Dynami was made in 30 hours from scratch using C++. I've just released a timelapse video showing the full development process:

Dynami (pronounced as "Dinami")  is a Simple 2D Game Engine that is scriptable in Python. It was made from the absolute scratch in exactly 33,45 hours using C++ and OpenGL. The main objective with this project was to build a game development tool for myself to create 2D games and also why not releasing it to public (you can download and use it as well). 

People tends to romanticise Game Engine development, as it is a super complicated and hard thing to do. From my point of view, well, it is. But if you know what you're doing, it can be pretty straight forward. This was not the first or second engine I made, in fact, I do have a lot of professional working experience, both in game engine development (having my own + working with existing engines in the industry, doing console ports) and game development (with around 40 published videogames over the past 12 years).

Nowadays, when making video games in my indie studio, I'd rather make my own tech instead of relying on existing ones for the simple sake of control and freedom to customize it as you need. That's not a waste of time and money, as proven in the video, if you know what you're doing you can have a fully working engine in a very short amount of time. What I've seen working in the industry is that people (including big studios) often choose to use existing commercial GEs with the argument that it will be a time (and money) saver, but in the end, they spend more time hacking the existing engine around to fit their needs (resulting in a glitchy codebase that doesn't work well) that they would if they had a professional making the tech from scratch. It's not a rule, a studio can live without this problem, but based on my experience, it's not a rare behaviour. 

The engine name was an homenage to my very first game, made as a kid, called "Dynami", that was a word created based on the greek word "force" ("δύναμη").

In the video below, you can find the full timelapse of me making the entire project from scratch, followed by my personal commentary on the entire project process.

If you're curious, here is the statistics for the nerds:

Number of projects: 

• 3 (Engine, Editor, Player)

Time spent (recorded):

• 2.007,5 minutes (about 33 hours and 30 min)

Lines of Code (written by me, during the timelapse):

• 1.344 LOC - in 39 C++ Header Files (.h)
• 4.997 LOC - in 42 C++ Files (.cpp)
• Total: 6.341 LOC, 81 files. 

Coding speed (average):

• 1 new file per 24 minutes
• 3,15 lines of code per minute
• 189,5 lines of code per hour

That's 1516 lines of code a day (tipical 8 hour work)

Small FAQ:

Did I worked 8 hours a day?

• Answer: No. My initial plan was to take a weekend to make the project, splitting the time into 16 hours of work per day (saturday and sunday). Unfortunately a family member passed away right in the beginning of the project and I had to stop. After recovering from it and coming back, I decided to just "take it easy" and work when I wanted to. So I finished the project in 7 days with an average of 4.4 hours of work a day.

Did I tested the engine?

• Answer: Yes, afterwards. Unfortunately I was not able to precisely record and document the testing phase because it relies on other people downloading and using the software to then give me feedbacks (if it crashes, critical usability problems and so on). But my estimation is that it took me an extra 4-5 hours to talk to the testers, locate and address all the issues.