Hey there!

I have been using Houdini comfortably for the past 2 years. I am interested in going into game design and game development. I wondered if there was a way to make a game within Houdini itself instead of using a game engine. The reason for this - that I am sure most people can relate - is just the amazing debugging tools within Houdini.

What I would like to do - for example - is create a prototype within Houdini and figure out the logic and feel of that prototype.

Like if I wanted to make a ship move around, following the cursor with speeding up and slowing down controls using keyboard inputs. The reason it makes sense to do within in Houdini (which I am comfortable with) is to make the logic work. Using vector math and the feel of the velocities and angular velocities.

I can do this with a sphere normally with another target point and using a solver.
But if I could use my cursor or keyboard inputs I can "feel" what it would feel like and I can nail the concepts before doing it within a game engine.

The core reason is - quick conceptualization, understanding the logic required, and fast iteration.
I feel like there is a lot of potential for doing it within Houdini and it would make sense to learn game design through the lens of a skillset I am already comfortable with.

Would love to hear if its possible or if there is a way I can do research into this.

Thank you!

While you can technically do it, I don't see a benefit using Houdini for the purpose you described especially since it's much easier to prototype game logic in dedicated game engines and most of them allow you to define logic using nodes, have much more sophisticated controller mapping, native game loop with time delta adjusted for current fps, are much more optimized for performance and GPUs and have many more resources for this purpose

Larger engines like UE or Unity also have Hengine support so even if your needs extend beyond game logic into procedural content creation you can get best of both worlds

As for debugging tools, while I'm not a game developer I believe game engines have much better and more granular debugging tools both for performance monitoring and setting granular breakpoints within your game logic