Game Architect on Good Middleware

Good Middleware

An excellent article on what makes good middleware was posted on Game Architect. Kyle, the author, hits the major points -- anyone who's used bad middleware has certainly run into these issues. 

I would make a distinction between middleware and engines. Something like Unreal is an engine. It isn't something you integrate into your application, it forms the framework of your application. Because it is a framework, it has made some architectural decisions for you: memory, I/O, the data pipeline, etc. 

Due to an engine enforcing architecture, the questions used to evaluate it are different (and probably the subject of another blog entry). The advantage of a complete engine is tight integration and a lot less work to get up and running, particularly on the tool side of things. The disadvantage is the engine may have made architectural decisions that don't fit your game. Like most engineering decisions, it is a tradeoff everyone has to decide for themselves.