any direct experience with Rimworld mods and how exactly they interact with the game; if they used a data-driven approach, then it could be possible to redo just that interface and keep mods working (though it would also depend on what exactly was running the mod code itself, as that part would also need to remain functional).
There are rumors it’s based on the engine that Kitten Space Agency’s (spiritual successor to Kerbal Space Program) devs develop. So it would be that other game.
Those are two games with extremely different needs…
From what I understand, BRUTAL (the thing that KSA devs made) is not a typical game engine. It’s very low level and more of a set of tools and libraries to make a game and its engine with, without completely reinventing the wheel. It doesn’t restrict game devs in any way and aims to give them maximum freedom (e.g. it doesn’t even have a concept of a “scene” that all engines like Unity or Unreal have). Obviously this also makes it very complicated to use compared to Unity, but makes it possible to custom-tailor it to any game and use case.
This is especially important for a game like KSA that doesn’t fit into Unity’s model at all, but I guess it also provides some benefits for RimWorld.
Yeah, imo the term “game engine” itself has kinda evolved over the years from “framework that contains common game/renderer code” to “platform to handle the entire process of implementing a game”.
It’s just code in the end, so even the “full platform” option can be used as if it’s just a framework, which it sounds like RimWorld was doing if it could switch engines without breaking mod support (another comment guessed LLMs were involved but IMO this goes way beyond what an LLM would handle well, as it would involve pretty much reimplementing unity’s framework). Though I don’t have any direct experience with Rimworld mods and how exactly they interact with the game; if they used a data-driven approach, then it could be possible to redo just that interface and keep mods working (though it would also depend on what exactly was running the mod code itself, as that part would also need to remain functional).
They’re both projects moving away from Unity and to something more tailorable to their needs at a lower level, so it’s not all that strange, really.
Dean confirmed on the KSA discord that they licensed BRUTAL (the framework that KSA’s engine is built upon) to Ludeon for Waylith.
Don’t do that to me. Don’t give me hope.