Dev Log - That's just Unreal, damn

I have been working on a game for a while now. At the beginning, I decided to build everything myself in Python. Engine, renderer, logic, all of it. I already had a story, lore, and a large world in mind. I also had a growing pile of assets, music, sound effects, images, textures, and concepts.

The original design was Wolfenstein-like, simple corridors, tight spaces, controlled geometry. One key requirement was visual “plasticity”, surfaces needed to look smooth, glossy, alive, not flat or dull. I actually managed to get that part working. Visually, it was promising.

Then reality hit.

The framerate dropped to a crawl. Every wall added made it worse. Optimization attempts helped only marginally. No matter what I tried, batching, culling, restructuring, it never crossed the line into something stable or scalable. I spent a long time on this, determined to make it work, determined to prove that writing my own solution was the right call.

It wasn’t.

Looking back, the reason is obvious. I was pushing against a solid wall. Python itself was not the enemy, but it was a major limitation. I did not need to make the engine in Python. I learned Python thanks to this project, and that alone made it worthwhile, but using it as the foundation for a performance-heavy 3D game was simply the wrong tool for the job. Too high-level, too much overhead, too little control where it mattered most.

So I ended up back at the beginning. Not truly from zero, I still have the assets, the world, the ideas, but the technical foundation had to go.

I spent about a week studying the most common engines that could realistically support what I want to build, Godot, Unity, and Unreal Engine. I will not go deep into comparisons here. The short version is simple, my requirements aligned most strongly with Unreal Engine.

And that brings me here.

I am about to learn an engine I have never used before, fully aware that this means relearning workflows, tools, and ways of thinking. At the same time, the ceiling just moved much higher. Many of the constraints that shaped the original design no longer exist.

Which also means this game will not be Wolfenstein-like anymore.

Full 3D changes everything.

And honestly, that is exactly what I wanted all along.