The Hidden Cost of Building a Game Engine Editor (Why I Scaled Mine Back)

Building a game engine taught me something unexpected:

The hardest part isn’t always writing the renderer, implementing XR support, or optimizing performance.

Sometimes, the hardest part is deciding what NOT to build.

In this video, I talk about why I decided to dramatically scope down the Untold Engine Editor, the mistakes I made, and the engineering tradeoffs that come with maintaining complex tooling as a solo developer.

We’ll talk about:

  • Why I removed scripting from the editor
  • The hidden cost of maintenance
  • Why building an engine and building an editor require completely different skill sets
  • And why simplifying the editor was ultimately the right decision for the future of the Untold Engine

Untold Engine is a Swift + Metal renderer and engine focused on XR, streaming, and real-time rendering for Apple platforms.

Untold Engine: https://github.com/untoldengine/UntoldEngine

If you enjoy engine development, rendering architecture, XR rendering, or graphics programming, consider subscribing.

Harold Serrano

Computer Graphics Enthusiast. Currently developing a 3D Game Engine.