It seems like a lot of people judge Gamestudio based on the fact that they know it and because Unity/Unreal et al do it differently, it's inherently bad. Smells a bit like sunk cost fallacy.

The sprite creation example seems a bit contrived for example. Yes, lines of code wise, Unity is longer. Yes, it does have more boilerplate. BUT, in general, how many times are you writing this code? In reality, you'll have a certain type of sprite that you want and you'll have a factory method to create it that does all of the boilerplate set up code for you. Basically exactly what ent_create is, except you create it yourself.

Gamestudio is limiting! To stick with the example, what if you don't like the default behaviour of ent_create? Now you start writing your own boilerplate around Gamestudio and can easily balloon your one liner to a 50 liner. Even worse, there are limits in Gamestudio that you can hit fairly easily and then you are at the end of the road. You can't hack around certain internals and that can be extremely limiting. The more tools the engine gives you, the more complex the code might seem but the more freedom you have and less limits. Sure, Unity _does_ have its own sets of limits, but they are quite a bit harder to reach than Gamestudios.

Now, don't get me wrong, I still don't like Unity personally. But that's not to say that it's not a perfectly capable engine. Instead of trying to do an apples to oranges comparison, why not give Unity or Unreal a real chance?

This thread reads to me like a guy who has only ever put screws in by hand and is given a powerdrill for the first time in his life. Dude goes "Yeah, you see, I prefer to rotate it myself and I also never need to charge my screwdriver. Why would I need such a thing, it's way to complicated?". My dude, you missed the whole point of the powerdrill.