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I am a web developer who works with C# and Ruby On Rails languages – it depends of the platform my customer have – and I don't need deep knowledge of medicine to create a portal based on it. By now, I want to jump-in unto game creation.

I don't want to create games from literal scratch: I want to create things on the top of game engines such as Unity or Unreal Engine. The point is: I need some physics or mathematics knowledge?

Yes, the basics that everybody knows it's essential I think, but advanced things is necessary? I mean, I need to be a doctor in physics to create awesome things with game engines? I know if I create a game engine, the knowledge is a little necessary, but remember: I'll work on Unity or something like that.

Keep in mind...

  • We are talking about to designing code. I'm not talking about to drag n' drop sprites and go;
  • I know that a game engine is composed by some libraries that bring games to life, such as:

    1. Audio services;
    2. Network tools;
    3. Graphics mechanisms;
  • ... in other words, I know there are components that helps me to get things done, but I don't know if they do all the (hard?) work for me.

  • I told you "[...] to create awesome things with game engines? [...]", do you remember? So, what you must understand by "awesome things" is: imagine a simple ball kicking the floor. OK, it moves up and down, and I want to do this applying gravity realities.

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    \$\begingroup\$ The answer is "It depends". We don't know what you know already, and we don't know what you're going to create or what tools you're going to use. If you're creating something the tools aren't designed for, you'll need "special knowledge", but since we don't know what you know already, that knowledge might not be that special to you. \$\endgroup\$
    – House
    Mar 17, 2014 at 13:51

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You don't need a deep understanding of what the game engine does.

Otherwise there would be no point in using an engine. You need to understand the overall picture of what it does, and learn how to use it.

You also need to determine if the engine actually provides all that is required for your game (hint: it's probably not). E.g. let's say your game requires procedural generation of terrain: if the engine doesn't support it, you'll have to roll your own system for that.

In other words, something that an engine doesn't do for you is the gameplay layer. Everything that is specific to your game can't be part of an engine, by definition. So what you'll definitely need is knowledge of how to create games. Luckily, this is the kind of things you learn by doing them, so just delve into it and you'll be fine.

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