Does a game engine developer need knowledge of low graphics programming?

Question

Game development

Can OpenGL, or understanding how it works, come in handy when making games on engines like UE or Unity? And one more thing, SDL is written using OpenGL, I understood correctly (by abstraction SDL is higher than OpenGL)?

Answer 1

A "game engine" is not only a "graphics engine". The whole point of game engines is to abstract away low-level things. Ideally, never encounter them at all.
But!
If something is not implemented in the engine, then this something is either simply impossible to use, or you need to write it yourself, perhaps in pure OpenGL / DirectX. That is, up to some point, "low" knowledge is not needed, but at some point they may be very necessary.
At least superficial knowledge will be a plus - if necessary, you will understand where to go and what knowledge you need to pull up to solve the problem.

Answer 2

Developer to developer strife
Someone modifies physics, creating curved spaces, so you definitely need at least an understanding of how everything works in engines at a low level.
And someone will rivet hundreds of clicker games, where there are no graphics, no gameplay, no complexity, such game engines use more as a tool to display a picture (a kind of overkill). So you don't even need to understand what opengl is.
Although, there will come a time when even such developers will run into misunderstanding, for example, here one asked why he slows down when he puts objects into a glass, and they are made on the basis of transparent textures, since the objects are uneven, the sprites intersect and there comes a moment when the number translucent overlays exceed the capabilities of mobile video cards and everything lags, when the contents of the glass do not change after the fall of the object, there is no need to recalculate this content every time, let it all be one object and that's it.

Answer 3

Let's do it. No one knows. You may not need anything for the rest of your life. And perhaps tomorrow it will be necessary to maintain low-level code. I recently needed to implement a tree traversal algorithm, although I am a web developer, and as they say on the Internet, "algorithms are not needed." Study, and do not ask questions - "do I need it or not." If you are not yet working in the industry, and are only going to look for your first job, then I do not advise you to give preference to studying low-level things, a lot of time will be wasted. If you are already a practicing developer, this is up to you. Yab taught.